My adventures in gaining control of my car

[scaesare]

At m

So you bring up very good points. And if you had access to ToolBox, you would have been able to perform those functions.

Would it be fair to suggest that what you specifically are requesting is an interface/avenue to perform general maintenance?

At minimum.

But the car is mine. If I want to tweak it to change the wiper sensitivity, so be it.

If I want to overdrive the inverter for more power and risk blowing up the drivetrain, that's my prerogative too.

 

[supratachophobia]

At m

At minimum.

But the car is mine. If I want to tweak it to change the wiper sensitivity, so be it.

If I want to overdrive the inverter for more power and risk blowing up the drivetrain, that's my prerogative too.

Then I can only meet you half-way in agreement. I think you should be allowed to make the wipers more sensitive (that is not a capability in ToolBox, to my knowledge). But I don't think you should be allowed to make them any less sensitive than the lowest settings Tesla has entered. This is because the wipers are used to keep the auto-pilot camera free of debris and impairing their ability could cause a malfunction in AP.

And I don't think you should be allowed to blow up your drive-train via software. I'm trying to keep you safe.

 

[msnow]

Gotta start somewhere, so that really makes this a poor argument.

Also, people are assuming the OP and others with root access can just go in and "change anything they want". That is not entirely correct, since most of the code for AP or any other subsystem is compiled into machine code. I seriously doubt he will go through the arduous process of decompiling it and trudging through that to attempt changes.

Nope it's a strong argument and there are some AP settings available as I recall from the old Let the Hacking Begin thread. We don't want people just futzing around in there while families are on the road right next to them. I can't see Tesla allowing unfettered access.

 

[mmccord]

And I don't think you should be allowed to blow up your drive-train via software. I'm trying to keep you safe.

I think you should be allowed to blow up your drive-train via software if you so choose, or remove the speed-limit on AP, or any of the numerous other options available by rooting the car.

 

[supratachophobia]

I think you should be allowed to blow up your drive-train via software if you so choose, or remove the speed-limit on AP, or any of the numerous other options available by rooting the car.

Then we will agree to disagree. I think you might not realise that the car does have hardware limitations and that processing of auto pilot data cannot happen if data is coming in too quickly.

 

[hiroshiy]

Can we just focus on @green1 's posts sans criticism? This is his thread. People who want to discuss whether hacking a car is good or bad, can start a different thread.

 

[scaesare]

Then I can only meet you half-way in agreement. I think you should be allowed to make the wipers more sensitive (that is not a capability in ToolBox, to my knowledge). But I don't think you should be allowed to make them any less sensitive than the lowest settings Tesla has entered. This is because the wipers are used to keep the auto-pilot camera free of debris and impairing their ability could cause a malfunction in AP.

And I don't think you should be allowed to blow up your drive-train via software. I'm trying to keep you safe.

And I'm very content to not have you manage my personal property or actions, thanks.

 

[Lon12]

Can we just focus on @green1 's posts sans criticism? This is his thread. People who want to discuss whether hacking a car is good or bad, can start a different thread.

LOL. Apparently not. Kind of like saying "Don't look! There goes a model 3".

 

[supratachophobia]

And I'm very content to not have you manage my personal property or actions, thanks.

You could potentially create a situation where blame could be placed at Tesla's feet. I don't believe that's acceptable or fair to them.

 

[msnow]

You could potentially create a situation where blame could be placed at Tesla's feet. I don't believe that's acceptable or fair to them.

Some people are pretty selfish when it comes to weighing what they think is their personal liberty versus the safety of those around them on the road. If you want to take risks fine just stay off public roads.

 

[eloder]

You know, there are many, many, many other cars to choose from, none of which have the protections or restrictions Tesla does.

Go buy them. You buy Teslas, you play by their rules. No different than how if you buy a cell phone, you can't use it for illegal activities on the carrier's network--they will shut you down.

 

[ohmman]

I want to mention that as a 17 year old kid, I rebuilt the entire suspension on my vehicle. I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, and even severely damaged a tool (coil spring compressor) upon which the task depended. In hindsight, it was irresponsible, but it wasn't out of the ordinary in my group of friends. We were doing all kinds of things to the "classic" cars of the time. They were imminently accessible for this kind of modification, and we were young kids craving control over our machines.

I am willing to bet this continues readily in the automotive enthusiast community. I personally don't think that someone else "hacking" the systems associated with their Tesla puts me at a statistically significantly higher risk of an accident. Especially not when you consider my anecdote above. Hacking isn't something I'm doing or care to do, but I don't think the discussion about the "danger" is reasonable.

