I had a little bit of fun. I integrated the OnStar functionality into my smart home. I use Home Assistant, and it was pretty simple to connect it to Onstar2Mqtt and pull data and also send commands. One thing I am most excited about is that when it detects me having a shower in the early morning during a work day, it will start preconditioning my car at that time, rather than on a schedule. I like to sleep in. I am not very consistent with my hours. In some ways, it is better than the app because you don't have to wait for sign in, then press and hold, and generally, remembering to precondition the car. Probably be a lot of fun in the winter on cold days. I attached what it looks like in my dashboard. I am aware the background image is of an SS model, but it is really hard to find a nice image of the RS in an attractive pose for a wallpaper.

View attachment 1969

Very impressive! Paul Hibbart would love you for using Home Assistant. 🤣🤣🤣

I should consider this myself. I think I have a spare Raspberry Pi 3 sitting around here somewhere.

 

I just love it because almost everything smart home is supported and that means one app to deal with it all.

Plus there’s a home assistant app already for AAOS. It’s installed and tells me various things about the Android side of things inside of home assistant. It only it could tell me the last time it auto updated or something so I can know if fixes might have rolled out.

 

How do i send command? I see all sensor with value but i dont view anything on automation to send command

 

I talked about it a little here. But the official documentation shows some example Home Assistant setups you can do. I do have a start and stop button command on the dashboard, but these areas will let you see "under the hood" of my install. Now plastic cover there.

 

Well, an update. GM hates fun functionality. With the rollout of MFA, the integration is broken. This was the cool feature to talk about to counter my super big negative around the car. Because, who doesn’t want a car guaranteed to be warm in the winter or cool in the summer every time?

 

Please define MFA. What is that?

 

I had a little bit of fun. I integrated the OnStar functionality into my smart home. I use Home Assistant, and it was pretty simple to connect it to Onstar2Mqtt and pull data and also send commands. One thing I am most excited about is that when it detects me having a shower in the early morning during a work day, it will start preconditioning my car at that time, rather than on a schedule. I like to sleep in. I am not very consistent with my hours. In some ways, it is better than the app because you don't have to wait for sign in, then press and hold, and generally, remembering to precondition the car. Probably be a lot of fun in the winter on cold days. I attached what it looks like in my dashboard. I am aware the background image is of an SS model, but it is really hard to find a nice image of the RS in an attractive pose for a wallpaper.

View attachment 1969

Thanks for posting this. I got this working in my home assistant based on the links you posted.
I made a dashboard that includes both the onstar blazer mqtt feed and my ChargePoint home flex.

I really like the look in the mobile app, even more than the MyChevy app.

 

I really enjoy how much faster it is to send commands. No press to hold.

One idea I have is to tie the car to my alarm system when its at home. No need to get an outside buzzer; just have your car go nuts. But I am afraid that either testing or it tripping driving the neighbours nuts. I already once had my car alarm go off when I was at Dinsey World (though I am unsure if I was the cause, or there was an actual cause).

 

So I figured I should update everyone how I made this easier:

First, I am using an addon repository for the On-Star setup. The nice thing about the add-on is it has room for more than one care (only two; and I am not sure how well it works with ICE models because this was designed for the Volt and Bolt). It's also a lot easier to configure since it is in the GUI., The repository is: GitHub - BigThunderSR/homeassistant-addons-onstar2mqtt: OnStarJS wrapper for MQTT as a Home Assistant Add-on

Second, and I am not sure if this is experienced by a lot of people, but the remote start from the app or FOB fails a ridiculous amount of times. So here is my script to try multiple times until it does work (max 3 times). If it responds unexpectedly, I just assume it starts.

blazer_ev_start:
  alias: Chevrolet Blazer EV Remote Start
  sequence:
    - variables:
        retry: true
    - repeat:
        count: 3
        sequence:
          - service: button.press
            target:
              entity_id: button.2024_chevrolet_blazer_ev_command_status_monitor_sensors_command_start
          - wait_template: "{{ is_state('sensor.2024_chevrolet_blazer_ev_command_status_monitor_sensors_command_startvehicle_status_monitor', 'Sent') }}"
          - wait_template: "{{ not is_state('sensor.2024_chevrolet_blazer_ev_command_status_monitor_sensors_command_startvehicle_status_monitor', 'Sent') }}"
          - choose:
              - conditions:
                  - condition: state
                    entity_id: sensor.2024_chevrolet_blazer_ev_command_status_monitor_sensors_command_startvehicle_status_monitor
                    state: "Command Failure"
                sequence:
                  - delay: "00:00:10"
              - conditions:
                  - condition: not
                    conditions:
                      - condition: state
                        entity_id: sensor.2024_chevrolet_blazer_ev_command_status_monitor_sensors_command_startvehicle_status_monitor
                        state: "Command Failure"
                sequence:
                  - variables:
                      retry: false
    - condition: template
      value_template: "{{ not retry }}"
  mode: single
  icon: 'mdi:car-electric'

 

@Canadian Has this stopped working for you? Mine stopped a few days ago. From what I can tell its because the API key used by the connector expired and no one is able to get a new one.

