Tesla Light Show xLights Guide | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Light Show xLights Guide

github.com

242 pointsjudge2020108 comments

Amazing to read through that repo and then come to realize that’s not some reverse engineered hacker project, but actually a trillion dollar car company publishing that on their own GitHub page. Very cool.

This sort of proves they are the hacker car company. There were definitely features before that screamed it (frequent over-the-air updates), but this seals the deal.

EDIT: and the README.md on that page is better than 99% of open source projects I've looked at.

Yet the firmware is locked down and they aggressively pursue and punish people who try to control their own cars... they may be the hacker car company, but overall they are very anti-hacker.

Can this be a safety issue? I’d rather not have a 4k pound hunk of metal flying at me by someone that just wanted to try something out in a cars firmware.

What's the difference between that and say, changing your brake rotors and brake pads? There's a level of danger there if it's not a professional doing it.

In either case the person doing the modification would be found at fault by police / insurance, but with software it isn't so clear cut - how do you know whether or not the car is hacked? Often, the collision will become a national news story, prompting Tesla to perform a multi-week investigation to see if anything in the car was modified, all while they've already lost because news media had already blamed Tesla.

You're absolutely right. I think Elon is very acquainted with the hacker ethic, he's written a lot of code in his life. People see the celebrity businessman that he is now and they assume he hasn't written code.

He's a hacker that worships money more than open source software. There is a spectrum of how hackers balance riches and fame and being true to their roots of open source. I'd say Linus has done a very good job. Perhaps the best job you can do. Elon is probably at the other end of the spectrum, but not quite as far as the Google lads are. They're at the other end of the pool.

It's called marketing.

If it were simply marketing, then everyone would be doing it

>Supported Vehicles

> Model S (2021+)

> Model X (2021+)

> Model 3

> Model Y

Someone didn't get the memo from Elon that proper Teslexicographical sorting is S, 3, X, Y.

There's a workaround... Just manually flip the high beams, shift through drive modes, vigorously alternate turn indicators, and pump your brakes furiously.

That’s is a hilarious visual lmao, I want to see someone try that now.

Fixed now xD

The PR for the fix is here: https://github.com/teslamotors/light-show/pull/3/files

Amusing. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfucQM07tGQ here's the demo in order: "S3XY Light Show"

Reading the title I thought it would be something like Audi's Matrix Lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJi240E_ZA

It does a little bit of that too. This video makes that more visible: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/rnk10o/tesla_h...

Now we just need a marketplace/forum for sharing custom .fseq files.

A GitHub repo? awesome- type list [1].

[1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

http://teslalight.show

This is the built-in light show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfucQM07tGQ

This seems like a lot of work for a marketing stunt

It's been a thing for a while on the X, they've just opened it up to running custom scripts from a USB. I'm sure it's generated thousands of sales for them at this point.

The X light show: https://youtu.be/-jyPkg0yXzM?t=6

People have been doing that with Honda Civics for decades... Now if they put all that energy into build quality and making sure that auto pilot doesn't kill anyone, we'd have something impressive... :/

I find it ridiculous that something negative about a Tesla gets downvoted and essentially hidden

It's okay, instead of running TV commercials, Tesla hires people to brigade negative and humorous commentary, they've been doing it for a long time now, but here's evidence that backs up my claim, they really learned that light trick from people with modified Civics...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRgu7_tKzi0

All cars kill people. Tesla never claimed that their autopilot wouldn’t kill people. They have claimed it’s much safer than a human driving, and it is.

Your snark is why you got downvoted, not a Tesla conspiracy.

Also some people independently modifying their cars is much different than an official open source tool, but I’m sure you realized the difference.

With that being said, the civic thing is cool. Next time try a constructive comment and I’m sure you’ll have a more positive response.

> and it is

Can you provide the independent data you used to come to this conclusion?

No, there has not been an independent audit. I’m not sure How that would improve confidence as the auditors would still just be reviewing data provided by some of the best data scientists in the world, so if they’re going to lie they will regardless.

