Connect to new BMW CarData service through MQTT

Bredmich · October 26, 2025, 6:34am

Did you configure your telegram items that contain the reply ID and last message text?

fregger65 · October 26, 2025, 8:46pm

Yes, I double-checked and when I send messages from my phone to the bot they appear in the Last Message item. I also tried deleting the client on the BMW portal and creating a new one with a new Client ID. Still nothing. I guess I’m missing something on my system, compared to yours.

Bredmich · October 27, 2025, 8:19am

So you set your Client_ID and then you don´t receive a Telegram message?

Could you please open the log viewer and filter for bmw.
When you change or update your Client_ID item, you should see this message:
Starting BMW Device Code Flow for Client ID:

fregger65 · October 29, 2025, 8:21pm

I’m not used to working with file based rules and might be doing something silly here. So before i try again, let’s make sure files are in the right place.

I assume i should have:
$OPENHAB_CONF/automation/js/BMW_Token_Setup.js
$OPENHAB_CONF/automation/js/BMW_ID_Token_Updates.js
$OPENHAB_CONF/items/carBMW.items

Correct?

Bredmich · October 29, 2025, 8:34pm

Yes looks good.
Does you log say something like ‘Rule loaded: BMW Token Setup - Step 1 …’?

Do you have the Javascript Scripting installed?
It‘s an option of openHABian and includes openhab-js.

fregger65 · October 30, 2025, 10:55pm

Javascript Scripting is installed.
Steps taken and log output:

Created $OPENHAB_CONF/items/carBMW.items

22:12:41.784 \[INFO \] \[del.core.internal.ModelRepositoryImpl\] - Loading model ‘carBMW.items’

Created $OPENHAB_CONF/automation/js/BMW_Token_Setup.js
[

INFO \] \[port.loader.AbstractScriptFileWatcher\] - (Re-)Loading script ‘/etc/openhab/automation/js/BMW_Token_Setup.js’
\[INFO \] \[g.openhab.automation.openhab-js.rules\] - Adding rule: BMW Token Setup - Step 1: Device Code Request
\[INFO \] \[g.openhab.automation.openhab-js.rules\] - Adding rule: BMW Token Setup - Step 1.5: Handle Telegram Reply
\[INFO \] \[g.openhab.automation.openhab-js.rules\] - Adding rule: BMW Token Setup - Step 2: Token Request

At this point i do for 1.2 openHAB Telegram in the instructions step 1,2,3 and put the Client_ID into the openHAB item carBMW_Client_ID

\[INFO \] \[del.core.internal.ModelRepositoryImpl\] - Loading model ‘carBMW.items’

Then i would expect things starting to happen but nothing does. I don’t see the message

Starting BMW Device Code Flow for Client ID:

Bredmich · October 31, 2025, 8:18am

But you see logs that your carBMW_Client_ID was updated/changed to the new value?

The trigger listens to an update to the item.
triggers.ItemStateUpdateTrigger(clientIDItem)

fregger65 · October 31, 2025, 12:34pm

When i change the Client_ID, i see in the log “Loading model ‘carBMW.items’”, but not that the carBMW_Client_ID was updated/changed to the new value explicitly. The value in the item changes, though.

Bredmich · October 31, 2025, 1:24pm

I´m not sure what you´re doing
The carBMW.items file shouldn´t be reloaded when you change the state of carBMW_Client_ID.
Just to make sure, how do you set your Client_ID?

There are different ways to set the state and i don´t know which one you´re using.
You could use the API Explorer inside the Main UI.

