Thank you for BavarianData – and a logbook guide for older BMWs (iDrive 6)

[ursubey]

Hi @JustChr,

many greetings from the "Rheinland"!

I just want to say a big thank you for BavarianData. You've done a great job with this integration.

I drive a BMW G31 (530d) with iDrive 6. I compared BavarianData with other CarData integrations, and with my car BavarianData gave me the most accurate values: mileage, fuel level and the position at the end of a trip. For a driving logbook, those are exactly the values that matter. The setup was easy, and the stream has been running reliably ever since.

As you know, older cars with iDrive 6 only report their data at the end of a trip and don't stream live GPS while driving. That's why the built-in trip detection can't work for these cars. That's not a problem with your integration, it's how the older cars behave.

To make your work usable for owners of older BMWs too, I built an automatic driving logbook on top of BavarianData and published it as a full guide:

👉 Home Assistant BMW Logbook for iDrive 6

How it works:

• Trip end and all values come from BavarianData: mileage, fuel and position, with Places for the address.
• Trip start comes from the iPhone: an iOS Shortcut sends a webhook with the current address as soon as the phone connects to the car via Bluetooth.
• Every trip ends up as one row in Google Sheets, with start and destination address, distance, duration and fuel consumption.
• It includes fallbacks for lost webhooks, return trips that start before the previous trip is closed, and duplicate Bluetooth events.

Your integration is credited and linked in the README. I hope it helps other owners of older BMWs get the most out of BavarianData. If you think it fits, feel free to link it in your wiki for iDrive 6 cars.

Thanks again for your work!

the other Chris (@ursubey)

[JustChr]

Hi Chris,

thank you, that is very kind, and I'm glad it gave you the most accurate values of the integrations you compared.

Your explanation of how iDrive 6 behaves is exactly the kind of thing I can't see from my own car. I develop against a single i5, and a diesel G31 is the first petrol or diesel BMW anyone has told me about. I'm adding a short note to the wiki that older cars report only at the end of a trip, with a link to your guide, labelled as an independent community project. It goes live with the next release.

Two questions, and no obligation on either:

• Is there anything that would make this easier for you, or anything you would like to see in BavarianData? Your logbook is built around what the integration doesn't do for your car, so I'd rather hear it from you than guess.
• If you are happy to, a diagnostics download (Settings → Devices & Services → BavarianData → ⋮ → Download diagnostics) would show me which fields your G31 really sends. It contains no personal data beyond what the integration itself redacts, but have a look before you post it.

Thanks again, and for crediting the project.

Chris

[ursubey]

Hi Chris,

thanks a lot for the quick and friendly reply, and for adding the note to the wiki. I really appreciate it.

Diagnostics

Attached. I removed the account fingerprint, the config entry ID and the unrelated custom components. Everything else is unchanged.

Some context on what's in there:

• Coverage is 26 % (35 of 133 descriptors), and the tire cluster stays silent. That matches how iDrive 6 behaves: almost everything arrives in one burst at the end of a trip.
• The kvanbiesen CarData integration is still installed via HACS, but it has no config entry, so it doesn't open a second stream.

Observations from the G31 that the diagnostics don't show directly

• Timing: the car sends one burst at the end of a trip and nothing while driving. Yesterday's four short trips: my phone connected via Bluetooth at the start, and the burst arrived in HA about 7–10 minutes later, i.e. right after parking. For the last trip the vehicle timestamp was 09:19:40Z and HA received it at 09:19:43Z, so the latency between car and HA is only ~3 seconds.
• Resolution: odometer in whole km, fuel level in whole litres (15 → 15 → 14 → 14 → 14 L over those trips). Short trips therefore show 0 L consumption. Position arrives once per burst, with altitude and heading.
• Never or barely sent: nothing from tire. Engine coolant temperature, battery voltage and the service interval descriptors arrived once after setup and never again. vehicle.cabin.door.lock.status arrived only 4 times and never changed in a way that marks the start of a trip, so I couldn't use it as a start signal.
• Three "Unspecified error" disconnects this morning between 05:59 and 06:02 UTC (BMW MQTT disconnected rc=Unspecified error from stream.py:388, count 3). The car was parked and the odometer didn't change, so they're not related to a trip and look like they came from BMW's side. All other disconnects are the normal ~45-minute token refresh.

What would make it easier for older cars

1. Trip detection for "end-of-trip only" cars. Instead of live GPS, a mode where a new travelledDistance report closes a trip: start = previous end position and time, end = new position and time, distance = odometer difference. That's essentially what my logbook rebuilds in automations, and it would make the trip journal usable for iDrive 6 and probably many other combustion cars.
2. Expose the vehicle timestamp. The last_timestamp of each descriptor as an attribute (or a "last report" sensor), so automations can use the time the car sent the data, not the time HA received it. This matters when a car is parked without mobile reception, e.g. in an underground garage. Its report then arrives much later.
3. An event when a report burst arrives, e.g. bavariandata_vehicle_report with odometer, fuel and position in one payload. Right now I wait until the odometer has been stable for 10 minutes to be sure the burst is complete.
4. An optional external start signal, e.g. a service bavariandata.mark_trip_start. I get the trip start from my iPhone (Bluetooth connect, then a webhook). If the integration could accept that, its own trip journal could log real start times for older cars.
5. Coverage expectations per drivetrain. For a diesel (drive_train: CONV), electric descriptors such as stateOfCharge.target will never be meaningful, and the "stream coverage gaps" repair issue keeps coming back for cars that simply report less. Maybe the expected set could depend on drive_train, or there could be an "end-of-trip reporting" profile.

No pressure on any of this. The values themselves are excellent, and that's what matters most for a logbook. If you'd like me to test anything on the G31, e.g. a beta with one of the ideas above, just let me know.

Best regards,
the other Chris

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