Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Openpilot in my 2018 Corolla for the past few months. Some takeaways:

It's mind-blowingly good. Easily on par with Autopilot (That is, Autopilot's ACTUAL capabilities, not what they show in marketing promos). For long highway trips, it's easy to go hours without a disengagement.

The full setup costs about $800, is completely plug-and-play, and you can order everything you need on the site (EON/Panda/Giraffe). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfF9l2-orTk

There's a huge active community working on adding support for more cars and even custom forks with more advanced features like dynamic follow. Someone even recently got a VW bus working with it. https://discordapp.com/invite/avCJxEX

Also it's just really freaking cool to have a self driving Corolla. Can't stress how much this thing has changed the way I view driving and going places. It's no longer a pain, but a joy to sit in stop and go traffic. It's not perfect, but it's pushing the border of level 3 autonomy and far better than anything that any manufacturer besides Tesla is shipping.

I had no idea the software was in use and this stable! Is the discord community the best way to follow progress or are there other resources?

>I had no idea the software was in use and this stable! Is the discord community the best way to follow progress or are there other resources?

Yep, the Discord is super active and there's plenty of people to help you out if you hit any snags. But the hardware is super easy to install and ready to go if you have a compatible car. There's also a lot of active Youtubers like ku7 (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXmUBvIuFLjLRuJ0mX298Ng) and arne (https://www.youtube.com/user/arneschwarck) that are building their own forks.

i'm surprised i didn't get mentioned, since I have a fork dedicated to the Corolla. but yes the system is actually in use and comma have logged over 10 million miles already. on top of that, the Discord community reports any and all accidents and none have been due to openpilot. there have been a few accidents were people got rear-ended or sideswiped, but fortunately there has never been an accident with the system engaged or due to openpilot.

Openpilot is not on par with Autopilot. There's a long list of things Autopilot can do that Openpilot will never be able to do with existing hardware.

>There's a long list of things Autopilot can do that Openpilot will never be able to do with existing hardware.

Such as what? Autopilot is completely vision/radar based as well. Sure it has a few more cameras for a greater margin of safety, but its' effective capabilities are the exact same. It's still completely reliant on tracking lane lines, the user has to disengage at stop lights, and it can't make 90 degree city street turns. The only real difference I can see is automatic lane switching, which is available in some Openpilot forks.

Such as Navigate on Autopilot(freeway interchanges and exits), speed based lane changing, merging, object detection. There are 8 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and a radar. They are not the same.

Of that long list, what do you think Tesla owners value the most? ACC+Lane Keeping (what openpilot does) is the answer: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4y0Fb7XsAEKhFh.jpg

Well yes, of course those are valued highest. What's the point of auto lane changing if you can't ACC and lane keep?

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