Bluetooth or Cloud Commands

How to tell whether a Home Assistant command went to your vehicle over Bluetooth or through the Teslemetry cloud

When a vehicle is paired over Bluetooth in the Teslemetry Home Assistant integration (see Control with Bluetooth), each command can take one of two routes:

Bluetooth (local): Home Assistant sends the command directly to the car. It never reaches Teslemetry.
Cloud: Home Assistant sends the command to Teslemetry, which sends it to the car through Tesla.

The Teslemetry integration's own command entities try Bluetooth first. If the car is not in Bluetooth range, or the Bluetooth attempt fails, they send the same command through the cloud. The Teslemetry Bluetooth Commands add-on is different: its entities and action use Bluetooth only, and never fall back to the cloud.

Check the Teslemetry console

A Bluetooth command never reaches Teslemetry, so it uses no credits and leaves no record in your Teslemetry account.

A cloud command uses credits: normally 1 credit, plus the wake-up cost if Teslemetry has to wake the car first. Each one appears in your console:

Command Credits (/console/credits) shows your credit usage for the last 28 days.
Credit Usage History (/console/credits/history) lists every command, wake-up, and on-demand data refresh that spent credits, with its timestamp, the command name under Activity, and the Vehicle.

If you send a command from Home Assistant and no matching row appears in Credit Usage History, the command went over Bluetooth. If a row appears, it went through the cloud.

Check the Home Assistant logs

The Teslemetry integration logs which route each command took at debug level.

To turn on debug logging:

Go to Settings > Devices & services > Teslemetry.
Select Enable debug logging.
Send the command.
Select Disable debug logging to download the log.

You can also turn it on permanently in configuration.yaml:

logger:
  default: warning
  logs:
    tesla_fleet_api: debug

For a Bluetooth-paired vehicle, the tesla_fleet_api logger writes one line for each route a command tries. The backend value names the route:

Log line	Meaning
`command=charge_start backend=VehicleBluetooth result=success`	Sent over Bluetooth
`command=charge_start backend=VehicleBluetooth result=error error=...`	Bluetooth failed; the command is tried through the cloud next
`command=charge_start backend=TeslemetryVehicle result=success`	Sent through the cloud
`command=charge_start backend=VehicleBluetooth result=unconfirmed error=...`	Sent over Bluetooth, but the car's reply was lost; not sent through the cloud

If the car is out of Bluetooth range when the command is sent, Bluetooth is skipped without a log line, and you see only the TeslemetryVehicle line.

A vehicle that is not paired over Bluetooth sends every command through the cloud, and does not write these lines.

Bluetooth Commands add-on

Commands from the Teslemetry Bluetooth Commands add-on only go over Bluetooth. If the car is not in range or the Bluetooth attempt fails, the command fails with an error, and is not sent to the cloud. They never use credits and never appear in Credit Usage History.

To log these commands, add the add-on's logger:

logger:
  logs:
    custom_components.teslemetry_bluetooth: debug

Each command the car receives over Bluetooth then writes a line such as Bluetooth command charge_start result: .... A command that fails shows an error in Home Assistant instead.

Control with Bluetooth

Control your vehicle locally without Teslemetry

Command Signing

How Teslemetry signs vehicle commands