 

It has stopped. The secrets necessary expired October 23rd and GM really doesn't like us doing this and they changed how it authenticates. Now it has to be reversed engineered yet again.

It is kind of disappointing. This functionality seems to get people interested and I'd think GM would love if I could say 'And GM vehicles are the only vehicles cool enough to do this.' I am starting to think GM is sleepwalking into the trash that is Google's business model via AAOS. 3rd party integrations doesn't work. Their app doesn't work. They killed Google Assistant voice commands. All I have is my keyfob. So 90s.

 

@Canadian Just a heads up in case you didnt see. The Home Assistant integration is working again. The new setup requires moving your OnStar login to "Third-Party Authenticator App" to authenticate with TOTP.

 

I have been playing close attention, but it seems Canada has a very different login process than the USA and we are not permitted third party app MFA options. So I have to wait and hope they do migrate the USA system to Canada.

This might also explain why the MyChevrolet app performs like absolute shit after they required MFA. I can't remote start my car. I can't see my charge status. I can't do anything with that app unless I delete everything re-install, and re-login. Then, for a glorious first load of the app, everything works. It should be disgusting that despite the longterm outage of Onstar2Mqtt project; it proven way more reliable since I bought the car. LOL

 

There are now instructions for non-TOTP users. GitHub - BigThunderSR/OnStarJS: NodeJS Library for making OnStar API requests It does work, so this is great news.

 

I should add, include any 16 digit TOTP code. It wasn’t clear, but it needs it to start up even it isn’t used ever again.

 

Hi @Canadian , thanks for all your very informative posts. I am mostly setup and ready to go except for the pesky TOTP code. I tried the app(GM-MS-TOKENS.exe) and it seems to crash on an error. On my first attempt it accepted my username and password and sent me an access code via email. When I entered the code it flashed something on the screen and then crashed. I retried and it crashed right after I entered the password. I also tried the NPM method which I could not get to work. It just says "> node-oauth2-gm@1.0.0 start > node auth/app.js Server running on http://0.0.0.0:3000" but does not ask for a username and password. I am in BC so I am wondering if there are still issues with the Canadian MFA or if I am just missing something. Cheers

 

I never used the NPM module directly. I’m not sure what might be the problem.

I have used the GM-MS-TOKENS app without too many issues. I’d suggest either posting the issue to their GitHub. But without knowing much about the error, it’s hard. But did it produce the JSON file? That’s all it does once it’s generated and exits. I always run it from a command prompt so I can read the output.

 

DOH!
You are absolutely right. Did not even think to look. Have it working now and just need to do the fun part of setting up the dashboard.
Thanks so much!!!

 

Is there a step by step on how to set this up? I was looking at Home Assistant yesterday and these instructions and I guess I don't see what I'm missing, and I do work in IT so the code is very familiar to me. I just need to know where to add it.

 

I wasted a lot of time trying to get this to work using michaelwoods/onstar2mqtt which involves setting up docker and bridging mqtt. Luckily I found Canadian's post above which was a lot simpler and easy to setup.

"First, I am using an addon repository for the On-Star setup. The nice thing about the add-on is it has room for more than one care (only two; and I am not sure how well it works with ICE models because this was designed for the Volt and Bolt). It's also a lot easier to configure since it is in the GUI., The repository is: GitHub - BigThunderSR/homeassistant-addons-onstar2mqtt: OnStarJS wrapper for MQTT as a Home Assistant Add-on
- Canadian"

If you follow the instructions in the Bigthunder repo you should be fine. I ran into difficulties because in Canada it turns out we cannot use TOTP. You should be able to get a TOTP code as an American user.

This addon requires the installation of Mosquito Mqtt first. There are lots of Youtube video on how to setup Mosquito if you don't already have it installed.
Once you have Mosquitto and the addon all you have to do is go into the config page where Bigthunder has provided a handy config form. If you need help with any of the fields let me know.

