Firmware 7.0 Beta Discussion

[Lloyd]

For what it's worth, I have. I've noticed a bit of "schizophrenic" behavior on the energy graph during longer trips. Take a look at this video:

Start watching the energy meter at 0:20. Also note that despite me driving at 75 mph, the "since last charge" doesn't change from 103.3 miles. In fact, it didn't change for well over 15 minutes, then started jumping by a few minutes until it (mostly) caught up, although it still lost some mileage.

When it does this, responsiveness would go away.

(Video taken by my wife, in car with me. Sorry for the shakiness, she's balancing the phone on the steering wheel.)

I was told by a tech today that leaving a bunch of miles on your resettable trip meter slows down the processor. I know this sounds like really dumb programming, but apparently the trips are calculated by adding ALL of your individual trips. They are recommending until this software is fixed that you leave no more than 2000 miles on trip A or B.

Don't shoot the messenger! I know that everyone has kept one original to view lifetime wh/ mile.

 

[HankLloydRight]

I was told by a tech today that leaving a bunch of miles on your resettable trip meter slows down the processor. I know this sounds like really dumb programming, but apparently the trips are calculated by Addinng ALL of your individual trips. They are recommending until this software is fixed that you leave no more than 2000 miles on trip A or B.

Don't shoot the messenger! I know that everyone has kept one original to view lifetime wh/ mile.

I'll be the first one to call total BS on that. First of all, it's a ridiculous notion that the software is logging hundreds or thousands of individual trips and summing them together. Second, a ten year old programmer could program a simple accumulator to keep track of the odometers. Third, the processing involved to add up even several thousands of numbers happens in micro or nanoseconds, even with a slow processor, Adding integers is one of the most basic thing a processor does. Drawing even one graphic element on the screen, like the blue speedo bar takes up thousands of more processing cycles than adding up a thousand integers. What a complete crock of BS. There's no flipping way code that does that would pass any code review, much less persist this long in the software development cycle.

 

[spentan]

I was told by a tech today that leaving a bunch of miles on your resettable trip meter slows down the processor. I know this sounds like really dumb programming, but apparently the trips are calculated by adding ALL of your individual trips. They are recommending until this software is fixed that you leave no more than 2000 miles on trip A or B.

Don't shoot the messenger! I know that everyone has kept one original to view lifetime wh/ mile.

Really? I'll reset mine (I have both a and b at like 10k+ miles) and report back

 

[FlasherZ]

I was told by a tech today that leaving a bunch of miles on your resettable trip meter slows down the processor. I know this sounds like really dumb programming, but apparently the trips are calculated by adding ALL of your individual trips. They are recommending until this software is fixed that you leave no more than 2000 miles on trip A or B.

Don't shoot the messenger! I know that everyone has kept one original to view lifetime wh/ mile.

In that case, I would expect the issues to occur all the time, rather than under some specific circumstances. I sent a case in; I believe it was referred to engineering.

 

[Lloyd]

I'll be the first one to call total BS on that. First of all, it's a ridiculous notion that the software is logging hundreds or thousands of individual trips and summing them together. Second, a ten year old programmer could program a simple accumulator to keep track of the odometers. Third, the processing involved to add up even several thousands of numbers happens in micro or nanoseconds, even with a slow processor, Adding integers is one of the most basic thing a processor does. Drawing even one graphic element on the screen, like the blue speedo bar takes up thousands of more processing cycles than adding up a thousand integers. What a complete crock of BS. There's no flipping way code that does that would pass any code review, much less persist this long in the software development cycle.

I know sounds nuts, but I complained of slow and sticking data and this was the fix.

 

[Cyclone]

@wk057 - I have not noticed any performance or responsiveness decline on my "classic" MS. But if the flatter UI really cuts down on CPU/GPU usage then I'm all for it. Although if it is accompanied by a messy IC interface that removes a bunch of functionality then that's a whole different ball game.

I have, but either the later 6.2 updates helped or me taking the media app off the IC helped. I still see it doing lots of rough "fading" when I use the scroll wheels, but now it doesn't redraw the pane as often when I skip song after song on Slacker.

 

[Bugeater]

If Tesla didn't care about the UI, they wouldn't have beta testing & solicit input from a pre-selected group of customers. They'd just use professional drivers to test the functionality and call it a day. But they don't do that.

A customizable drag and drop UI for a vehicle would be a really bad idea - 'Where did I put that button?' is not the question I want to hear the driver mumble while speeding along in heavy traffic.

