Running TeslaMate
on the Raspberry Pi
by Emmet
Published May 15, 2023
Beginner IoT Servers
In this tutorial, we will show you how to run
TeslaMate on your Raspberry Pi.
TeslaMate is a data logger that allows you to
track numerous details about a Tesla car. It
achieves this by polling the Tesla API and
logging the data it returns to a PostgreSQL
database running on your Raspberry Pi.
This software is excellent for those who own a
Tesla and are interested in keeping track of
data returned by it. You can even integrate this
data with software like Home Automation to
automate various features of your car.
The Raspberry Pi makes a perfect companion
with TeslaMate as it is a low-powered device
that isn’t expensive to run 24/7.
To make the process of running Teslamate on
your Raspberry Pi significantly simpler, we will
be running it through a Docker container. This
saves us from having to install and configure
several different pieces of software.
Equipment
Below is a list of the equipment we used when
setting up our Raspberry Pi to run TeslaMate.
Recommended
Raspberry Pi
Micro SD Card
Power Supply
Ethernet Cable or Wi-Fi
Optional
Raspberry Pi Case
USB Mouse
USB Keyboard
HDMI Cable
Monitor
This tutorial was last tested on a Raspberry Pi
400 using the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS
Bullseye 64-bit.
Preparing the Raspberry Pi
to Run TeslaMate
Before we can install and run TeslaMate on our
Raspberry Pi, we need to go through some
initial set-up steps.
Over the next few steps, we will update the
Raspberry Pi and ensure that you have Docker
compose installed.
1. Before continuing any further, we should
update the available list of packages and
upgrade any out-of-date packages.
We can perform both tasks by using the
following command within the terminal.
Terminal $ Copy
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
2. Next, we must ensure that Docker Compose
installed on your Raspberry Pi by running the
command below.
Docker will make running TeslaMate on your
Raspberry Pi significantly more
straightforward.
Terminal $ Copy
sudo apt install docker-compose
3. For our current user to interact with Docker,
we must add it to the “ docker ” group using the
command below.
Add this user to the group by running the
following command. This line uses the usermod
command to modify your user’s properties.
Terminal $ Copy
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
4. For changes to your current user to take
effect, you must log out of your system and
then log back in.
You can log out from the terminal by using the
command below.
Terminal $ Copy
logout
After logging out, you can immediately log
back into your account.
Installing TeslaMate to your
Raspberry Pi
Now that we are prepared, it is safe to install
TeslaMate to your Raspberry Pi.
For these steps, we will be creating a “docker-
compose” script that will set up all the services
we require to run TeslaMate.
5. Before installing TeslaMate to our Raspberry
Pi, we need to create a directory within our
home directory called “ teslamate “.
You can use the mkdir command to create this
folder by running the command below.
Terminal $ Copy
mkdir ~/teslamate
6. Now that we have created our new
directory, we need to use the cd command to
move change to it.
Terminal $ Copy
cd ~/teslamate
7. We can begin writing our “ docker-compose ”
file by using the following command within the
terminal.
This compose file will set up four different
services on our Raspberry Pi.
1. The first app it sets up is TeslaMate itself.
2. Next is the database service that
TeslaMate needs to store its data. In this
case, it will be PostgreSQL.
3. Additionally, Grafana will be set up within
a Docker container as well. Grafana is how
you will view all the data that TeslaMate
gathers on your Raspberry Pi.
4. The final Docker container that will be
installed to the system is the Mosquitto
broker. This broker is what allows other
services like HomeAssistant to interact
with TeslaMate.
Terminal $ Copy
nano [Link]
8. Within this file, you will want to enter the
following lines into the file.
While entering these configuration files into the
file, you must replace the following two
elements.
[REPLACEWITHENCRYPTKEY] – This key is
essential as it is used to encrypt the Tesla
API keys while they sit on your Raspberry
Pi.
Ensure you set a long random key for this
key.
[REPLACEWITHDBPASSWORD] – Next, you
must specify a password for the
PostgreSQL database. There are three
occurrences of this within the file.
This database is where TeslaMate will
store all of its data while it runs on your
Raspberry Pi.
Add > Copy
version: "3"
services:
teslamate:
image: teslamate/teslamate:lates
restart: always
environment:
- ENCRYPTION_KEY=[REPLACEWITHE
- DATABASE_USER=teslamate
- DATABASE_PASS=[REPLACEWITHDB
- DATABASE_NAME=teslamate
- DATABASE_HOST=database
- MQTT_HOST=mosquitto
ports:
- 4000:4000
volumes:
- ./import:/opt/app/import
cap_drop:
- all
database:
image: postgres:14
restart: always
environment:
- POSTGRES_USER=teslamate
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=[REPLACEWI
- POSTGRES_DB=teslamate
volumes:
- teslamate-db:/var/lib/postgr
grafana:
image: teslamate/grafana:latest
restart: always
environment:
- DATABASE_USER=teslamate
- DATABASE_PASS=[REPLACEWITHDB
- DATABASE_NAME=teslamate
- DATABASE_HOST=database
ports:
- 3000:3000
volumes:
- teslamate-grafana-data:/var/
mosquitto:
image: eclipse-mosquitto:2
restart: always
command: mosquitto -c /mosquitto
# ports:
# - 1883:1883
volumes:
- mosquitto-conf:/mosquitto/co
- mosquitto-data:/mosquitto/da
volumes:
teslamate-db:
teslamate-grafana-data:
mosquitto-conf:
mosquitto-data:
9. With this done, you can save and quit by
pressing CTRL + X , followed by Y , and then
the ENTER key.
10. At this point, we can finally start
TeslaMate on your Raspberry Pi by using the
command within the terminal.
During the first start-up, Docker will download
the latest version of the TeslaMate container
alongside other software such as Grafana,
Postgres and Mosquitto.
Terminal $ Copy