Hope this helps. Bruce

 

I was looking at that repo and was wondering how I add the script to Home Automation since I don't see anything for that particular add-on nor do I see a section to add a custom script without having to build it first. I'm quite familiar with YAML since my job is scripting and we use YAML for our scripting pipelines.

 

Go to SETTINGS/ADDONS at the bottom right is a button that says ADDON STORE.
Click on the button and search for OnStar2MQTT Home Assistant Add-on.
When you select the addon you will see a link in BLUE that says INSTALL. Just hit the link and it will install. Once installed you can go to the config tab.

I am new to HA myself and found it a bit confusing that there are 3 different ways to install a repo.
ie system/add integrations
system/addons
and HACS

 

Ahh, I did not see the tabs at the top. Thank you!

 

I've been wanting to get Home Assistant set up for years in my house, finally pulled the trigger and got a Raspberry PI 5 yesterday and set it up.

Definitely not for the non-technical user. Thanks to @Canadian, I was able to add:

OnStar2MQTT Home Assistant Add-on (BigThunderSR) for Vehicle 1

However, it seems to only show data from my Blazer EV. Is there another add-on for the ability to push data to car. i.e.~ start/stop, set precondition temp, etc.?

 

Go to settings/devices and services/devices/2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV/commands

Select the command(s) that you need and click-on enable. All the available commands are there but are disabled by default.

It would be nice if there were more commands available but I guess that would need a GM change.

I would particularly like to have a Trip Counter Reset command, 12v Battery Status, and a window close command or at the very least a window open sensor.

I would also love to see more info about charging so that I could build a charging curve graph.
I used to have all this charging info but it disappeared when Enel X decided to brick my charger intelligence.

 

Go to settings/devices and services/devices/2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV/commands

In Devices, I've got 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV and I have 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV Command Status Monitor Sensors. Is it the first one in which I want to click on each Controls entity desired to enabled them? They look the same, but since the latter is labeled "Status Monitor Sensors," I'm guessing that's not the right one to use to issue commands.

 

Good news for Canadians, MFA is now available offering a permanent fix over the cumbersome method. So it takes care of itself.

 

Hi Canadian,
thx for keeping us up to date. I have this working now. So when you say "takes care of itself",
do you mean that TOTP key will stay the same or will we have to update it periodically?
I found that using the old method I had to renew the code every few days. (This MFA stuff is all new to me.)
Cheers

 

So if you grab the TOTP code after switching your auth to that model, it can pull its own tokens rather than a manual process. Prevents it from going offline until you can update it yourself. it’s going to be a relief not to have to worry about it.

 

Excellent! That's very nice!
It's really good that GM has done something for Canadians. I went back to the app for a while and it still really sucks. Hope they add a few more commands and sensors.

 

I found the info given by the fuel economy entities to be confusing so I converted them for my dashboard to km/kWh. I can post the code if anyone wants it.

 

I was having trouble getting up-to-date readings. The new version, 1.21.2, fixed it. Thanks to BigThunderSR for the fix.

 

Anyone else having issues connecting today? There was a version upgrade(1.24), then it stopped completing authorization. I rolled back(1.23.1), but it still wont complete the connection to onstar.

 

Authentication no longer works. It stopped before 1.24 came out - the goal was to fix authentication.

GM is actively trying to block such access. Don't know why. This is cool. And they still get whatever value might exist in knowing when I start my car when selling to data providers 🤷‍♂️. And also, gives me a good reason to continue to subscribe to OnStar as someone who hates subscribing to anything.

They are working on it; but it could take a while. There is a Github issue already open and investigating.

 

I am using version 1.23.1 (in Canada), and it is retrieving the correct data. I moved to this version last month. I have not tried a remote start.
I guess I won't try the latest version.

 

I am using version 1.23.1 (in Canada), and it is retrieving the correct data. I moved to this version last month. I have not tried a remote start.
I guess I won't try the latest version.

Has nothing to do with the version.

The second your token expires, you lose access. Tokens can be somewhat long lived; but they are not forever.

 

So finally got OnstarMQTT to connect to the GM servers. The issue I'm encountering now is that MQTT is not seeing any device related to the Onstar Add On. I have Mosquito and the MQTT integration functioning properly with my Sol-Ark inverter for the past several months. I can't recall how I got it working. I think it actually discovered the inverter automatically via Solar Assistant MQTT. Can anyone provide a link to troubleshooting steps to get the new device recognized in the MQTT integration?