Bonnie, there already is a customizable UI. However it is very clumsy. It uses the scroll wheels in the steering wheel. A simple drag-n-drop on the main screen could make the current customizations much easier. They could also add customizations for adding temp, date/time, odo, and a number of other items that could fit it the edge spaces around the IC. As others have said, a reset to default button and a set of optional layouts to start from would be great! As a classic S owner the new toy car layout doesn't seem like it would help me at all. Well, unless Tesla is going to upgrade all our cars with the auto pilot sensors!

 

[Earlian]

Firmware 7.0

To the Flat-Design-Critics:

It is like always: First you show a new design, then a lot complain about it, because it is not of their taste. "It is ugly, it's so flat, the old one is better..."

Then after they use the bad 7.0 over a year and you offer them to get back to the perfect[emoji6], old 6.2 Design. Wonder....only some hardliners who can't adapt stuff twice in a lifetime still want it back, but the other 99% will stay at 7.0. Surely only because the old will miss features and they still hate 7.0.[emoji6]

7.0 design won't be the same like today.
But it will bring new features and the design like we saw has one simple pro: it is easier to find the buttons because they are clear. So, just accept it for safety issues. Over time the most people will love it anyway.

If only they bring promised auto steering, it may look like pony farm.

Besides that, I found it hard to see the beauty in Model S pictures. In reality, seen with human eyes, it is the nicest car out there. And I have a feeling that 7.0 will look just fine when we have it for real and not with some pics here and there.

 

[SeminoleFSU]

Yep, noticed this as well. On the P85D it's been worse though. I've seen the speedo and energy bar "stick" for several seconds at times, then quickly play catch up. It's pretty bad sometimes.

I've seen this too

- - - Updated - - -

There's a few recent things that worry me about all this besides losing vital info others have pointed out..
1) People not in the beta program got pushed a beta firmware by accident :-(
2) Who got the SC letters for overuse also seemed to be based on poor logic
3) the anti-range anxiety routing is awful and has been for some time (frankly an embarrassment that should not have been released in its current state)

Add all 3 of those together and ask yourself if the power meter and other core info will be on the dash in v7. I think it's pretty easy to see where things are headed and the direction is not looking good. Hopefully they'll get this stuff corrected. It does seem like they need more competent leadership on the software side. Just item #1 releasing software to the wrong people, especially alpha/beta software on accident just reaks of incompetency

 

[SR22pilot]

To the Flat-Design-Critics:

It is like always: First you show a new design, then a lot complain about it, because it is not of their taste. "It is ugly, it's so flat, the old one is better..."

Then after they use the bad 7.0 over a year and you offer them to get back to the perfect[emoji6], old 6.2 Design. Wonder....only some hardliners who can't adapt stuff twice in a lifetime still want it back, but the other 99% will stay at 7.0. Surely only because the old will miss features and they still hate 7.0.[emoji6]

Maybe but I work in IT for a living and I still dislike a lot of the flat designs. I love Windows 10 but the flat design isn't part of that love. It's harder to tell which are clickable spots and where data entry is. Plus I find it visually more boring. I have fully supported dropping wasteful skeuomorphisms such as binder rings on contacts lists. Somewhere along the way that got confused with the "need" to go flat.

 

[mgboyes]

I was told by a tech today that leaving a bunch of miles on your resettable trip meter slows down the processor. I know this sounds like really dumb programming, but apparently the trips are calculated by adding ALL of your individual trips. They are recommending until this software is fixed that you leave no more than 2000 miles on trip A or B.

Don't shoot the messenger! I know that everyone has kept one original to view lifetime wh/ mile.

As others have said this sounds like total BS, though I can believe it's what you were told.

In my experience there is a massive "chinese whispers" effect among front-line staff and it leads to all sorts of odd claims which were originally based in fact but which have been mangled.

In this case I'd guess the following happened:
* someone was told that the MCU/IC were more reliable and faster if they were occasionally allowed to reboot/shutdown (i.e. turning on energy saving mode). This as far as I know is true - and it stands to reason - whole classes of bugs like memory leaks etc can be masked if you just turn any computer system off and on again regularly. There is a reason why "have you tried turning it off and on again" is the first answer to all helpdesk calls.
* this changed in the first iteration to "if you don't allow the MCU/IC to power off occasionally, then 'data about your driving' builds up and they slow down and become unreliable (I have been told exactly this by a service tech at TM; I had energy saving disabled and he said I should put it on in order to allow the 'data' to be cleared out)
* and in turn this has been misremebered by someone else as "if you don't reset the trip meter, then 'trip data' builds up and it makes the whole thing slow down and become unreliable".

So I'd be 99% sure it's nonsense, but I can easily believe someone earnestly told it to you.

