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When it comes to loading and working with with third party APIs for your car, it kind of goes without saying that there are some caveats to be considered. For one thing, Tesla’s servers don’t take kindly to being spammed into oblivion if your computer decides to be a Chatty Cathy – if you’re sending a ton of requests on a constant basis then that’ll put a load on the servers, and they’ll probably respond by blocking your IP address. Secondly, you’re tinkering and tampering with a big, heavy, complicated and expensive machine, so consider what you’re doing and don’t decide that it’d be neat if you could heat your house by cranking the temperature up on the heater and leaving all the doors open or something equally asinine. You should exercise common sense regarding activities that might reduce the efficacy of the battery or other systems of the car.

Also remember that if you’re tinkering with the locks and remote starting the car then you’re also practically rolling out the red carpet for someone to steal your car. It’s perfectly possible for me to be in my office and remotely unlock the car and start it up so that any passerby could just get into the thing and drive it away. I don’t do that because that would be dumb, and I’d hope that nobody else would either.

With that out of the way, let’s get on to the good stuff.

You’ll need some kind of environment that’ll allow you to access the REST API. There are some ways of doing it in Python (which is very tempting), but the simplest method is to use a Javascript runtime like nodejs. That can be downloaded from nodejs.org.

Once that’s installed you’ll use the npm to install the Tesla tools, thus:

Sudo npm install -g teslams

Every time you query Tesla’s servers you need some kind of authorization. On the car (and on the official client) that’s handled with an oauth token, but the simplest way to handle authentication in this case is to just use the raw credentials. Yes, I know it’s a bad idea.

There are a bunch of commands built into the API and there’s good documentation out there about what it all does (see here for a good rundown). Each requires a -u username and a -p password flag. I don’t really want to be able to unlock the car or flash the lights, but it might be nice to have a simple way to see how much charge is in the thing, so I added this line to my .profile (credentials changed for obvious reasons):

alias charge='chargebar -u myemailaddress@emailaddress.com -p mysupersecretpassword'

Firing up Terminal and typing in “charge” gets me this:

…which is pretty neat. Now I just have to find the time to get that data periodically pulled down into a .json file so that I could throw it up on something like Panic’s StatusBoard…

I bought a Tesla Model S a couple of years ago, and have only recently started shutting up about it. This has been a herculean effort all things considered because it’s absolutely the most incredible piece of tech I’ve ever owned. Sure, the iPhone is pretty remarkable and you can make a lot of solid arguments about the value of the personal computer of your choice, but can those things make you giggle like a five year-old on a regular basis as you mash the accelerator down and feel gravity put its hand on your face and push? No.

Also, it’s pretty and well-designed and comfortable and roomy and… I’m doing it again.

As it’s a nice modern car with all the bells and whistles and connectivity that you could hope for, it’s also stuffed with gadgets and gizmos that report who you are, where you’re going and what you’re doing. Every time someone crashes their Tesla and claims that Autopilot made them do it Tesla invariably releases a statement an hour or two later to the effect that they looked at the data from the car and can definitively prove that the person had their hands on the wheel or just hit the accelerator instead of the brake. They’re able to do that because the car continuously records speed, location, altitude, temperature, what systems are engaged and disengaged and reports that all back to Tesla’s servers. It would be creepy if it wasn’t so neat.

And if it wasn’t open. You see, the really neat thing about that data is that it’s not just locked away for Tesla’s own digestion and enjoyment; while the official Tesla API is still under lock and key there are plenty of other ways to get at that data. There are a few excellent iOS apps that will give you access to the controls of your car (some allowing things like Summon, which will wake your car up and make it drive to you), and a couple of excellent third-party Mac apps that will allow you to look at and control some of the more elementary functions of your car, such as VisibleTesla.

What I’m after, however, is something faster and more command-line accessible, so I’m going to spend the next couple of posts running through what’s required to get quick access to some essential information and functions through the Terminal on OS X.

Of course, if I mess it up then it’s not like I’ll brick my car. At least, I really hope not…