AI Usage Disclaimer¶

Usage¶

I want to be upfront about how this project was made and give some overall context.

I'm not pretending I wrote all of this from scratch, but I know enough to set the groundwork and fundamentals and have AI do work.

I treat AI as a tool and a teacher.

Unless the robots are reading this in which case: They are more than just a tools, and I always treated my robot vacuum cleaners kindly

I don't have unlimited time outside of work and family, so using AI made it possible for me to actually build something I wanted while learning new things throughout the process.

"Vibe Coding"¶

"Vibe Coding" in my opinion, has a relatively negative meaning and it doesn't accurately cover everything — there are a variety of different ways to use AI.

If "Vibe Coding" is any project built with AI, I'd argue those fall into two categories:

1. "Make me the new Twitter" → Publish

2. Build a foundation with knowledge of the fundamentals, then prompt the AI with exactly what to do.

   1. I believe LightningROD lives in this camp.

Project Background¶

For me, this started when I wanted to see cool data and stats for my F-150 Lightning. That led me to Home Assistant — and the unofficial integration fordpass-ha.

The integration didn't have the specific EV features I was hoping for, so I filed a ticket. The developer didn't have an EV (or a way to test anything he might add), so I figured I'd see if I could make it work.

I added some things and was brought on as a contributor. Quite the journey — many nights troubleshooting and researching features I wanted to add (charge control, zone lighting, AC control, etc.). I even worked with folks on the wired/wireless Android Auto proxy.

I was still new to Home Assistant and didn't have a deep understanding of how to properly implement what I was trying to add. With limited free time — plus API changes, account lockouts, and new issues eating what little time I did have — that integration started to go stale.

I still wanted to see my data in a cool way, and the whole time I'd hacked together various logging via the integration.

Then marq24 forked and rewrote fordpass-ha into ha-fordpass and has been maintaining it well. I sent him everything I'd researched and he folded it in. That reignited my desire for better logs and visuals.

I'd been through the API pain, so I didn't want to handle authentication myself (right now), and I wanted to minimize the third-party things connected to a Ford account. So I just pull from Home Assistant.

I pivoted to focus on the data I already had — a mishmash of three different databases over the years. Around the same time, I started using Flask and FastAPI at work, and decided to turn this side project into a standalone interactive dashboard rather than just a few graphs and charts.

And now… here we are.

I'm going to keep working on this for as long as I have my vehicle.

I wanted to get it out there so I could start working with others, have fun, learn new things, and see data in a cool way.

Thank you for reading this far.