Comma openpilot – Open source driver-assistance

Top voted comment on hacker news btw.

Ok that was probably unnecessarily snarky I hope you don't take offense, but it seems the hacker spirit has been fading more often from this site, we used to replace stuff with inferior versions just to see if we could.

HDA2 cuts out if there is a break in lines more than 50ft or so.

Openpilot can track the slightest of roads, even able to follow off-road the tracks in grass from a leading car.

It does basically everything HDA2 does and then some, and does it much better.

It has a driver-monitoring camera that you control, that monitors for inattentiveness which is much more effective than simple wheel-torque based sensors.

Becasue most cars with lane follow still lose lock on the lane when the lines are hard to see (rains, snow, etc) or missing due to exists and other things.

Becasue most cars with lane follow fail to keep well when the turn gets too sharp.

Comma.ai lets you go completely hands free with no wheel nags. It also works just fine when there are no lane lines or poorly visible lines. It also supports lane change by signaling, and then nudging the wheel when it's clear to move.

There is also an experimental mode which stops and goes at stop signs and stop lights.

If the driver monitoring camera in the comma detects you fell asleep or something, it will slow the car down and pull over. All the stock lane keep that I have used in cars, if you fail to nudge the wheel they just disengage and you keep going at full speed in a straight line...

Then we delve into OpenPilot forks like SunnyPilot that let you do things like decouple gas/break control from steering control, so you can control the gas/brake yourself and let comma just always steer for you. Comma can also steer more aggressively in turns than any lane keep I have seen, and when it can't you will see the limit being reached on the little display so you know you will need to help out on that tight curve.

Experimental mode isn't the best all the time, and SunnyPilot allows hybrid mode which uses regular mode and dynamically switches to experimental mode for stop signs and stop lights.

With SunnyPilot it can even read your car's blind spot monitors to automatically make the lane change hen clear without you having to nudge the wheel.

Some have been playing with concepts of auto navigation too where the car will take exits and turn through intersections for you.

The comma.ai devices have 10W of compute power and the current driving models only use 1W, so there is room to scale to better models with teh current comma devices. There is also talk of supporting more cameras for side views and external GPUs addons with 100W compute for potential FSD level models.

Tesla Autopilot was always available, but they were as sketchy as it always had been. Shoving the head into road barriers and fire trucks with rear ends that were less car looking especially to pre-LLM image recognition models.

OpenPilot also allow retrofits. People who own 2017-2023ish cars, shipped between the times after self driving hype took off and before command signature enforcement was widely implemented, can DIY self driving without re-buying the whole car, put aside whether it's legal or whether you should.

And people think that is a good thing?

It also times out very quickly when traffic comes to a complete standstill, requiring manual intervention to get going again, and it doesn't give any indication to the driver when that occurs.

If these things bothered me much more than they do, I'd be interested in comma.ai as a possible solution. As it stands, the OEM radar cruise control is "Eh, good enough, I guess."

  - InsureCo, how may I help you?
  - Hey, I want to ask about installing a self driving module in my car...
  - Sure, you mean Tesla upgrade?
  - No, another one.
  - Another one?
  - Yeah, you remember that kid that hacked Playstation?

If you have a collision and your vehicle is judged at fault by whatever authority does it in your area the you are liable.

We don't yet have the legal framework to say 'Sue company x, it wasn't my fault!' You get sued, then you have a very uphill battle to turn around and try to sue the company that provided the 'self driving' functionality because companies put all sorts of 'I totally accept liability for using this' in the T&C of their products.

They sell the device without firmware and you have to acquire and install it yourself to bypass government regulations.

Or something like that.

But you would probably need to sell a car together with Comma integrated. And also test every update as well.

I'm afraid to ask about the bad ones.

We badly need right to repair and right to tinker laws. Or better yet a "thou shall not employ DRM against the legal owner of a device" commandment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus

The exact message content and protocols are reverse engineered.

Some cars use FlexRay instead of CAN bus but that has only experimental support.

It plugs in-line with the plug behind your rear view mirror and you pick the vehicle model to receive the correct adapter plug with your unit.

So a 1920s Fords are out, and 2035 BYD flying cars with post-quantum cryptographic command signature enforcement are out too. Toyota bZ sits somewhere in the middle of those. IIRC they got past some types of Toyota security keys but not all.

never heard of anyone asking for anything like that

If you use Sunnypilot or one of the other friendly forks, you can do more, but it's not (currently) to the state of Tesla's FSD.

Personally, I recommend buying it if you do a lot of road trips. It's amazing for that. In/around town it's only useful if you have a lot of stop and go traffic, like if you live in LA or other large car-centric city with a big commute.

No it’s not FSD. There is no navigation at all, you’re correct that it’s “just lane assist”. But the lane assist is next level.

I take a few 1,000 mile plus road trips every year and the comma pays for itself every time. Using the stock lane assist, I’m constantly correcting it. The stock assist tries to take an exit, doesn’t handle curves well at all, and any construction or unusual road conditions it won’t work at all.

With the Comma, on the highway it’s basically FSD. On my last 1000 mile trip I never had to disengage, only to pass and make turns.

The biggest advantage is Comma allows you to be completely hands off the wheel. Where lane assist forces you to hold the wheel at all times.

at https://comma.ai/support#what-is-openpilot

/s

That said I am intimately familiar with the code and it’s pretty well designed with safety in mind. Plus your vehicle has safety parameters that limits the ability for the software to do something insane. That said there are a few stories of open pilot running into a curb, hitting a car in the neighboring lane, etc

There is a future where every manufacturer shares the same self-driving software.

You already trust your privacy and financial security to open source projects. There is a future where you also trust it for a self driving car.

This is a horrible idea for a bunch of reasons.

Real driver assist systems are tested for each car for millions of miles before release.

I can imagine this as a toy on a recreational vehicle like an ATV, but it's outright reckless to put this on a real car.

Sent From my iPhone

Your attitude reminds me of how Microsoft fans talked down Linux and GNU; blah blah open source can never be as good/secure/stable as our billion-dollar commercial product because money/certificate