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Tesla BLE Telemetry
Tesla BLE Telemetry is the Bluetooth pipeline that pulls live data straight from your car and lays it on top of the dashcam record. It's what makes the Battery, Climate, Odometer (and parts of the Assisted driving) sections on each Drive actually populate — and it's what feeds the live-status tiles on the Dashboard.
| Channel | What's sampled |
|---|---|
| Battery | State of charge % (drives show start → end deltas) |
| Climate | Interior temperature, exterior temperature, HVAC state and runtime |
| TPMS | Tire pressure status |
| Odometer | Total odometer reading (used for per-drive distance independent of GPS smoothing) |
| Location | Vehicle position, with reverse-geocoded place names for drive start/end |
Sampling cadence varies with what the car is doing — more frequent while driving, sparser while parked. The sampler reconnects automatically when it sees the vehicle wake.
Tesla's dashcam clips carry GPS and timestamps but nothing else about the car's state. Pairing the Pi over BLE lets Sentry USB:
- Show battery deltas per trip and across periods
- Track HVAC runtime and cabin temperature trends alongside the drive's video
- Use the odometer for accurate per-drive distance
- Resolve place names for start/end locations instead of raw GPS
BLE also doubles as the Keep Awake mechanism — nudging the car during archive cycles so USB power stays on. One pairing serves both purposes.
From Settings → Tesla BLE, two independent toggles control the BLE pipeline:
- Use BLE for telemetry — reads battery, temps, HVAC, TPMS, odometer, and location. On by default once paired.
- Use BLE for keep-awake — nudges the car over BLE during archive cycles so the dashcam keeps recording. Off by default; turn it on if you don't want to use TeslaFi / Tessie / a webhook.
You can run either, both, or neither.
The Setup Wizard's Keep Awake step walks you through pairing on first install. To re-pair or repair the link later: Settings → BLE Pairing → Re-pair. You'll need to be near the car so it accepts the pair request.
The card shows the paired VIN, current connection state, and a Show output button if you need the raw pairing log.
The Pi has a built-in Bluetooth radio, but for the most reliable telemetry we recommend a USB Bluetooth dongle — it has its own antenna and isn't sharing one with WiFi. Sentry USB auto-detects the dongle when plugged in and uses it; unplug it and the Pi falls back to the built-in radio automatically. The choice applies to both Tesla BLE and the SentryUSB iOS app.
If pairing fails, the connection drops, or telemetry stops flowing, the Logs → Bluetooth tab has a live diagnostic dump and a Download Bluetooth Bundle button that grabs everything for sharing on Discord. Full steps: Troubleshooting → BLE Keep Awake stops working / can't pair.
Discord · Report an issue · MIT License