AP2.0 Cameras: Capabilities and Limitations?

[pilotSteve]

@verygreen - as others have said, THANK YOU for the informative posts you've written about EAP/FSD and the APE. I purchased both options one year ago.... and your information and progress reports are the ONLY indications I've had that Tesla engineering is making (some, limited) progress.

To think that they can't support your investigations and offer you 'friend of Tesla' status is the most disappointing TSLA news I've heard all year.

They will ONLY get better and DELIVER what we PAID FOR when their feet are held to the fire.

Thank you again for what you've contributed. You can hack my S90D any time!

 

[ABC2D]

That's quite a bit of money, you know! And what if I don't live up to your expectations in the future? Lot's of pressure...

But if you want to give me a Tesla no strings attached, I guess I would be too stupid to refuse, right?

Well, if my memory serves me right, I believe you mentioned something in line of:

If tesla offered to refund me just say $50-$60k and keep the car, I'd jump on that deal!

So, we only need to crowd source $50-60K..... whadayasay?

 

[buttershrimp]

That's quite a bit of money, you know! And what if I don't live up to your expectations in the future? Lot's of pressure...

But if you want to give me a Tesla no strings attached, I guess I would be too stupid to refuse, right?

I was thinking we start a Go Fund Me page for $120,000, we get everyone to contribute and I'll keep watch over the money before pocketing it...wait... I mean before I DONATE the money to verygreen's free tesla.... yeah that's the ticket. DONATE.

 

[verygreen]

Well, if my memory serves me right, I believe you mentioned something in line of:

So, we only need to crowd source $50-60K..... whadayasay?

I think you are mostly out of time anyway so this discussion is pretty theoretic.

In addition, I am mostly at the end of the road of keeping my ape root, realistically speaking. It was a small miracle and a string of very unlikely lucky occurrences and some very favorable timing for initial entry that helped me, but the opening keeps shrinking dramatically,
I can well foresee that the next update will be beyond my humble capabilities

A lot of other info (at least for now) could be obtained without getting inside of APE and there are many people with necessary access.

Now model 3 on the other hand, with the new updated platform (and eventually refreshed S/X and the Truck (traces of _that_ are also in the code)) - that's going to be quite a lot more challenge than current S/Xes (rootable in under 15 minutes on the cid front).
$50k is quite a bit of money just for a toy to break into for me, but the usual suspects already got theirs and are working on it.

 

[buttershrimp]

Well, this was covered elsewhere, they don't even like putting info out that they are obligated to release to continue having software that they use (GPL GNU public license - look it up, they are violating it on a number of components). They don't mind to lie to you to stall for time and never resolve any of these things when confronted which really puts me off, btw.

They blacklist cars of researchers that gain their entry into the car systems, the blacklisting deprives such cars of (most of) updates, the blacklisting restricts ability of service centers to perform work on such cars (need engineering approval to perform a lot of operations => prolonged repair times as the result). For example the two last updates my car officially got were 17.50.2 yesterday and 17.24.x in August.

I was most disappointed by how outdated (and slow) interior hardware components were, and software too (somewhat improved now, but very slightly)! The architecture was a product of a true startup-like mindset - cobble something together that kind of barely works for the most part and ship it, then barely patch it up as issues crop up to just keep it (mostly) afloat. The take 2 on the model 3 and ape front is more organized and lately they even started to put good effort into the security side of things, but current S/X systems appear to be a writedown at this point on the Tesla side which should be a concern (esp for new owners) given that they still sell these systems.
Quality control on the software side is such that the manufacturing QA seems to be a shining example of perfectionism in comparison (another throwback of startup mentality?), when you look inside, things are crashing left and right (not always in user-visible manner, but every time you enter the car and the full player got minimized - that's a sign that underlying media player has crashed). Spotify server is particularly crashy (did you know spotify-server is running on your car even in North America when the functionality in just the UI is disabled?)

What I was pleased with? Well I was pretty pleased with how easily the entry could be gained, I guess. Also they run Linux (well, I already knew that by the time I bought, but I still like it). Inside there's a whole network of different compute nodes, not just one cramped node that's common with other manufacturers (for cost reasons mostly - why have 2-3 computes when you can have just one driving multiple displays and other business logic). Hm... slim list on the positive side I guess.... Ah! It was fun to play with too

OK, I think it's come full circle and I really understand the pixel earbud analogy... it's not enough to say other car manufacturers aren't close...

I have a couple of more questions I hope you'll humor me... forgive the lack of computer science knowledge.

