Tesla's recent rollout of fleet-telemetry empowers authorized users to seamlessly stream real-time data directly from Tesla vehicles. Let's delve into the process of initiating live data streaming from a Tesla vehicle.
To make this as smooth as possible, a few important notes:
- I created a Postman collection to help with the API requests sent during this tutorial.
- The latest documentation for Tesla's Fleet API is available here.
Create a Developer Account
To begin your quest for data, first create a developer account on Tesla's official developer portal: developer.tesla.com.
I recommend selecting all scopes as there is no downside. Here is my configuration for Client Details:
Finishing Application Registration
Once your developer application is created, you must register it with Fleet API.
This includes submitting a certificate signing request (CSR) to Tesla. To create one, first generate a private key.
openssl ecparam -name prime256v1 -genkey -noout -out private-key.pem
Now, derive its public key.
openssl ec -in private-key.pem -pubout -out public-key.pem
Make this public key accessible at: https://your-domain.com/.well-known/appspecific/com.tesla.3p.public-key.pem
Note: there are two domains you may use throughout this tutorial. The first one is your public domain users are familiar with (such as your-domain.com). This is the domain you host your public key on. The second domain is the domain your fleet-telemetry server is exposed on (such as tesla-telemetry.your-domain.com).
Now, using the private key, create a CSR.
openssl req -out your-domain.com.csr -key private_key.pem -subj /CN=your-domain.com/ -new
With all this created, let's send it to Tesla.
- In Postman, fill in your environment variables (client id, client secret, scopes, audience, redirect uri).
- Send the "Generate Partner Token" request.
- Send the "Register Partner Account" request.
- Input the appropriate
domainandcsrin the body.
- Input the appropriate
Sample body:
{
"domain": "your-domain.com",
"csr": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----\ncert_data\n-----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----\n
}
Once this is submitted, Tesla will process the CSR and update your account on the backend accordingly. It may take a few weeks to process. In the meanwhile, check out all the capabilities of Fleet API.
After CSR Confirmation
Once you receive a confirmation email from Tesla, you can begin configuring your fleet-telemetry server. Since the server will need to be accessible to the world, I am using a Linode nano server to run everything.
1. Create another CSR (optional)
If the domain your fleet-telemetry server will be on is different from the domain used in the CSR above, create a new CSR for this domain.
2. Obtain a Certificate and CA Bundle
Next, we need to obtain a certificate for fleet-telemetry to use for TLS connections. There are many ways to do this, but I opted for a free and simple soution: LetsEncrypt and Certbot.
Note: Ensure your server's DNS is configured for this to work.
# install certbot
sudo snap install --classic certbot
# ensure certbot command can be run
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot
# create the certificate
# when offered http server or validation files, I opted for http server (option 1)
certbot certonly -d tesla-telemetry.your-domain.com --csr tesla-telemetry.your-domain.com.csr
The output of this last command should tell you where the certificate and full certificate chain are located. Copy these files into an easy to access directory.
Successfully received certificate.
Certificate is saved at: /root/fleet-telemetry/0000_cert.pem
Intermediate CA chain is saved at: /root/fleet-telemetry/0000_chain.pem
Full certificate chain is saved at: /root/fleet-telemetry/0001_chain.pem
Create fleet-telemetry config
The fleet-telemetry server takes a JSON configuration file. You can take this template and customize accordingly:
{
"host": "0.0.0.0",
"hostname": "tesla-telemetry.your-domain.com",
"port": 443,
"log_level": "debug",
"json_log_enable": true,
"namespace": "telemetry",
"reliable_ack": false,
"rate_limit": {
"enabled": false,
"message_limit": 100
},
"records": {
"alerts": [
"logger"
],
"errors": [
"logger"
],
"V": [
"logger"
]
},
"tls": {
"server_cert": "path to certificate from previous step",
"server_key": "path to private key"
},
"ca": "content of full certificate chain file from previous step"
}
The
hostnameandcafields are not required. They must be included to use thecheck_server_cert.shscript later in tutorial.
