Apple Homekit / HomePod / Siri Tesla control/interrogation of the car

[MrBadger]

I find the health tracking, Apple Pay, walking navigation, HomeKit Siri Control

Probably more for a new topic so I've started this. Do you use Siri control (with or without Home kit) for controlling/interrogating the car?

I recently bought a HomePod Mini but find its Siri interactions with the car to be a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it works fine, other times it tells me to open the app. I've not investigated further, but anecdotally I suspect the behaviour varies whether the car is awake or not.

Our HomePod is in the hall, so useful when exiting the house. So unlocking the charge port would be a useful feature if it remained unlocked for a reasonable amount of time. We currently have the 'Tesla button' but that may not be our final solution, so easy unlock of car port when hands are full would give us more options.

Another feature that I would like is to turn on pre conditioning, but then turn off in 10 minutes. I use that for a few home automation functions elsewhere and would be good if it worked with the car.

What features/commands from Siri / Homekit / HomePod have people found reliably working with their Tesla and are you using any automation? I apologise that I haven't really given it the time that perhaps it needs as its not really high priority. But since its already been mentioned, I thought that I would ask.

Unfortunately this thread "Hey Siri" Commands didn't really take off and is a bit more limited in scope for what I was after.

 

[Jeeves]

Do you use Siri control (with or without Home kit) for controlling/interrogating the car?

Yes I used Shortcuts, but I've hardly used them since lockdown (no commute). I just looked at the shortcuts I built. They used the Tesla Remote app:

• 'Get the car ready for work' would open the frunk, stop the car charging and open the charge port.
• 'Warm up the car' would turn on either max heat or climate control dependent on outside temperature. I would let that run for 30-40 minutes whilst getting ready to leave. I was unconcerned about the battery drain. I was more interested in the range enhancement, so I never considered turning it off.
• 'Open the frunk' and 'unlock the charge port' would do what you would expect.
• 'Defrost the car' would turn on max heat.

I had limited success with these in the sense that it would be 50/50 whether or not they would work. They all relied on waiting for the car to wake which seemed hit and miss. Maybe things have improved and I should take another look maybe using another app.

 

[MrBadger]

Just stumbled across this existing UK thread

Managed to get my Model 3 to talk to my home automation system

 

[NewbieT]

Not sure if it’s the Tesla App or iOS 15 but my Apple Shortcuts / Tesla Remote don’t seem to be working this year. Very annoying.

 

[Jeeves]

Not sure if it’s the Tesla App or iOS 15 but my Apple Shortcuts / Tesla Remote don’t seem to be working this year. Very annoying.

Thanks for mentioning this. I'll not bother trying mine again.

I started to get a bit uncomfortable with lots of different apps having the creds to my Tesla account and decided to enable only WatchApp for Tesla a while back. I notice that now has shortcuts, so I may try to get that to work. I noticed reports on their support GitHub about problems waking the car with those too. I think the poor reliability I used to get might be down to patchy connectivity where I usually park.

 

[Cardo]

Thanks for mentioning this. I'll not bother trying mine again.

I started to get a bit uncomfortable with lots of different apps having the creds to my Tesla account and decided to enable only WatchApp for Tesla a while back. I notice that now has shortcuts, so I may try to get that to work. I noticed reports on their support GitHub about problems waking the car with those too. I think the poor reliability I used to get might be down to patchy connectivity where I usually park.

I use Watch App for Tesla for my Siri commands. (You’ll notice a number of the posts on GitHub relating to shortcuts issues are from me!).

The Siri commands, once the shortcuts have been set up, generally work very well. The main issue, which is an Apple limitation, is shortcuts have a limited time within which to run, so if the car is fast asleep and doesn’t wake up before the shortcut timeout, the command will fail. There are two ways to manage this. The first is a workaround the developer has thrown in which essentially brings up a dialogue box asking whether you wish to continue waiting, when the car hasn’t woken up yet, which will extend the shortcut timeout period. The other way round it is let the shortcut fail (though the wake command will have been sent), then wait a minute and try the command again. By this point the car should have woken up and the command should work fairly quickly.
I regularly use my Watch to turn on climate control, open/close the boot, bonnet, and unlock the charge port when out and about (I have added a “Tesla” button to my home charging plug, so no need there).

Unfortunately, iOS 15 seems to have broken the timed/automated shortcuts, so I’m waiting for the developer to have a look at that.

 

[Jeeves]

I use Watch App for Tesla for my Siri commands. (You’ll notice a number of the posts on GitHub relating to shortcuts issues are from me!).

The Siri commands, once the shortcuts have been set up, generally work very well. The main issue, which is an Apple limitation, is shortcuts have a limited time within which to run, so if the car is fast asleep and doesn’t wake up before the shortcut timeout, the command will fail. There are two ways to manage this. The first is a workaround the developer has thrown in which essentially brings up a dialogue box asking whether you wish to continue waiting, when the car hasn’t woken up yet, which will extend the shortcut timeout period. The other way round it is let the shortcut fail (though the wake command will have been sent), then wait a minute and try the command again. By this point the car should have woken up and the command should work fairly quickly.
I regularly use my Watch to turn on climate control, open/close the boot, bonnet, and unlock the charge port when out and about (I have added a “Tesla” button to my home charging plug, so no need there).

