Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Didn't George quit comma.ai?
    by brcmthrowaway
  • Huh intersting that that they don't support any of the european Stellantis brands at all, wonder what they do differently that makes them incompatible.
    by haunter
  • They boast a "one year hardware warranty" (EU mandatory minimum is two) so I don't think they're targeting the European market directly right now.
    by hnbad
  • Presumably it is just that no one has tried to do it all the way yet.

    But i know there is some experimental work out there.

    https://x.com/comma_ai/status/1956879764829995394

    by reliablereason
  • From what I understood, when I looked into it a while ago, some car makers use an encrypted ODB2 (needed by Comma.ai to communicate driving instructions).

    See for example: https://autel.us/security-gateways/, 'Automakers with security gateways installed include Stellantis (Dodge, Chrysler, Ram, Alfa Romeo, FIAT, and Maserati), Nissan and Infinity, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen and Audi.'

    by Gys
  • Probably because they use a bus that's harder to on-the-fly rewrite or because they sign commands.

    comma openpilot do its thing by faking stock self driving unit talking to actuators over the in-vehicle network; a modern car is like a bunch of Pi on a LAN hosting microservices, but on a car specific network standard, usually the one called CAN bus, instead of the 802.3 we're familiar with. The manufacturer stock units is usually a camera unit integrated CPU sitting behind a hump behind the rearview mirror. comma devices tap into the cable going in there, sending out fake commands to other computers handling cruise control, brake, steering, blinker... etc.

    This can break two ways: some communication standards like FlexRay are harder to tamper and fake, or some newer cars have tightened security clearly in response to comma doing its thing too well, many following the new EU cybersecurity standards which require commands to be signed and/or each of those Pi-like modules to be crypto paired against each others.

    I think Stellantis car always had the first of those two issues of having something difficult that are not strictly anti-hacker hostile architecture. But could be both or I could be wrong altogether. The comma devteam seem to like 2015-2019ish hybrids from such brands as Honda, Subaru, Hyundai and Toyota for the presence of the remote control features in the actuator modules && lack of security getting in the way.

    by numpad0
  • I’m working on integrating with a Jeep Renegade which was designed on the Fiat small-wide platform, and the CAN bus architecture is a non-starter for mainline OpenPilot support. OpenPilot requires every signal needed from/to the car is accessible by tapping at most two CAN buses, both of which must be accessible on the cable to the lane assist camera behind the rear view mirror.

    On the Renegade, the adaptive cruise control activation and control signals are on a separate bus from the steering control signals, and the ACC signals don’t get up to the lane assist camera at all. OpenPilot support on this vehicle will require tapping CAN buses in two spots on the vehicle, and this is not a Comma-supported configuration. They want to be able to make a single interposer cable that plugs in between the lane assist camera and your car, and if that’s not possible they will never support your vehicle.

    To attempt to support my car I am working on a gateway device that will bridge information from the powertrain bus to the fusion bus so it will be available at the camera (which is on the fusion bus and the chassis bus). But this implementation, which may not actually work but even if it does, will never be accepted upstream. And safety-wise, that’s probably the right choice for the project.

    The sad part is I think the only signal that I need that I don’t have at the camera right now to make a safe implementation is ACC engagement. I’ve scrutinized every bit of every message on the chassis and fusion buses available at the camera and there is simply no signal that indicates if ACC is engaged.

    One bit is all I need to get lateral control working. Well, assuming that once I start injecting control signals there aren’t other issues, that is. And that is not probably a safe assumption.

    by hoss1474489
  • I wonder if it's possible to do link aggregation for x8 lanes to GPU. I have two thunderbolt connections available, each x4. x8 has minimal losses for gaming.
    by 47635274172635
  • This bridge - does it actually support host PCIe->thunderbolt->PCIe device - my reading of it is that it's just handling USB commands that the bridge is turning into separate PCIe commands to the GPU?
    by trebligdivad
  • My understanding is both USB 4 and TB use PCIe tunneling. Surely at this price point we’re looking at a USB 4 device. Thunderbolt has historically cost more due to licensing, which is now free I believe, but there’s still specialized hardware and requirements manufacturers need to adhere to.
    by gymbeaux
  • What I tried was based on theory (I haven't seen real device), bought Oculink dock, connected Oculink to M.2 connector, USB4 M.2 SSD Enclosure to connect to thunderbolt, whole thing costed 150euros :)
    by ijsmtmmwiu
  • This article triggered my AI sensitivity. Had to skip the second half.
    by snovv_crash
  • I had my C3X audio device fail a month or so past warranty. It literally couldn't detect the sound card anymore. My car is not supported, and I've been on a fork since the beginning. Few line of code changes to get it working again and it's almost two years in use. And yes, I tried flashing any and all available releases/forks. The sound hardware was not visible in the kernel on all.

    I've given up on the latest models and don't bother with the automatic cruise control. But just the lane centering is extremely helpful.

    When people ask me about the device, I tell then it's the next version of power steering. And if one has never driven a car without power steering, one may not understand how much easier it makes the drive.

    Thought about upgrading to the C4 as the original owner I could trade mine in for a discount. But the first thing I noticed on reddit threads were the C4 H/W failures, and that made me not want to bother figuring out what's needed to get the C4 running on my car. Wish they figured out how to bulletproof the device, would love to add the GPU.

    by alex0com
  • Accessing a GPU bar via USB2&3 endpoints seems novel.

    [1] https://github.com/tinygrad/asm2464pd-firmware/blob/master/U...

    by amstan
  • I find comma.ai’s work pretty fascinating compared to the bigger fish in the self-driving world. There’s something quite human about it versus the Waymo’s and Tesla’s of the world.
    by socratics
  • If you liked that, you should look into tinygrad
    by itomato
  • the picture of that GPU installed on the side of the firewall tunnel reminded myself and my husband of a gadget they would have shown off in the original Batman series.

    "Golly gee whilikers Batman, what is this high tech contraption?"

    "It's a car tracker my good lad, see how sleek and easy to hide it is?"

    https://blog.comma.ai/img/chestnut/install_footwell.png

    by serf
  • The direct eGPU link if you're curious https://comma.ai/shop/chestnut
    by reustle
  • I'm surprised that it's pretty much the same as the adapters you can get on aliexpress. Not even a case to protect it from feet in the passenger footwell. Especially compared to the windshield-mount unit, which looks like a very slick product. I suppose they can always improve it if there is interest in this first version.
    by Gracana