Is it safe to say that you are more of someone who loves cracking complex puzzles or hacking? Do you enjoy finding vulnerabilities ore than designing these systems or trying to design full self driving because it isn't as enjoyable or challenging to you as this particular type of problem solving? Do they really hate you or do you know if they are just fearful of that info being served up to competitors or bad actors? Like an anarchist cookbook thing... or maybe a How to Cook Meth primer? You seem like a research guy to me.... someone who is too smart to just go to cash in the private sector (no offense to anyone reading this who is both of those things).

Maybe we can get a tenure position created for you at UT Austin? I see tasty publications in your future. Longhorns can probably solve full self-driving if no one from Oklahoma uses it.

Any other insights before you abandon your fans at TMC? Not looking forward to meeting your TMC replacement.... I don't really want "step-dad" verygreen, to come in and awkwardly teach me about the birds and the bees.

 

[bswn1]

I think you are mostly out of time anyway so this discussion is pretty theoretic.

In addition, I am mostly at the end of the road of keeping my ape root, realistically speaking. It was a small miracle and a string of very unlikely lucky occurrences and some very favorable timing for initial entry that helped me, but the opening keeps shrinking dramatically,
I can well foresee that the next update will be beyond my humble capabilities

A lot of other info (at least for now) could be obtained without getting inside of APE and there are many people with necessary access.

Now model 3 on the other hand, with the new updated platform (and eventually refreshed S/X and the Truck (traces of _that_ are also in the code)) - that's going to be quite a lot more challenge than current S/Xes (rootable in under 15 minutes on the cid front).
$50k is quite a bit of money just for a toy to break into for me, but the usual suspects already got theirs and are working on it.

Any insight you can give on the upcoming S/X refresh?

 

[verygreen]

Is it safe to say that you are more of someone who loves cracking complex puzzles or hacking? Do you enjoy finding vulnerabilities ore than designing these systems or trying to design full self driving because it isn't as enjoyable or challenging to you as this particular type of problem solving? Do they really hate you or do you know if they are just fearful of that info being served up to competitors or bad actors? Like an anarchist cookbook thing... or maybe a How to Cook Meth primer? You seem like a research guy to me.... someone who is too smart to just go to cash in the private sector (no offense to anyone reading this who is both of those things).

Maybe we can get a tenure position created for you at UT Austin? I see tasty publications in your future. Longhorns can probably solve full self-driving if no one from Oklahoma uses it.

Any other insights before you abandon your fans at TMC? Not looking forward to meeting your TMC replacement.... I don't really want "step-dad" verygreen, to come in and awkwardly teach me about the birds and the bees.

Loving puzzles is practically part of the job description in software field. I participate in designs of different sort of systems and don't really know much about Neural Networks or self-driving cars or the like, while I probably can retool into that, it's not a guaranteed thing and I need to eat meanwhile I am also not a security researcher or anything of the sort, there are people that are insanely dedicated to this area and have tons of knowledge and experience and there's no way I can match those I am sure, so I just go with the low hanging fruit mostly. But I do often wonder how things works (esp. software things, esp. Linux software things) and that often works as a good enough motivation. It certainly helps when I have some progress instead of hitting a wall and being stuck at it for a long time
Big difference is I actually believe in open collaboration, instead of closed research, but bug bounties actually shut that down - people no longer trust each other to share info as one of the consequences. Then of course there's the thing of "I found this and I like to keep using it, when it becomes too exposed, it could be taken away" (remember the autopilot debug console? it was known for a while and I thought it was not a big deal, but after my video about it the console was gone in the next release. So I kind of regret making that video now).
At least the Keenlab guys at tencent made their research public.

Tesla secrecy is multifaceted, I guess. Of course they don't like people finding out about unreleased featured because that has impact on sales or on relations with their partners or just steals thunder from Elon's tweets. Also I am sure there are multiple cases where they don't want contents of their "black boxes" exposed prematurely (remember all the speculations about number of cameras used, all the experiments? The battery sizes debacle? ...) or at all.
Then of course some other things are security issues, you do not really want people being able to just walk to a car, plug something in and drive it off (they have a bounty program for this and they fix such things which is good).
The blacklisting is puzzling, it does look like an attempt to stall people from meddling with their cars, and there was no compelling explanation from inside Tesla that anyone believed. And the whole "Service techs can no longer work on such cars normally" even leads people affected speculate that the real reason is "these people know what's going with the car, so we cannot BS them in our normal ways, they see the same things we see, so Engineering needs to carefully curate what is actually said" - I experienced this a bit when I had my brakes failure, weeks passed before I got a plausible answer and "we are still examining things, all systems look normal, we cannot replicate" before that, how often does this happens to others? Normally there's some excuse right away judging on a number of posts here on TMC.

