What is Open Pilot?

[TonyT]

Quick and dirty, here are a couple links, OP is on it's way to give a pretty complete AP1 like experience.

!!!Disclamer, make sure you understand what is going on before you activate!!! This is a 2 ton death machine!

Tesla - comma wiki
http://tinkla.us/index.php/Welcome_to_Tinkla!

K, and now for those who like to read...

Why I'm writing this? Due to a lot of peoples effort I was able to have all my driving dreams fulfilled, however not many know about this path so I want to expose it to you to pay it forward for all those who have for me.

Since the day I heard about Tesla and the roadster I dreamed about owning one. I think most of you can relate to this, with exception to those who just went and bough them... If your one of those people, THANK YOU!

Then the S came out! WOW something as cool as a roadster but I can actually fit a family and groceries in it! Now if I only had 100K to spend on a car . First world problems, right?

So fast forward, to October 2018. Finally as the white stickers were expiring (California thing) lots of people were deciding to replace their HOA car since soon it will be useless to them, also Tesla was going to loose the $7500. This put a lot of used Tesla S's on the second hand market driving prices way down. And FUD made the high mileage S's very undesirable, which was great thing for me. Since I have been going full electric since my gateway car in 2006, a Prius... I have very high confidence the S will last me many more mile (500K I'm aiming for you!)
After getting my S I was mildly disappointed it didn't have any driving features (2013 = pre AP1.) However that feeling was quickly replaced after getting in the car each time.

Then 1 day, on a whim I decided to try OP and got all the parts. Well not totally on a whim. I heard about OP even when I was researching S's back in Oct but did not want to try yet as I was waiting for "Longitudinal control" Advance Cruise Control. The pages were a little of date implying it was not working. I will give a disclaimer that it is still being developed. After seeing BogGyver's videos I decided I really need to look into this more.

Almost all my parts arrived early April, but I was lacking parts to enable the steering. I decided to just hook up what I had so I can start earning some comma points, and help train the comma driving models. Keep in mind this was a non-tested configuration so I don't recommend you doing this. However I felt confident with the understandings I had and talked to the developers. With this basic setup EON, Panda, and Giraffe I had the better Cruise Control than stock! Remember at this point OP only has regen so you literally may need to step in any second!

I started with OP version .5.9 and quickly felt confident to go to .5.11 alpha. Reason was the lane control was so good with just 1 camera! At this point I have Lane control, which keeps my car almost perfectly centered in the lane at all times (More on this later.) Cruise control which will control my speed down to 18 mph (Regen only.) Below 18 mph is all manual. The tesla can use lane control only or lane control and speed control. I don't feel a need to use speed control only, except for a couple situations (more on that later.)

After almost 2 month and over 3500 miles I'm using lane control almost all the time. I still often keep my hands very near the steering wheel when I'm in heavy traffic. That is more for the even someone decide to share my lane while I'm in it. Yes the S is a small car that many people cant see, or maybe they just don't care (you can PM me for my private dashcam collection where 2 cars decide to mate on the highway.) I have added pedal (speed control to 0 mph.) Still works best when on free highway

Lane control is down to 0 MPH out of the box. I literally use this feature every drive there are lane markings. Since .5.11 curb detection has much improved. 1 lane tracking is decent enough to use about 60% of the time. When using lane control only I am in full control of speed. I can apply brakes at any moment which gives me extra time to grab the wheel if needed. There has rarely been the need. After a while you have a good understanding where OP will have trouble, which is mostly very faded lane lines. I also don't like using in the rain, that still feels very un-natural for me. Exits on right, most of the times the car will stay in lane by tracking the left lane. AZ freeways are really nice since the exits are also marked with dotted lines like the roads were marked for autonomous driving! The only time I use my steering wheel is to make sharp turns or change lanes. Automated Lane changing is operational however needs refinement so I don't use it yet.

Cruise Control without radar is good when there are not a lot of cars around. I don't experience phantom braking under bridges and stuff. I do experience it when going into turns and OP thinks a turning car in adjacent lane is in front of me. There seems to be limitations with depth and the single camera. OP is designed with premise that radar is available. Tesla branch was working around this as non AP cars don't have radar. There is current development and basic radar support is already implemented. I'm just waiting for the rest of my parts to arrive so I can retrofit it on my car. Sometime vision does not detect cars properly, so be EXTRA watchful when using cruse without radar. Think of it as slightly advance cruise control. Actually even AP 1,2,2.5, or 3 is not L4. Letting them do their own thing is just not the design intention...

The full OP driving experience will be once I retrofit iBooster for braking and parking sensors for 360 degree detection. I hope to add real radar based blind spot detection in the future, let me know if you have experience and want to help.
Soon my driving dreams will be fully realized! Tesla and very assisted driving!!

If you are a English teacher, please feel free to correct any errors here and I will post the edit.

If I can help you answer questions I will, feel free to post here as others may want the same answers.

I'm not affiliated with Tesla or Comma, but I will gladly take gifts if you want to give me stock.

These are my own comments and thoughts. If you decide to follow this path, do learn as much about it before you attempt. I am not responsible if you hurt yourself or others, so please don't. This is a 2 ton death machine!

 

[TonyT]

iBooster is need for full braking control. This electronic braking system gives OP the ability to use mechanical brakes which is need to stop the car completely to 0 Mph. This is also need in the event braking power beyond regen is needed during highway cruising.

 

[TonyT]

I had a great conversation about this with a friend. He is not getting into the advance driving assist offered by many manufacturers now. He had a huge question how I could trust my life to something that could not avoid all cars. I just happened to remember something another friend had talked to me about that is really into OP.

