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Webinar – Building a Custom OpenTelemetry (OTEL) Collector for Vehicle Telemetry | Python Tutorial

In this webinar, we walk through building a custom OpenTelemetry collector using Python to monitor vehicle telemetry from Rivian vehicles. The tutorial follows a fictional automotive retailer scenario — SparkPlug Motors — to demonstrate real-world patterns for IoT fleet monitoring.

What You'll Learn

  • Constructing an OTLP-based collector via the OpenTelemetry Python SDK
  • Accessing vehicle telemetry through the Rivian API
  • Engineering considerations for IoT monitoring including connectivity issues and rate limiting
  • Exporting metrics to Prometheus and displaying them in Grafana
  • Python dependency management best practices using uv

Video Chapters

  • 00:00 – Introduction & Integration Plumbers Overview
  • 05:31 – Why Python for DevOps & Observability?
  • 07:49 – Overview: OpenTelemetry SDK for Python
  • 10:39 – Exploring the Rivian API for Python
  • 13:27 – Engineering Design: Challenges of Mobile Telemetry
  • 16:20 – Tutorial: Setting Up the Environment & Installing Dependencies
  • 20:04 – Code Walkthrough: Building the Collection Loop
  • 24:33 – Integrating with Prometheus & Grafana
  • 29:53 – Q&A: Why Choose OTEL? & Common Configuration Pitfalls

Who Should Watch

DevOps engineers, SREs, and observability enthusiasts seeking to implement monitoring for IoT fleets and remote devices using open-source tools.

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