Open http://<openHAB>:8080/developer/api-explorer
On a second tab open http://<opeNHAB>:8080/developer/log-viewer
replace <openHAB> with the hostname or ip-address of your oH instance
Open Items and search for PUT - /items/{itemname}/state and open it.
Click on Try it out, enter carBMW_Client_ID as itemname and your Client_ID as Request body.
Click on execute
Open the log viewer tab and filter for bmw

Do you see an entry like openhab.event.ItemStateUpdatedEvent Item 'carBMW_Client_ID' updated to 1234567890?

fregger65 · October 31, 2025, 8:13pm

I had been editing carBMW.items directly with vi over an ssh connection. Told you i might be doing something silly

All works now, i have a stable connection with the BMW broker and have watched the token being refreshed a couple of times. Now it’s just a matter of configuring channels/topics.

There’s quite some logging going on though, but i guess i could just comment out the relevant lines in BMW_Token_Refresh.js for that.

Thanks a million, finally there’s a fire-and-forget solution for communicating with the bimmer now!

Bredmich · October 31, 2025, 8:26pm

Perfect!

For the logging, just change all references of logger.info to logger.debug

Andy_Co · November 4, 2025, 2:01pm

@Bredmich Hi, today I noticed that problem with refreshing token begin. I have such line in the logs:

Full JSON Response: {“error”: “invalid_request”, “error_description”: “The request is missing a required parameter, includes an unsupported parameter value (other than grant type), repeats a parameter, includes multiple credentials, utilizes more than one mechanism for authenticating the client, or is otherwise malformed”}

Bredmich · November 4, 2025, 2:12pm

When i had these errors it was coming from the BMW backend.
You can try to setup a new Token but you‘ll probably receive the same error for a few hours.

My tokens has been refreshed for three weeks now.

fregger65 · November 4, 2025, 10:09pm

Did you stop and start the openhab service in these three weeks? This may be coincidential: after restarting the openhab service tonight, the bmw broker first came online without problems. But when the tokens needed to be refreshed after half an hour, i got this:

22:06:00.956 \[INFO \] \[tomation.openhab-js.BMW_Token_Refresh\] - Token needs to be updated! → Starting update

22:06:00.991 \[ERROR\] \[tomation.openhab-js.BMW_Token_Refresh\] - Exception during token refresh: TypeError: null has no such function “toString”

I’ll leave it for now and see if it recovers.

Bredmich · November 5, 2025, 5:50am

Yes, multiple times.
It always recovers.

You should try to do the setup again, as the tokens are probably aleady expirer. Including the refresh token.

fregger65 · November 5, 2025, 11:09pm

Doing the setup again worked smoothly, however this ‘event’ resulted in trying to refresh the token every 30 seconds (is that supposed to happen?), exceeding my bmw quota and spamming the Telegram bot all day as a result. I’ll try again when they’ve recovered a bit Not sure if it was the OH restart that triggered this or a glitch at bmw.

Bredmich · November 6, 2025, 6:17am

Strange behavior.
I‘m currently out of office and can‘t check it.

sihui · November 7, 2025, 7:14am

Thx a lot, works like a charme.
We got our new BMW yesterday and immediately tried this out.

First I went the manual way and was not successful, then I tried the Telegram way and it worked out of the box.

Without your work I would never have been able to find out myself.

Are you sure it comes from refreshing the token? I had a similar problem with a syntax error in one of the Channels and the log messages came from MQTT trying to reconnect, which was not possible because of the syntax error.
I commented out the Items with the Channel linking one by one until I found the bad one …

Bredmich · November 7, 2025, 2:50pm

I had a strange bug today, but it´s not openHAB related.
Just want to make you aware of it since some use the location of the car for rules.

I went to a shop, stopped the engine, opened the trunk and unloaded something.
The war was not locked while i did this and the whole stop took around 10 minutes.
After this stop, the car stopped sending data to the backend.
I just noticed this at home, as the car was still showing were i stopped to unload.
The MyBMW app also showed the car at this location and the trunk as open.
I used the app to send a locking command and this updated the data.

Seems like a stop without locking can potentially interrupt the connection between the car and the backend.

sihui · November 8, 2025, 1:29pm

It looks like 2 Items are missing in your Items example in 3.1 (although setup worked without them):