I am not really a scientist though, I don't do publications and it's too hot in Texas anyway, also Titan is still much faster than Stampede 2 last I checked

I already have my next project, my wife bought this cooktop, but the android app did not materialize for the last 6 months, so time to take things into my own hands. If only amazon + usps can finally team up and deliver that bluetooth sniffer to me without losing it.

 

[verygreen]

Any insight you can give on the upcoming S/X refresh?

The computer systems refresh is a very logic thing for Tesla to do soon (now that they use the new systems on model 3), but of course I have zero visibility into what form would that take or when.

 

[conman]

@verygreen you haven't actually sold your vehicle yet have you? If there was a sudden EAP feature drop would that make you reconsider? I'd like to say thanks too for your efforts.

 

[verygreen]

@verygreen you haven't actually sold your vehicle yet have you? If there was a sudden EAP feature drop would that make you reconsider? I'd like to say thanks too for your efforts.

They are picking it up in under an hour.

I am not a big believer into this whole "shiny separate FSD code in the sky castle wating to come down and save us all from menial driving", but if they (whoever "they" would represent at the time) do release something that will interest me, I imagine I would be able to buy a car that has it.

 

[conman]

They are picking it up in under an hour.

I am not a big believer into this whole "shiny separate FSD code in the sky castle wating to come down and save us all from menial driving", but if they (whoever "they" would represent at the time) do release something that will interest me, I imagine I would be able to buy a car that has it.

Oh I wasn't talking about FSD. That's leprechauns and fairy talk. I only mentioned EAP, you know the thing most of us paid for (and didn't get) and expected by now.

 

[lunitiks]

They are picking it up in under an hour.

 

[_jal_]

Things are going to be very boring and very speculative without @verygreen. Thanks for all your info. Like @pilotSteve said above, a lot of what you discovered was all I had to believe that work was actually being done on the AP front. Without proof that the NN changed or whatever, it was all just touchy-feely "I think it seems better." It's going to suck not knowing.

And, btw, it's pretty incredible that you actually followed through and got them to take your car w/ the lemon law. For all the "I'm declaring a LEMON!" posts I've read on TMC, you are the first I read actually pulling it off.

Lastly, fwiw, we love our Subaru if you're looking for a new ride.

Godspeed @verygreen

 

[Gunboat]

As a longtime lurker, I’ve registered just to say: thank you, @verygreen, for all of your detailed and informative posts. I’ll miss them.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@verygreen Before you leave us and blissful ignorance takes over any comments to my rumor summary's AP2/2.5 points? Anything important I missed / you disagree with?

Rumor summary: Blind-spot cameras, Rain sensing, Level 3, Big battery, Interior/HUD

 

[verygreen]

@verygreen Before you leave us and blissful ignorance takes over any comments to my rumor summary's AP2/2.5 points? Anything important I missed / you disagree with?

Rumor summary: Blind-spot cameras, Rain sensing, Level 3, Big battery, Interior/HUD

I have no visibility into battery and interior/hud (though I know there is internal hud project, but no idea of the status).

the fsd (likely more like promised eap) features are likely to be finally coming relatively soon indeed, and probably to California first.
Why rain-sensing stuff not yet activated is a bit of a mystery, you'd think with NN included and all that, it would be there already.

Also don't forget the dashcam, traces of which were in the cid code for a some time now (keyword for voice activation: bookmark).

 

[verygreen]

Without proof that the NN changed or whatever, it was all just touchy-feely "I think it seems better." It's going to suck not knowing.

There other people with this level of access to at least see if the NN changed or not, so this should not be a problem.

 

[banned-66611]

Wouldn't changing to the M3 systems be another massive step backwards? They haven't even got the auto lights working yet, so you have to go to the touch screen and find the right page because there is no stalk.

I'm kind of amazed it's even road legal...

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Wouldn't changing to the M3 systems be another massive step backwards? They haven't even got the auto lights working yet, so you have to go to the touch screen and find the right page because there is no stalk.

Yes, the upgraded hardware in Model 3 has caused a Tesla style software regression (just like AP2.5 caused a momentary regression in Model S/X and AP2 of course caused a massive temporary - and not yet fully over - regression over AP1).

How long it lasts, who knows.

 

[BigD0g]

How long it lasts, who knows.

Three months maybe, six months definitely!