I now have energy saving turned on and the MCU/IC are hugely more reliable as a result, even though I do sometimes have to wait for the thing to boot up when I get into the car.

 

[HankLloydRight]

To the Flat-Design-Critics:

It is like always: First you show a new design, then a lot complain about it, because it is not of their taste. "It is ugly, it's so flat, the old one is better..."

Then after they use the bad 7.0 over a year and you offer them to get back to the perfect[emoji6], old 6.2 Design. Wonder....only some hardliners who can't adapt stuff twice in a lifetime still want it back, but the other 99% will stay at 7.0. Surely only because the old will miss features and they still hate 7.0.[emoji6]

If you're talking about only DESIGN, then I would agree with you. I don't like the total, austere, bland "flat" design that Apple and Tesla is now adopting. I just don't like it. But if 7.0 was the same INTERFACE as 6.2 with a different design, I'd learn to live with it and move on, just like I did with my iPhone and iOS 8. It's awful, but I really have no choice but to upgrade and live with it.

But what Tesla did was change the design AND the interface -- for the worse. They removed or relocated vital functionality which regardless of DESIGN, makes the new interface very hard to adjust to, since there's phenomenally less information presented. IF I could only get the same information I'm getting now, but with a different design -- BFD.

 

[dsm363]

I've never reset the trip computer in 6.2 after 35,000 miles and no issues with speed of screen.

 

[mknox]

I know sounds nuts, but I complained of slow and sticking data and this was the fix.

FWIW, I have not reset my Trip A since getting the car 2.5 years / 55,000 miles ago, and I have none of this "stickiness" or lagging being discussed here.

- - - Updated - - -

If you're talking about only DESIGN, then I would agree with you. I don't like the total, austere, bland "flat" design that Apple and Tesla is now adopting. I just don't like it. But if 7.0 was the same INTERFACE as 6.2 with a different design, I'd learn to live with it and move on, just like I did with my iPhone and iOS 8. It's awful, but I really have no choice but to upgrade and live with it.

I agree with that. I still don't like the fact that they took away the "chrome" bezel around the speedometer a few firmware releases ago, but, with no other option, have just learned to live with it.

 

[FlasherZ]

At risk of going too far off the thread's topic, I've found that after charging, the car seems to unstick. I don't know whether that's because something in "since last charge" gets reset, or whether it moves on to the next leg. What's particularly telling is the schizophrenic behavior of the energy graph (watch my video starting at 0:15 or so and focus on the energy graph, note how it seems to jump around).

BackOnTopic(tm): I hope I don't see this in 7.0.

 

[scaesare]

Also @wk057 -- you mention all the texturing and other "brushed metal" elements -- most all of those are likely static bitmaps that are displayed once and not redrawn unless the screen changes state. The dynamic things that actually change (on 6.2) are the speed and power lines -- those are just gradient color arcs. Also the text based numbers change (speed, trip odos, battery, time, temp, etc). I haven't noticed any laggyness on my car, everything is pretty snappy. Also, I think there are different processors handling the IC display and the nav/range assurance stuff on the main screen. So I really don't think performance is the leading issue causing the re-design.

But if what you propose is true, they could have just removed all the texturing and other elements WITHOUT also removing or relocating major portions of critical functions.

This.

There's not much being rendered with any sort of complexity in real time on the displays. The look and feel of the skeuomorphic elements are all static, with the meters and graphs composed on top of them.

Rendering a needle sweep or graph line over a flat background, as opposed to a 3D one makes no difference. I suppose you could eliminate the gradients associated with the needles and graph, but that's a drop in the CPU/GPU bucket.

You had already mentioned this previously, but it appears to have been ignored...

 

[ecarfan]

Firmware 7.0

I've never reset the trip computer after 35,000 miles and no issues with speed of screen.

I have never reset my A odometer after 29,000 miles and have not noticed any issues.

And I like "flat" UI designs. I dislike any trace of skeumorphism.

 

[apacheguy]

I now have energy saving turned on and the MCU/IC are hugely more reliable as a result, even though I do sometimes have to wait for the thing to boot up when I get into the car.

Could be. I have Energy Saving on and my IC boots up from scratch every time. I have no complaints RE responsiveness.

 

[3s-a-charm]

I credit this thread with teaching me what skeuomorphism is! Learn something every day.

 

[scaesare]

I have never reset my A odometer after 29,000 miles and have not noticed any issues.

And I like "flat" UI designs. I dislike any trace of skeumorphism.

Similar.. my "A" trip odometer hasn't been reset since new... roughly 52K miles on the clock...

No issues.