However, the official Tesla stats show it’s about 3.5x safer to use autopilot vs manually drive a Tesla. It’s about 9x safer to use autopilot than to manually drive an “average” car.

https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

I used the word “independent” on purpose, and I was being a bit disingenuous since I already knew there wasn’t any independent data. I clearly failed to give the hint since you ended up giving a Tesla link.

Please do not put your safety in the hands of the marketing department and their misleading stats, they will be the first to point the finger of blame back at you when something happens.

I'm a free human being that expresses my honest opinions, regardless how many virtual points it creates, I won't ever tailor my comments towards public favorability. Please reconsider your inclination towards recommending that I or anyone else ever change my/their personal choice of words to favor votes on a web site, it's a destructive attitude towards honest discussions.

I guarantee the team that worked on this is doing it entirely in parallel to whoever’s working on build quality and autopilot.

If it creates an endless stream of YouTube videos featuring Tesla cars, all for free after this point mind you, it seems like a win to me.

Here's a random marketing video from Tesla showing off the lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfucQM07tGQ

Isn’t this stuff a bit creepy? I feel I don’t have the right mindset to even understand why is this a thing.

I dream a future eithiut cars.

What exactly creeps you out about this?

It seems like a perfectly good amount of fun for everyone involved. The people making it. The owners and their friends and families.

I can't wait to show this to my family tomorrow night.

I dream a future without constant complaining about cars.

How exactly would people who live in rural areas get around without cars?

Would love to see what people come up with

Would love to see a video or animated gif example!

Do I see correctly from the software that the car is using a WS2811 LED controller for the lights? Or is this just for a simulation?

My 2015 Model S 70D is not supported :-(

Am I the only one that finds this incredibly scary?

Sticking a USB drive into the car so that the primary computer can parse some file and then send some commands over (what I assume is) the CAN bus?

If you can send arbitrary messages over the CAN bus, I’m guessing you can do some serious damage, and even with precautions about what the parsing process can do, that’s still…very scary.

You probably wouldn’t enjoy owning a Tesla if that is how you operate. Which is fine, but not for who this repo is for.

Did you know you can start a Tesla from a phone and someone can drive it away with no key?

Not arbitrary messages and anyway can’t you send arbitrary messages over a CAN bus in an ordinary vehicle? Do most automotive manufacturers implement some kind of authentication of messages these days?

Arbitrary if the sending process is compromised through a parsing exploit of some sort. I’m not sure about CAN message authentication but it’d be much easier to convince someone to plug in a USB for lights/music than it’d be to plug into a diagnostic port making it an easier target.

Okay, I didn’t realize we were assuming an exploit in the parser which allows for arbitrary message sending. When I would write CAN logic we didn’t do any sort of authentication. And I know parsers have historically been an attack vector but I don’t understand how people write parsers that are exploitable for arbitrary CAN message sending.

No video :-(

Here's a video of the pre-loaded light show on the Model X: https://youtu.be/Xg_0NRi-OxE

"The trunk may open during the show"?

Can you bounce the car up and down using the active suspension? Lowriders would go for that.

What colours are available?

this seems like an RCE waiting to happen

Probably CE, not sure how this opens the door to an RCE.

It can open the doors alright it seems.

Doesn't running the light show require plugging in a USB device, which in turn already requires open doors?

Actually yes, so it already needs open doors, can open other doors, but both are literal. I’m not sure opening these doors lead to opening the other, proverbial door to CE/RCE realms. That may need some more magic.

Lol all the negative replies here really drives home the “hacker” spirit in “hacker news”

If Ford made the lights on some cars flash, would it be a mega corp trying to go viral, or the hacker spirit alive and well?

I like it, the the cynical angle has some merit.

There is an awesome GitHub repo with lots of cool stuff to hack on for Christmas on millions of electric cars. This is about as hacker worthy as it gets.

Is it not possible for an individual engineer within Ford to have some creativity? To hack on something they weren't supposed to? Not every output from a company is top-down, corporate-overload, profit maximizing.

It's parsimonious of me, but "hacker" includes the idea of "pushing hardware into uses not intended by the manufacturer."

