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Any way to determine latest car location?

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In fact that's exactly what it does. Just open up the mobile app to the map page and watch your car move in almost real time. The app is getting that info from the Tesla servers, not the car. There is no direct connection between the app and the car.

I know there is no direct connection between the app, and the car. The servers communicate to the car through cell/wifi via a secure VPN connection.

But, it seems to me that it would be a massive amount of information coming into the Tesla's servers if every 250ms EVERY car out there communicated its information to the Tesla's servers. This would be a lot of data, and privacy issues would arise if Tesla had all this data.

The way I saw it working is the only when the position is requested (when the app starts the connection to the car through the server) does the servers collect that information from the car. That way the Tesla servers only have to communicate to the cars when information has been requested from the app.

The way the current app works is it gives no historical data. It simply tells the servers you wish to get X data from the car. I believe it does this because it has no historical data (data from before you opened the app).
 
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Despite what you assert, I'm pretty sure the car is sending, and Tesla is receiving, that information in real time. We don't know how long they maintain this information. And it's not only when the apps are requesting it. Like I said, when driving down the highway, look at the map page of the Tesla mobile app, and you'll see your real-time (slightly delayed) location (and speed and power) right there. It will be trailing behind the "blue dot" of your phone's location by about 500 feet. The car has to be streaming this information to Tesla in real time, and then back to the app for display. It would require an additional step if the request from the app to the API then had to then send a request to the car to send its current location. Repeated 4 times per second... OR the car could just stream its location to the server, and the API can pick up the most recent location and return that to the app -- a much simpler implementation.

Assuming that the car is updating 4 times a second, and 4 bytes is enough to send the lat/long of the car (which it is), that's only 1.4 Mbytes of data per car per day to store real-time location data. Say another 4 bytes for car ID and a timestamp and it's still just 3MB/car/day.

And in terms of privacy, check your purchase agreement about Tesla collecting telemetry data. It's all there.
 
I know there is no direct connection between the app, and the car. The servers communicate to the car through cell/wifi via a secure VPN connection.

But, it seems to me that it would be a massive amount of information coming into the Tesla's servers if every 250ms EVERY car out there communicated its information to the Tesla's servers. This would be a lot of data, and privacy issues would arise if Tesla had all this data.

The way I saw it working is the only when the position is requested (when the app starts the connection to the car through the server) does the servers collect that information from the car. That way the Tesla servers only have to communicate to the cars when information has been requested from the app.

The way the current app works is it gives no historical data. It simply tells the servers you wish to get X data from the car. I believe it does this because it has no historical data (data from before you opened the app).

I'm sure Tesla can easily handle a lot of data and keep it secure as well. It's really just a hundred thousand or more remote nodes reporting their status and health back to the mothership. Just like any large corporation except Tesla's nodes are in motion. Very interesting model.
 
Just this past weekend, my step-mom returned to me a Dell X300 notebook computer I loaned here 5 years ago. This notebook was originally sold in 2003. It runs Windows XP (I wonder if it will run Windows 7 or 10??).

Anyway, I just loaded up VisibleTesla on it and it runs perfectly fine. You can get boxes like these for less than $100 on ebay or ubid or woot. For $150-$200 you can get much newer and capable used notebooks off lease (I just got a refurb Dell E4310 notebook for my brother for $175).

The X300 is nice because it's small, "ultraportable" (by 2003 standards), and doesn't consume much power. You could easily set up one of these to just run VT on a shelf. You can access it using Remote Desktop from any other computer. I now have two X300s including their docking stations. I think I'm going to leave this one here running VT (why not?). VT will definitely tell you the last known SOC in the graph, and likely the last known location using the "Trips" tab. You can also set up geofences when the car enters or exits some known area.
 
I have a much less technical question and hoping someone can help me out.

When using the Mobile App, and you click on the location tab....clearly you can see where your car is. (with the red arrow) However, It thought you used to also be able to see where you (or more specifically, the phone) are located (with a blue dot, if I remember correctly.) Currently my app does not show that, and I'm wondering if something changed, or I just am mis-remembering this. there are also some buttons at the top of that screen, to the right of the menu. The third one clearly toggles between "map" and "earth" view, but what do the two other buttons do? Thanks for any help.
 
I have a much less technical question and hoping someone can help me out.

When using the Mobile App, and you click on the location tab....clearly you can see where your car is. (with the red arrow) However, It thought you used to also be able to see where you (or more specifically, the phone) are located (with a blue dot, if I remember correctly.) Currently my app does not show that, and I'm wondering if something changed, or I just am mis-remembering this. there are also some buttons at the top of that screen, to the right of the menu. The third one clearly toggles between "map" and "earth" view, but what do the two other buttons do? Thanks for any help.
Mine shows the blue dot, so perhaps you have to be within a certain distance of the car for it to show.

The circular icon centres the display on the blue dot, and the car icon centres the display on the car.