So I asked him if he uses Cruise Control. He said absolutely! So I asked him how many cars or obstacles has it avoided ramming? And his reply was none, it will ram anything and he needs to watch out for it. So I told him OP slows down and matches speed on most instances and increases speed when there is room. You should not be totally trusting it and should still be watching it at all times. He though about it for a few minutes.. And now he really wants to try it out, and maybe put it on his car too.

Terms like AutoPilot can be really misleading. People tend to have a perception that it will drive safely, all the time.

 

[Cheburashka]

OpenPilot is awesome if you don't mind some tinkering. Strong community and it has made leaps in progress.

 

[Electric700]

Really interesting! I had not heard of Open Pilot before.

 

[Bmod]

Very interesting, are there any youtube videos explaining this more, and or cars driving with this?

 

[Bmod]

 

[TonyT]

OpenPilot is awesome if you don't mind some tinkering. Strong community and it has made leaps in progress.

Depends how much functionality you want. Basic limited setup is mostly plug and play. You can tinker additional if you want. This also allows you to really customize things to tune it the want you want it to drive.

 

[TonyT]

Very interesting, are there any youtube videos explaining this more, and or cars driving with this?

I think I need to make one. But my car is kinda in pieces since I'm always doing mods and upgrade. You can search youtube. Most cars actually drive very similar, exceptions being the minimum speed system can stay engaged and how much of an angle the system can make. We have the steering rack from AP cars, so OP on Tesla is one of the top in steering category. However since our cars are old (most official support are last couple years) we will likely never get official status since car upgrades are required to have the full system control most newer cars have. With that said I'd modify and drive my old S any day over a new Corolla or Civic. Nothing against them, but they are not Tesla's...

 

[boggyver]

It is very easy to start. Our community is also working hard to make it easy for nontechnical people to adopt openpilot. With some basic setup you can have a decent LKAS and ACC for Highway use.

 

[boggyver]

And for more info please visit Welcome to Tinkla! - Tinkla: Tinkering with Tesla or join our Discord group

 

[Kant.Ing]

I was hoping Tesla opened up the AP hardware and software platform to some level and built something like Mobileye's RSS as safety design rule checks, so that 3rd party developers do their driving or UI apps and Tesla only needed to focus on safety and guarantees safety. But it's now hard, being a public company.

 

[TonyT]

We just got updated to version .5.13 on OP. This update was pretty big. Mostly due to the Tesla development team. We have a major advance in speed control. Advanced Cruise Control is so smooth! This is the way it should be I don’t understand why no manufacturers have done this. Also declaration when approaching lead car has been smoothed out a lot. No more sudden acceleration or deceleration. Smooth transition to lead car speed. This is something I can use pretty much all the time!

Keep in mind I still don’t have radar yet since I’m waiting for a final part from Tesla to attach my radar. I expect it will get even better once I have a true radar. Using visual radar causes inaccuracies detecting lead cars sometimes. So you have to keep more of a watch Incase correction is needed. It pretty much did all my stop and go traffic for my last 120 miles of driving. I also don’t have brakes so I have to step in and help stop if there is rapid stops ahead. I have all the parts for that but just need to finish making my custom wiring harness to complete the retrofit.

A bit more on advance cruise. I’ve had it in several cars and I use it when going on long drives where there is not much traffic. But for my it was not useful since the acceleration was really abrupt. Basically the cars would try and resume speed as quick as it can and basically mashing the accelerator. That was not a feeling I enjoyed.

 

[samppa]

Also interested in this. Can you estimate following:
- cost of all required hardware?
- how much time it takes to install?

 

[TonyT]

Also interested in this. Can you estimate following:
- cost of all required hardware?
- how much time it takes to install?

Check out the wiki, has pretty much all the info the 2 hardest parts are making/installing epas cable, 1-4 hours depends on your speed and skill. tucking in the usb cable, 5m to 4 hours depends on your skills

Cost will depend how much functionality you want, so check out the wiki, also join us in discord.

 

[TonyT]

Just took a major road trip with OP, out of 4900 miles I maybe drove 100, most of my driving was during so bad weather I don't like being driven in, and some conditions beyond the limits of OP. Met lots of people at the SuperChargers, Talked to a few about OP, talked to many about how long to charge at and saving time while traveling. Can't wait to get more upgrades in the car. Car is over 140k miles now.

For this trip my OP parts were Eon, Giraffe, Panda, and Pedal. This will be so nice once Radar, and Ibooster are in. Parking sensors also going in but I discovered my car does not have the wiring, which I found a little weird, but will still go in with more work on my part.

 

[JoeMartin]

My brother had gone this route before completely retrofitting AP to his 2012.

I'm curious as to if this will eventually be able to offer FSD capabilities for AP1 cars, or if additional hardware would be necessary.

 

[Chaserr]

Additional hardware would be necessary. AP1 cars can't even use the rear camera to "see" backward and they have no side views.

 

[JoeMartin]

Additional hardware would be necessary. AP1 cars can't even use the rear camera to "see" backward and they have no side views.

Very valid points, thank you.

 

[TonyT]

I don't have any plans for this to ever become FSD, then again my car was not even AP capable... With that said have the expectation this is still working in progress. Latest advances have been pretty epic. OP with Tesla is even usable in traffic now even without radar, however still need to be super careful as vision radar emulation is good but not perfect. Even radar is not perfect.

A few things about OP is really shining. Automatic speed changes/ going through most speed traps are not an issue. Many areas had very up to date information about the speed limits, and car adjusted flawless where ever data was correct. Driver monitoring. Went over an hour without needing to touch the wheel. Speed changes are smooth, slowing down very nicely when approaching slower traffic.

Things still needing improvement. Accelerating after finding a slow car or getting cut off. Think a big part of this is me needing radar. (Tesla were is my radar duct, it's been over a month!) Bigger model using more camera. Lots of turns the S can make if it could only see it all. This is one coming soon...