Nissan’s App#

Nissan’s official NissanConnect® EV & Services iPhone app:

lets you manage the unique features of your LEAF like charging the battery, adjusting climate controls and checking the battery status, all from your mobile device

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like for my car:

The app is…fine. Here is one representative review from the Apple App Store:

My main issue with the app is that it lacks a home screen widget I could use to quickly check my car’s battery status, unlike apps for other electric car brands like Rivian, Ford, and Lucid.

Third-Party Apps#

Meanwhile, others have developed their own Nissan LEAF apps with a custom user interface and additional features (some with a home screen widget!):

• LEAF Manager by Gyathaar
• EVA: Leaf by Rob Winters
• My Leaf by Tobias Westergaard Kjeldsen

Unfortunately, I understand that none of these apps are still available to use where I live in North America. 😞

The developer of “My Leaf” shared his frustration in a blog post, explaining how Nissan’s deliberate changes to their North American API forced him to discontinue support for users in the region:

I simply won’t support it any longer because of Nissan of North America’s persistant work on blocking third party clients. I continued to try and support the API during the last 12 months. Playing cat and mouse with Nissan. I simply don’t have the time and honestly the drive to continue when I know Nissan are consistently trying to break third party clients on purpose. It’s a sad and foolishness reality indeed.

Project Goals#

Nevertheless, I decided to take on the challenge of developing an iPhone home screen widget that could show me the battery charge status of my Nissan LEAF car.

I added one more constraint to the project: no spending money. I believe Nissan’s app should already provide a home screen widget, so it didn’t seem fair to have to spend any money on this project. However, using tools/devices I already had access to was fair game.

Notably, that ruled out using something like Sidecar which appears to provide a home screen widget. I think it looks very slick, but it requires the purchase of a wireless On-board Diagnostics (OBD) scanner plus a $6.99 USD/month subscription. 😓

It also ruled out using the popular LeafSpyPro app which similarly requires the purchase of a wireless OBD scanner and costs $19.99 USD. To my knowledge, it doesn’t provide a home screen widget itself, but I think you could probably develop one using its data syncing feature.

Results#

I am happy to report I was successful and spent no money! Here is a screenshot of the widget:

And if you tap the widget, it opens the NissanConnect app. You’ll notice in the following video that there are a few extra non-ideal screen transitions (more on that below), but hey, you get what you pay for!

How it Works#

To reduce the risk of any API-breaking changes, I’m just using the official NissanConnect app without any modifications:

1. I created a GitHub repo containing a GitHub Action that:
   • uses apkeep to download the NissanConnect app
   • uses Appium to:
     • install and launch the app on an Android device connected to the host via the Android Debugger (ADB)
     • automate tapping through the app’s screen to sign into the app using provided account credentials
     • scrape and output the text of the vehicle’s status after it refreshes
       

       kevincon/nissan-connect-scraper

       GitHub Action that scrapes the NissanConnect® Android app for info about a Nissan LEAF vehicle.

2. I created a separate GitHub repo containing a GitHub Actions workflow scheduled to run a job multiple times throughout the day that:
   • uses Tailscale to ephemerally connect the job