Start your server
There are many ways to start your fleet-telemetry server. I opted to use Docker with the following docker-compose.yml:
version: '3.8'
services:
app:
build:
context: ./repo
ports:
- 0.0.0.0:443:443
volumes:
- /path/on/host/to/certs:/config
- /path/on/host/to/config.json:/etc/fleet-telemetry/config.json
This requires having fleet-telemetry cloned to the repo directory:
git clone https://github.com/teslamotors/fleet-telemetry.git repo
Then, start the server with docker compose up.
However you run fleet-telemetry, ensure your server is accessible to the outside world on port 443. This is the port vehicles use when connecting.
Validate server configuration
Tesla provides a handy check_server_cert.sh script to ensure your server is configured properly.
From your local machine, run the script. Pass in the path to your server's config.json:
./check_server_cert.sh config.json
Before moving on, be sure to get the success message from this script.
Add Fleet Key to Vehicle
Before configuring a vehicle, it needs your Fleet Key (public key) to be added. To do this, send the owner to https://tesla.com/_ak/your-domain.com. This will prompt them to add your key to the vehicle.
Send configuration to vehicle
Once the server configuration is validated, it's time to try sending data from a real vehicle.
The endpoints we used earlier required Partner Account tokens. The endpoints we will be using here act on behalf of a customer account.
When we called the "Generate Partner Token" endpoint earlier, an environment variable AUTHORIZE_URL was created in Postman. Grab that URL and paste it into your browser. This redirects to Tesla for authenticating with a customer account.
Once Tesla redirects to the redirect URI, extract the code from the URL parameters and paste it into the CALLBACK_CODE environment variable in Postman.
Now, go back to Collections in Postman. Send the "Code Exchange" request.
Next, let's setup and send the "Send Fleet Telemetry Config" request. This places your streaming config on a vehicle.
Here is an example body for the request:
{
"vins": [
"VIN"
],
"config": {
"hostname": "tesla-telemetry.your-domain.com",
"port": 443,
"ca": "full certificate chain (actual contents, not path)",
"fields": {
"Soc": {
"interval_seconds": 30
}
}
}
}
You can view all possible fields in this file.
Once you send the request, the impacted VINs will begin trying to send data shortly.
Receiving Data
If everything went smoothly, the logs from your fleet-telemetry server should begin showing realtime vehicle data.
Here's a sample of what I received:
{
"data": [
{
"key": "Soc",
"value": {
"stringValue": "79.147"
}
}
],
"createdAt": "2024-02-24T07:23:58.314605660Z",
"vin": "TESLA00000001"
}
If you aren't receiving data or are seeing TLS errors, send a request to the "Fleet Telemetry Errors" endpoint. It shows any errors the vehicle is encountering.
{
"response": {
"fleet_telemetry_errors": [
{
"created_at": "2024-02-24T06:54:20.660684365Z",
"error": "\"webconnection error: x509: certificate relies on legacy Common Name field, use SANs instead\" cm_type=stream",
"error_name": "cloud_manager_error",
"hostname": "your-domain.com",
"name": "121c18bba1fc-4058-bd98-687727180599",
"port": "443",
"txID": "edf2ba8d-cc8b-4d03-b619-74bd5a0e0be8",
"vin": "TESLA00000001"
}
}
}
Congratulations
If you made it this far, hopefully you are seeing realtime data from your vehicle. Nice work! Hopefully you can leverage this data to build something awesome 😎
Top comments (40)
I was considering writing an article just like this a few hours ago, so glad to see you already have. I got access to Fleet Telemetry this morning and have successfully implemented it on teslemetry.com to send Webhooks or Server Side Events.
So you subscribe on their behalf and post it back out to their provided webhook on each report?
One question, why do we need to send
cain the body ofSend Fleet Telemetry Config?I'm asking because in practice it means every 3 months that the TLS certificate changes(assuming I'm using let's encrypt) I have to resubmit my whole fleet configs.
Or is it only needed on the first time when the vehicle is configured?
Theoretically the CA shouldn't change if you generate with the same CA each time. It's probably easiest to self-sign your certificate. I will update the article soon to show how to do this.
Hi Patrick, thank you for this tutorial. I helps a lot! I still have some questions?