 

[wk057]

Protecting Tesla from blame sounds like something that's simply not our problem to care about, nor something we should care about... that's their job. Next time you see someone tuning up a non-Tesla vehicle, make sure to tell them that some situation they might cause through their modifications could somehow maybe be blamed on the manufacturer... be sure to continue that stance as they carry you off in a straight jacket laughing hysterically. This level of defense for a private corporation from the general public is just absolutely ridiculous. If Tesla doesn't want people modifying the cars they shouldn't sell them, and they should only lease them. That way they actually own the property and can actually tell you what you can and can not do with it. I don't think that's something that's going to happen, since Tesla is a publicly traded for profit corporation and they need to actually sell cars to stay in business.

Anyway...........

Congrats on getting Factory Mode. If you want to dissect your car, hack it, mod it, blow it up, re-wrire it, reprogram it, whatever... more power to you. It's your car. You can do whatever you d**m well please to it.

Even if you somehow hack the car to be able to run autopilot indefinitely while you napped in the passenger seat or trunk... not our problem. Really, people, get over it. People do things with their cars that are FAR more careless every day than anything @green1 could possibly do through tinkering with software on his car. Get over yourselves. This is why there just can't be any actual technical discussions on this forum and a big part of the reason why I've stopped bothering with it almost entirely. Too many self–righteous individuals making a lot of noise over nothing preventing actual discussions with substance from continuing. This thread is 150+ posts... out of those maybe 10-15 are even close to on topic? That signal to noise ratio is crazy. "sell the car!" "get your money back!" "buy a different car!" etc... WT* people. Are you offering to pay full retail to refund the cost of the car in a misguided attempt to protect Tesla? You aren't? Didn't think so. Enough already.

And @green1, I am glad you're not posting a step-by-step for this for the masses. One of the things unique about Tesla would be the OTA update ability. While today they don't seem to care enough to close off this particular attack vector, I guarantee that once someone posts exactly how to pull it off it will just be patched out within a week... which is a big part of the reason myself and others have been reluctant to share such information. It is obvious Tesla knows this particular method of gaining factory/dev mode access exists, but closing the hole likely just hasn't been a priority just yet. And honestly, as may or may not be evident from my feeling expressed here, I don't think most people deserve the fruits of such work for nothing... especially given the fact that you'll just be shooting yourself in the foot when Tesla locks it down later. Half of the people whining about what you're doing and how horrible and dangerous it is would likely try and do it themselves if they had the info available, and probably still keeping crying about how terrible it is.... lol.

More on-topic, there really aren't a whole lot of useful things that can be done with just factory/dev mode and no root. Lots of cool data available, but not many changes can be made or anything without unlocking more of the "apps," which can't be done on the production firmware, to my knowledge, without root.

There's some simple things that can be done/changed with dev mode, but just be careful. And whatever you do, do NOT reboot the gateway while the car is on (ready to drive)... really, since it could potentially result in the need for a service center visit depending on how badly things freak out.

I figured it's worth mentioning here as well: Factory Mode/Dev Mode does not give access to the autopilot dev app that I posted about a while back (which is what you're looking for). Further, Tesla has removed this "app" entirely from some of the newest firmwares, so it's not even possible to enable *with* root either anymore.

Not 100% sure where I was going with all of this... I'm just really annoyed seeing what @green1 is having to put up with from supposed peers here. It's absurd. Go on a forum for (insert ANY other car maker here) and start bashing people for modifying their car... half of the nonsense in this thread is probably ban hammer worthy on other forums.

(Dislike if you must... the ratings here don't count for anything anyway.)

 

[green1]

What I've learned so far here is that factory/dev mode is overrated, but what's severely underrated is the API calls you can make on the Ethernet network (like the one that got me to factory/dev mode in the first place)
There appears to be a ton of stuff you can do that way, though without root it's hard to know what they all are. (or maybe it's not, there may be some other way of finding them, I just don't know yet)

There's a reason I've been referring to this as an "adventure" or a "journey". This isn't simply a task where you do one thing and you're "done", there's so much to explore and try, and always another step to be taken.

I also want to thank all the people who have reached out privately with support. Seeing the ridiculousness in this thread and others I fully understand why you don't want to post publicly, but the outpouring of support does help none the less.

