I'm one of the developers of the Tesla OpenPilot fork and figured I'd throw in my 2 cents.
He may want to try it out again if he still has his parts. We have people looking to switch over from AP1, and should have it working in near future. It should be pretty much plug and play with AP1 cars.
Please note that, AP1 Support is not yet available. I estimate it being about 6 months away. So "Soon" is relative.
Biggest issue is finding an AP1 car to work on, as currently both me and the other dev working on it do not have an iBooster installed (yet). we haven't fully reverse engineered the iBooster/DI/DAS negotiation for longitudinal control.
If you are a developer and want to work on AP1 support, please PM me!
Here's how OpenPilot currently compares for Non-AP cars:
Steering:
on par with AP1/AP2+ when it comes to actually driving and following the road. But allows for seamless pass-through between driver control and OP control without full disenagagement. OP will take over once your hands are off the wheel again.
Longitudinal Control:
OP is much worse than AP1/AP2+ when it comes to longitudinal control. This is for two reasons, stock Tesla cruise control is awful and we don't have electronically controlled friction brakes.
The first issue has been 100% fixed with additional hardware (takes about 5 minutes to install) which emulates pressing the throttle pedal instead of using the cruise control system. This allows OP to actually operate much smoother than even the AP1/AP2+ ACC at highway speeds and would make OP better than AP if it weren't for the second issue.
The second issue, we don't have control of the friction brakes, only the regenerative brakes. Thus, we dont have AEB, we can't do stop and go traffic, and sometimes the driver needs to step on the brake pedal.
Retrofitting an iBooster, while possible, is a big job. You have to replace all the wheel sensors, ESP system, and brake system and modify the car harnesses, So I doubt many Non-AP users would do that.
Additionally, you can retrofit a radar module as well, (this is fairly simple) and get more accurate ACC controls versus the vision-only solution, but it is very much not required.
We use the maps that are built into tesla as wel, so we have localization speed controls like AP has when going around turns and such as well.
Driver awareness:
OpenPilot is superior to AP1/AP2+ for driver awareness. We use a camera facing the driver to determine if they are paying attention versus just sensing torque on the wheel. This means that you do NOT have to have your hands on the wheel when you use openpilot, but you do need to be more attentive.
Integration:
OpenPilot can fully integrate into the Tesla CID/IC UI if you have root, it'll look like AP1. While the AP2 view is also possible, it's kind of pointless since OP can only see ahead.
We have automatic lane changing.. but recently disabled it temporarily. We aren't happy with its performance. while it is aware of ultrasonic sensor data, it does not use them, so you have to check yourself.
Future updates list:
- implementing navigate-on-openpilot, it'll be almost the same implementation that Tesla currently uses - driving off the road curvature data when taking exists.
- Using ultrasonic sensors to correct lane position when someone is close (not sure how good this will be for 8-sensor cars)
- supporting the iBooster controls for those who have one
- developing an AP1 Giraffe & AP1 support
- Futher improvements to long control
Any advantage over stock 8.1 for AP1 which {cough} someone rooted?
What's required, and what's the mechanism to change over?
root?
When you notice I'm the developer of this you will probably run, but anyway..
It will require no permanent hardware modifications. Parts will consist of buying an EON (or building a FreEon), Panda (white/grey, doesn't matter), and the unreleased AP1 Giraffe. You will be able to easily switch between AP1 and OP at any time using a Toggle on the CID or EON.
Installation will be simple:
1. Unplug the wire going into the DAS
2. Plug that wire into the corresponding female cable the Giraffe
3. Plug the giraffe's male version of that cable into the DAS.
4. Plug Panda into Giraffe
5. Mount Eon
6. Plug Eon into Panda
And you are done.