Connect Telegram
Panoptes talks to you through your own Telegram bot. You create it once yourself, free and without coding. Then you pair it with a PIN. Done.
What can Telegram do?
Alerts
Guard alarm, charging finished or a charging error, weak starter battery, tyre pressure, new updates, a short report after you park. You switch each kind on or off on its own. There are quiet hours for the night.
Menu with big buttons
Write anything to the bot, for example “Hello”. A menu appears. From then on you just tap buttons.
Check on the car
How is the car? Where is it? How full is the battery? Plus a camera picture and your recordings when you ask for them.
Guard and camping
Wake the guard or let it sleep. Switch camping on or off, only while parked.
Update messages
With “Only notify”, the bot writes “Panoptes … is here” with an “Install now” button and asks once more first. With “Small updates on their own, report big ones” (default), small updates arrive quietly once the car has been off for at least 10 minutes. Panoptes announces big ones first with a summary, and you decide. Never while driving.
Pictures and videos
From 0.1.38.11 the guard sends its pictures along by default. If you had turned this off, it stays off. Turn off with /bilder aus or in Panoptes under “Send pictures and videos to Telegram”.
What deliberately does not work
Through Telegram you cannot unlock or lock the car. Climate, horn, lights, windows and starting or stopping charging do not work either. You can look at pet mode, but not switch it on or off.
What the menu looks like
A sketch, not a real chat. Buttons for commands you switched off are not shown at all.
What would you like to do?
Under “More”: camping, pet in the car, link to Panoptes, services, back up settings, help.
How to connect it
You need Telegram on your phone and Panoptes in the car. You enter the key in the Panoptes interface, on the car screen or on a PC. Setting up does not work if you signed in on your phone via Telegram.
- Open the page. In Panoptes: Rules → Alerts → Telegram alerts. It says “Not set up yet” and shows three steps.
- Create a bot. In Telegram, open the chat with @BotFather, Telegram’s official account with the blue tick. Send it
/newbot. Enter a name, for exampleMy car. Then a username ending inbot. - Paste the key. BotFather replies with a long key that looks like
123456789:AAH…. Copy it, paste it into Panoptes and tap “Check and save”. - Get the PIN. Tap “Start pairing”. Panoptes shows a 6-digit PIN.
- Pair. On your phone, tap “Open in Telegram and tap ‘Start’”. If the link does not work, send the bot
/pairand your PIN, for example/pair 123456. - Done. The bot replies “Paired!”. Panoptes notices this by itself. Use “Send a test message” to check that everything arrives.
/erreichbar aus.
Is it safe?
- Only you. It is your own bot. Exactly one Telegram account can be paired. The bot ignores messages from anyone else.
- PIN. The PIN is valid for 10 minutes and only once. After that you get a new one.
- Key. The key stays encrypted in the car. Anyone who has it can control your bot. Never share it.
- You decide. Under “Remote commands” you switch off single commands: guard, camera, location, battery, services, backup. If you send a switched-off command, the bot only tells you it is switched off.
- Updates. Never while driving. From 0.1.38.8 small updates install by themselves once the car has been parked for 10 minutes. Everything else only the way you set it under Settings → All settings → App updates.
- Pictures. Pictures and videos are stored on Telegram’s servers. They often show other people. Turn off with
/bilder aus. - Emergency off. From 0.1.38.8,
/aktionen austurns off all vehicle actions (horn, lights, unlocking) at once. Switching them on only works in the car. - Unpair. Only in Panoptes, under “Change or remove the bot”: “Pair a different Telegram” only unlinks your account, “Remove bot” also deletes the key. You cannot do this from Telegram itself.