How is this useful?

To give you one example: Tesla techs kept telling me that I had an upgrade that I did not have. Only when I gave them the raw data from the API they understood that they have missed one. In another example I found out from the options codes returned from the API that I had a feature I did not know I had and it was not listed anywhere in the orientation or the invoice which came with the vehicle!

Please note that this documentation is not official and in any shape or form supported or maintained by Tesla. It is actually reverse-engineered. The documentation web site Apiary is actually owned by Oracle and it is simply a product that helps with the documentation of application programming interfaces (or APIs). Also, none of your credentials are stored or kept anywhere. They are simply passed through to Tesla servers

How does this work?

We will start with the following steps needed to get the information we want from the Tesla Owners API:

• Authenticate via the Apiary Tesla Owner JSON API and get the authentication token we need in order to make any further requests to Tesla servers.
• Once we have the token we would use that and add it to the header so our request can properly. authenticate against the Tesla servers and obtain the other pieces of information we need.
• Get the list of vehicles under your account via the authentication token.
• Using a vehicle id get the information of interest.

Step 1: Go to the Tesla Owner JSON API on Apiary.io

Click on this link and have the browser window open and handy so you can see the current one you are reading from and the new one where you would add/change values. The link is to the actual documentation website we would use to make the requests.

Step 2: Get an authentication token from Tesla

You should see the screen above. The left side of it is the actual documentation and every request is explained in detail there. On the right side is the console where we would actually perform the requests and see the responses. Since the link already pointed to the Get an Access Token request it is already open and ready to be executed on the right side. The header information is already added as well as the majority of the body. What is only missing is your email and password. Enter those where it says “YOUR_EMAIL” and “YOUR_PASSWORD” and click on the “Call Resource”. Again no information is kept on your request. Your credentials are simply passed through to Tesla from the Apiary servers. You should see the following response in the console section:

You should get a 200 response from the server (see the red rectangle in the image above). This means we did everything correctly and we now have received an authentication token from the Tesla servers. This is the access_token in the Response Body above (masked in this example). Copy the value of that access_token (copy the text between the “” for the access_token key).

Step 3: Get the list of vehicles using the token

Now that we have the token we would go to the Vehicles part of the documentation and click on the List all Vehicles request:

In the console section, we would go to the Headers tab and for the Authorization key, we would set the value to be: Bearer and the token we copied from Step 1. That is all you need before clicking on the Call Resource again to this time to get the list of vehicles. Note that the Authorization value should not contain double quotes etc. Should be simply Bearer followed by space and the token value from Step 1. When you are done you should see something like this in the response:

All is well! We now have received the first few details about our car. We have the VIN, the actual Id in the Tesla system, the option codes, etc. Great result for a few minutes of actual “work” right? You also can now compare and check if your option codes match your invoice :). Now that we have the vehicle list we can copy the id_s value from it and dive into the actual specific data of that vehicle.

Step 4: Using the id_s to get vehicle data

What we will do now is to utilize the token and the id_s to get any of the State and Settings data we would like. We would only do the Vehicle State in this example since all others follow the same pattern. So two things we need to go forward with this. One is the authorization token we got from step 1 and second the id_s we got from step 3. Let’s click on the Vehicle State in the State and Settings section of the documentation.

Here in the console, we would go to the URL Parameters and for the value of vehicle_id, we would set the value we got from step 3 for the id_s. Then we would click on the Headers tab and do exactly what we did in step 3. Set the Authorization key to the Bearer and the token value from step 1. Clicking on Call Resource should return a response looking like this:

As you can see this returns a lot more data related to the actual state of the vehicle. You can now follow this example and do any of the other requests listed under the State and Settings section. For the sake of brevity, we would not cover the Vehicle Commands section. It follows the same patterns overall so you can experiment if you like it.

Hope this helps and if you have any questions do not hesitate to post a comment. I will do my best to reply promptly.

Use my referral code and save!

If you would like to receive 1,000 free Supercharger miles when you purchase your new Tesla use my referral code: http://ts.la/ilian3072

The post Tesla Owners API – How To appeared first on Alexiev Arts.

No router scenario

If you do not want/need a router then your setup steps are very straight forward and simply watching Spectrum’s video should get you set up. It goes step by step. You connect your modem to the cable. Connect your computer to the modem. Activate your modem and you should be good to go.

Router setup

The important step here is to make sure you activate your model only after you have connected your router to it and your computer to the router. If that is how you activated your model all should be fine and working. The way Spectrum makes the setup easy and secure is to remember your computer mac address

The mistake many people do is to connect the computer to the modem first. Activate the modem and make sure there is a working internet connection. Then adding the router to this setup should just work, right? Well not exactly. What happens is the modem records the computer mac address and from that point on it gets tricky to make it work with a router. Unless your router can do a mac clone.