This is an API that's being straight-up handed to you by the manufacturer, a manufacturer that historically has had a challenged relationship with the various hacker communities that have formed around their products.

Do you really think this was originally a planned feature by Tesla? That some cynical marketing manager sat down ans though "if we do this we'll get X impressions leading to Y new sales, lets allocate 0.7FTE engineers to the task"?

I very much doubt the design requirement for the Model X include a specification for "muat be able to produce Christmas shows". This sure looks like some engineer had a spurt of creativity, which qualifies to "hacking" to me.

If this was a jailbreak to control the lights, people would be a lot more excited. Tesla closes off their hardware to hackers - not exactly the spirit of hacker news

Please don't make it worse by being negative about negativity. The only thing that works is to post the kind of thing we want here: curious, informative, thoughtful. When so inspired.

Well it fucking sucks, what do you want?

Curious if this has any effect on warranty, since theres always been different comments on tesla warranty.

ie: even something like wrapping your tesla can affect your warranty, is what a tesla employee told me

If you wrap your car with a shitty wrap, and it damages your paint, do you expect the manufacturer to fix it for free?

Is this legal? Seems a great way to distract other drivers.

I can think of a bunch of scenarios where that concern doesn't apply, and so can you.

Of course, but I am positive plenty of "look at me" types will drive around with it[0]. And I'm sure you know that, too.

[0] If possible. I don't see where they explicitly say you can't.

The light show doesn't engage while driving, so no.

It only works when the car is stopped and the driver is outside.

Don’t do it while driving

What?

It means: Don't code while driving. For safety.

I think they mean don't play a light show while driving. You need things like blinkers, tail lights, etc. to function as intended for safety reasons. Many places have strict laws about exactly what kinds of lights can and can't be on a car in motion.

Doesn’t work while driving. GP was trying to make a Reddit like snark comment due to other stories about games being allowed while driving.

Well, that's less funny. I was thinking of that auto-pilot feature in Tesla. Which gives one time to code.

You can't.

This is not very cool. This is a tremendous waste of resource and yet more stuff that is added to the Tesla ecosystem which inevitably will go wrong.

Adding some joy to the world is not necessary a waste of resources.

I very much agree, but I still would like to add, that not everyone enjoys light pollution ...

what does light pollution have to do with any of this?

Blinking lights are a joy for many on christmas, for others, it is merely annoying light pollution.

What percentage of the world’s light pollution do you suppose will come from this feature?

Not much, I still just wanted to raise attention to the fact, that not everyone feels like more blinking lights are

"Adding some joy to the world"

for everyone. I mean, do you enjoy blinking banners on websites? I doubt it. Well, blinking lights in real life are pretty much the same to me. They either are important, like sirens - or they are noise to me and actually quite a lot of other people. But you have fun with your toy in the spirit that you will add joy to the world.

It's a good marketing stunt for a company that doesn't have traditional PR/marketing. And curious how some pre-recorded flashing lights and opening hatches will inevitably "go wrong".

I can‘t stand this attitude of yours. Not everything needs to be efficient, has to have a goal, make money or make sense. Have fun for once and put that capitalism brain aside for just 2 seconds.

You don't have to. Just collapse the comment and move on.

This was probably used internally to develop the built in light show, so open sourcing it wouldn't take much work and could generate some new PR buzz.

Waste of resources is how other car companies get attention of potential customers.

Oh lighten up…Tesla is pumping out a ton of value already.

Tesla has 70,000 fulltime employees and this repo has 2 contributors.

It is impossible for this to be a tremendous waste of resources even if this was the only thing those employees did for the company. Its a rounding error.

Note to Tesla owners: as this modifies the functionality of the headlamps and rear lights, your car is not street legal at night while using this code and you will get ticketed if you use this while driving.

I’m guessing the prompt to get out of the car means it won’t go while the show is running.

It only works when the car is stopped and the driver is outside.

That's actually false. It starts when the car is stopped but the driver is not required to exit the vehicle to get it to start.

There are videos of people running this program while they remain in their Teslas.

It stops if you shift gears out of park.

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