=> My app domain is registered like
www.your-domain.comnot with a classic your-domain.com (newbie error), will it work to have : telemetry.your-domain.com? (certificate has been generated properly)=> I have sent a CSR to tesla for your-domain.com, I got a response 200 with :
"response": {"account_id": "4625141***",
"domain": "www.*****.com",
"name": "***",
"description": "***",
"csr": null,
"client_id": "****",
"ca": null,
"created_at": "2023-10-25T17:17:48.744Z",
"updated_at": "2023-11-17T23:14:46.079Z",
"enterprise_tier": "free",
"issuer": null,
"csr_updated_at": null,
"public_key": "0451016f6299****"
}
But I see null for CA and CSR. Do you think that the CSR will be processed? Should I do something else?
Thank you!
Yes, that will work. I'm using "tesla.mydomain.com" for my app registration and "telemetry.mydomain.com" for the fleet-telemetry server and it seems ok with that. Granted I can't get my certs to load correctly yet so I can't prove it...
Hi Steve,
I'm wondering if your CSR was accepted and successful? I also want to confirm that you meant for the CSR you used "domain": "tesla.mydomain.com" (or "mydomain.com") instead of the "telemetry.mydomain.com"?
when editing the config.json I need to fill the content of the full certificate chain file:
"ca": "content of full certificate chain file from previous step"But the content is multiline code like this:
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----12345
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
abcde
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
How can I add this multiline code to the config.json?
OK, found it. Every line need a \n and then join to one line...
Now I can use the check script but it gives me:
What can be the problem here?
Looks like verification is passing with
-partial_chainflag. From openssl docs:Allow verification to succeed if an incomplete chain can be built. That is, a chain ending in a certificate that normally would not be trusted (because it has no matching positive trust attributes and is not self-signed) but is an element of the trust store. This certificate may be self-issued or belong to an intermediate CA.
Hi @patrickdemers6, thank you very much for the tutorial.
I've noticed your steps and steps in the tesla-temeletry repo are a bit different. Which one is the newest?
Since in the repo, it didn't mention CSR, I tried to get a self-signed CA. However, when I try to use the CA to verify my tesla-telemetry server, I got
The server certificate is invalid.error.Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks!
when checking the csr i kept getting an error, any feedback is appreciated!
./repo/tools/check_server_cert.sh config.json
CN = tesla-telemetry.your-domain.com
error 20 at 0 depth lookup: unable to get local issuer certificate
error /tmp/tmp.MB7flNLa0Z: verification failed
CN = tesla-telemetry.your-domain.com
error 20 at 0 depth lookup: unable to get local issuer certificate
error /tmp/tmp.MB7flNLa0Z: verification failed
The server certificate is invalid
Hi - I hope someone can answer a simple question.
I already have Fleet API working and want to add Fleet Telemetry.
I assume I can use the same account.
Can I use the same app or does this need to be a separate app? (the Generate Partner Token step looks identical).
Thanks in advance for any help
Strange, the telemetry-config has been synced to the car, my server is running, the CSR-request was accepted by Tesla, check_server_cert states 'The server certificate is valid.', but I do not get any data... If I query the Fleet Telemetry Errors endpoint with my partner bearer token, I get an empty fleet_telemetry_errors return...
Ok, seems like I missed only one step. Although I think the README.md on the github page did not described it a week ago. You need to redirect the owner of the vehicle you want to install the virtual key on to tesla.com/_ak/your-domain.com and let the owner accept this with his app... After doing this last step, data began streaming into my server.
I updated the readme to make the steps clearer a while back. I'll update this post as well.
How long is shortly? Just to have an idea. I've sent the config to a MY 2023 model, which accepted it. When requesting its config, the 'synced' field remains 'false'. Even after > 1 hour and waking up de tesla and even driving it for 2 minutes...
ok, the vehicle now states 'synced'='true'. I guess it may take a while...
Yeah, there's no hard rule on when the vehicle will receive the config. It depends on if it's connected to the server, has a solid internet connection, etc.
Hello and thanks for this great post!
May I ask you how long it took for Tesla to get back to you after you submitted the CSR?
In step 9 of their fleet api Github repo they mention it may take up to two weeks
github.com/teslamotors/fleet-telem...
Have you contacted them via email or just waited for them to get back to you?
Did they get back to you?
I'm still waiting since 2024-03-31
It took more than the advertised 2 weeks for me - just got my response this week and probably submitted it around the same time you did.
Thank you Steve, There were a problem on my account CSR was not attached but it is fixed!