Mac Clone

In our case, the router was added after the modem was activated with a computer connected to it. So the mac address of the computer was stored. The initial idea we had was we would set up the router with a static IP (which we got from our computer) and then have the modem as the gateway. That worked until Spectrum issued a new IP to us which was expected since we did not order static IP from them. They can change the IP anytime they want.

So how can you trick the modem to think that the computer that activated the service is the router? Here is where the mac clone functionality of the router comes into play. The router now “acts” as the computer with which you activated the service and you can still have your automatic IP setup as expected. Just click on the Mac Clone button and leave the WAN Connection type to “Automatic IP”.

Our router was Asus RT-AC68W but most if not all recent Asus routers have the mac clone capability. Other router manufacturers have that functionality as well. If you know how to get to your router user interface that should all you need to do.

To get to the router user interface you have to either connect a LAN cable to it and your computer. If it is a wifi router you can join the wifi network it creates. Then with your browser go to 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. Those are the usual default addresses manufacturers use. You should follow the manufacturer manual/documentation as to how to log in and get to the WAN settings.

The post Spectrum internet self-installation with a router appeared first on Alexiev Arts.

The thing about menu systems is that once you set it up you usually do not need to deal with it a lot. And even when you need to you always have a “Favorites” or “My Menu” where you store those hard to get to items. So we thought this is not a big deal.

Well, we got our A7III and we realized that some of the complaints in regards to the menu system are valid. Something as simple as switch between the EVF (Electronic View Finder) and the LCD is quite difficult to do. In fact, you can not unless you assign a custom button! Why would you need to do such a thing you would ask … good question let me explain:

The Problem

Out of the box, the camera switches automatically between the LCD and the EVF. When you get your eye on the EVF it defects it and shuts down the LCD. When your eye is away from the EVF it shuts it down and turns on the LCD. The issue is that the damn thing is so sensitive that every time you move your finger close to the EVF it shuts down the LCD which is THE thing you are a thing to change or do something with. Very annoying and frustrating after spending time with the camera. So we were on a mission to do this manually. If EVF is needed press a button to turn it on. Otherwise, keep LCD as the primary option. Or the other way around.

Since there are so many custom options you can have there are only a few that are not set and made sense to set this function on. We decided to set the Dial DOWN press to switch between the EVF and the LCD. Here is how we did it:

Step 1: Custom Operation1 > Page 8/9 > Custom Key

Please note that this selected item (Custom Keys) is a sub-menu for setting the camera custom keys (C1, C2, C3, C4, etc) ONLY when in “taking pictures mode”. The menu item underneath it is for setting the custom keys for when in video mode and the last one is for when in preview mode. It is not very self-explanatory. Icons are helping but not that much. Nikon menu system had a help function where you can press a button and see a screen full of explanation about the selected menu. It was VERY helpful. So back to the task at hand. Let’s get into the Photo Custom Key menu and try to find where the dial DOWN button is and set it to do what we want.

Step 2: Custom Key > Page 2 > Down Button

Once we are in the photo custom key section we go to page 2 and all the way down select/press on the “Down Button“. That refers to the main dial down button apparently. Next click on it and from that menu find the Finder/Monitor Sel. function located at page 14/19 in Display / Auto Review sub-menu:

Step 3: Display/Auto Review > Page 14/19 > Finder/Monitor Sel.

Once you select/press on the Finder/Monitor Sel. from the above Display / Auto Review sub-menu you are set. Now if you press the Down Button you will be able to manually switch between the LCD and the EVF!

Step 4: FINDER/MONITOR > Monitor (Manual)

Ok so we got the button covered but the camera still auto switches between the EVF and the LCD. In order to change that you need to go to the main menu (Just press the Menu button) and go to Display / Auto Review1 and then select FINDER/MONITOR (Yes it is in capital letters on the menu!). Once you select that you will get this on the screen:

We want to select here Monitor (Manual) from this menu. Once you do that on start the camera will turn on the LCD and not the EVF EVEN if you have your eye on it. You have to press the Down button to switch between the LCD and the EVF. Pressing again on the Down button would get you back on the LCD and turn the EVF off.

Note: Auto Preview

One thing to note is that if you have Auto preview on and you have set it to one of the time intervals (like 3-5 sec) it would ONLY show on the currently selected viewpoint. So if you are shooting with EVF and you have the auto preview it would show ONLY in the EVF :). For that reason, I have disabled the auto preview and it is only available by pressing the preview button. It actually works great that way since once you know the shot is good you hardly need to check and have the camera show every other picture of that sequence on the LCD or the EVF.

The post Sony A7III – Switch Between EVF and LCD via Custom Button appeared first on Alexiev Arts.