Unfortunately, iOS 15 seems to have broken the timed/automated shortcuts, so I’m waiting for the developer to have a look at that.

Thanks very much for this. You've probably saved me a huge amount of time. It would be great if you would post updates here on your progress.

Tesla Remote had a specific 'Awaken until awake' shortcut that introduced a 90s timeout. It did make all the shortcuts more reliable, but not foolproof by any means.

 

[Cardo]

Thanks very much for this. You've probably saved me a huge amount of time. It would be great if you would post updates here on your progress.

Tesla Remote had a specific 'Awaken until awake' shortcut that introduced a 90s timeout. It did make all the shortcuts more reliable, but not foolproof by any means.

Watch App for Tesla also has a “Wait” command that works well for automated shortcuts as you can specify an amount of time to wait (in my case, 60s worked well). However, this wasn’t really any good for regular shortcuts, as it meant the shortcut would always take 60s to run. I found it was easier to simply run the command a couple of times, if the car was fast asleep to begin with.

 

[Jeeves]

Watch App for Tesla also has a “Wait” command that works well for automated shortcuts as you can specify an amount of time to wait (in my case, 60s worked well). However, this wasn’t really any good for regular shortcuts, as it meant the shortcut would always take 60s to run. I found it was easier to simply run the command a couple of times, if the car was fast asleep to begin with.

I might be wrong, but the other shortcut implemented the loop being discussed on the github. It didn't always take 90s to run.

 

[Cardo]

I might be wrong, but the other shortcut implemented the loop being discussed on the github. It didn't always take 90s to run.

Watch App for Tesla simply has a “Wait for wake” option for each command in Shortcuts. This is a recent addition and may be the same thing? Though I think this is what causes the prompt to pop up asking whether you wish to wait to stop the shortcut from timing out.

 

[Jeeves]

Watch App for Tesla simply has a “Wait for wake” option for each command in Shortcuts. This is a recent addition and may be the same thing? Though I think this is what causes the prompt to pop up asking whether you wish to wait to stop the shortcut from timing out.

Thanks.

I'll wait until I know you've got things working again on iOS 15 before experimenting with it. If I could improve the reliability, I'd use Siri and shortcuts quite frequently again now.

 

[Cardo]

Thanks.

I'll wait until I know you've got things working again on iOS 15 before experimenting with it. If I could improve the reliability, I'd use Siri and shortcuts quite frequently again now.

Instant shortcuts (via Siri or the app) work fine on iOS 15. It’s only the automated shortcuts that are failing for me. Ie At 0700 run command “start climate”.

 

[MrTemple]

I use Watch App for Tesla for my Siri commands. (You’ll notice a number of the posts on GitHub relating to shortcuts issues are from me!).

The Siri commands, once the shortcuts have been set up, generally work very well. The main issue, which is an Apple limitation, is shortcuts have a limited time within which to run, so if the car is fast asleep and doesn’t wake up before the shortcut timeout, the command will fail. There are two ways to manage this. The first is a workaround the developer has thrown in which essentially brings up a dialogue box asking whether you wish to continue waiting, when the car hasn’t woken up yet, which will extend the shortcut timeout period. The other way round it is let the shortcut fail (though the wake command will have been sent), then wait a minute and try the command again. By this point the car should have woken up and the command should work fairly quickly.
I regularly use my Watch to turn on climate control, open/close the boot, bonnet, and unlock the charge port when out and about (I have added a “Tesla” button to my home charging plug, so no need there).

Unfortunately, iOS 15 seems to have broken the timed/automated shortcuts, so I’m waiting for the developer to have a look at that.

Heya, did you ever figure out a more robust solution? The dang Siri timeout is driving me crazy. (And has stopped me from setting it up for my wife.)

A while back I came across somebody who made a service to run on a server somewhere which would accept commands and then pass them along to the Tesla API. Basically Siri tells the service to run a single command, and the service handles the waking and the command.

I'm trying to locate it again, but not having much luck. Seen anything like that in your travels?

 

[Buzzliteyear]

Go to the Tesla.info website. you can select some ready made ones. I have one to release the charging cable and unlock the door and another in the calendar app for stopping the charge.

 

[Cardo]

Heya, did you ever figure out a more robust solution? The dang Siri timeout is driving me crazy. (And has stopped me from setting it up for my wife.)

A while back I came across somebody who made a service to run on a server somewhere which would accept commands and then pass them along to the Tesla API. Basically Siri tells the service to run a single command, and the service handles the waking and the command.

I'm trying to locate it again, but not having much luck. Seen anything like that in your travels?

I haven’t got around the wake up delay issue when carrying out commands remotely. However, with the new direct BT connectivity it doesn’t need to wake up the car through the remote command and it just works. I’ve been pretty happy with it all.