CAR-TER Developer Guide

This is the integration guide for building programs that drive CAR-TER — the JSON-driven universal remote & telemetry app for iOS. If you want to push live data to a phone, react to taps and sliders, or stand up your own backend for a custom dashboard, this is for you.

It is not the in-app documentation (that lives in the app's control-doc graph). This guide is about the server side and the wire protocol: how your code talks to a CAR-TER device over MeshSocket.

Who this is for

Developers writing a server program (in any language) that:

• streams telemetry into gauges, sparklines, graphs, maps, and logs, and/or
• receives actions from buttons, toggles, sliders, and other inputs, and/or
• hosts a layout-authoring loop (live-editing, or driving the app from an LLM).

You do not need to build the iOS app or know Swift. You need a WebSocket client and the protocol described here.

How this guide is organized

Each file is self-contained so you can read or edit one concern without touching the rest (e.g. update the Python guide without re-reading everything).

Suggested reading path

1. Start Here → Architecture — the big picture.
2. The MeshSocket Protocol → Data Flow — sync & actions — the wire contract.
3. Anatomy of a CAR-TER Server → Building a Server in Python (or Building a Server in Any Language (Raw Protocol)) — write your first server.
4. The Recipe: Telemetry Dashboard / Recipe: Interactive Controls recipes — copy/paste starting points.
5. Keep reference/ open while you build.