@wk057 is correct, the signal to noise ratio on this site is horrendous. Like him, I too don't come here nearly as much as I used to for that very reason (and the site re-design fiasco, but that's a different rant)

It really is too bad, it would be nice to have a forum for Tesla enthusiasts, somewhere where people can post all the great things they do with their vehicles, without being overrun by the haters. I'm not aware of any other car forum on the internet where tunning, and modding is greeted with disdain rather than enthusiasm. I have never had a vehicle I didn't modify, and I don't see that changing any time in the near future, I've always posted my mods on enthusiast forums too, and I've always gotten such a positive reaction to them, it's too bad Tesla is "different" (and really too bad that that isn't always in a positive way)

 

[cronosx]

What I've learned so far here is that factory/dev mode is overrated, but what's severely underrated is the API calls you can make on the Ethernet network (like the one that got me to factory/dev mode in the first place)
There appears to be a ton of stuff you can do that way, though without root it's hard to know what they all are. (or maybe it's not, there may be some other way of finding them, I just don't know yet)

There's a reason I've been referring to this as an "adventure" or a "journey". This isn't simply a task where you do one thing and you're "done", there's so much to explore and try, and always another step to be taken.

I also want to thank all the people who have reached out privately with support. Seeing the ridiculousness in this thread and others I fully understand why you don't want to post publicly, but the outpouring of support does help none the less.

@wk057 is correct, the signal to noise ratio on this site is horrendous. Like him, I too don't come here nearly as much as I used to for that very reason (and the site re-design fiasco, but that's a different rant)

It really is too bad, it would be nice to have a forum for Tesla enthusiasts, somewhere where people can post all the great things they do with their vehicles, without being overrun by the haters. I'm not aware of any other car forum on the internet where tunning, and modding is greeted with disdain rather than enthusiasm. I have never had a vehicle I didn't modify, and I don't see that changing any time in the near future, I've always posted my mods on enthusiast forums too, and I've always gotten such a positive reaction to them, it's too bad Tesla is "different" (and really too bad that that isn't always in a positive way)

If you remember my previus post, i said clear enought that i'm let people have free (editing) access to the firmware etc

But there are settings/action that usually are hidden to the final client in a way that he can't damage himself using it or get thinkering with something that he doesn't know and the saying "oh! but the car doesn't work as stated", but if you don't modify the routines and you just call the API, for me it's perfectly fine and this SHOULD be allowed, like the factory mode.. i would really like to have it free to access and of course all the diagnostic data and all of it.
It's stupid don't leave the access to the diagnostic data to the customers, sometime a problem can get solved easily without cramming the service center just knowing what's wrong

 

[diamond.g]

@wk057 @green1

Do you guys not think there is a market for a VCDS type harness/software for the Tesla?

 

[Pruitt]

And I'm very content to not have you manage my personal property or actions, thanks.

It's not that simple.
When your modifications may make unexpected changes to the way such a highly integrated kinetic missile may function, the question of your rights to make such modifications becomes much less cut and dried.

 

[kort677]

You could potentially create a situation where blame could be placed at Tesla's feet. I don't believe that's acceptable or fair to them.

wow, tesla needs you to look out for their interests? really?

 

[habanero69]

What I've learned so far here is that factory/dev mode is overrated, but what's severely underrated is the API calls you can make on the Ethernet network (like the one that got me to factory/dev mode in the first place)
There appears to be a ton of stuff you can do that way, though without root it's hard to know what they all are. (or maybe it's not, there may be some other way of finding them, I just don't know yet) ................................ SNIPPED CONTENT TO REDUCE JUST DUPLICATING THE ORIG THREAD )

I don't really agree with having complete, free reign over the software as delivered by Tesla, but that's obviously what this thread is about, and you've made it clear you don't care. Fine.

What I personally care about is mostly, that I hope, that Tesla can determine if you are running anything software-wise on the car that is not from their code repository/version. They should be able to in order to protect themselves from any liability should your so called hacking lead to a malfunction or unintended consequence that could harm yourself or others. I'm not sure I care or want them to try and stop what you are doing, it's just that they should know you are operating the vehicle on unapproved software. If you blow something up and somehow you get it replaced under warranty, that hurts all of us owners by making the cost of vehicles and/or maintenance higher. And I'm not OK with that.

My $.02, if even that.

 

[scaesare]

It's not that simple.
When your modifications may make unexpected changes to the way such a highly integrated kinetic missile may function, the question of your rights to make such modifications becomes much less cut and dried.

Folks here seem to misunderstand they've been modifying their "kinetic missiles" for years.