Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Comma Three Devkit

comma.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#11

Post by seniorivn »

bertil wrote: post #8
bitwidget wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, if they shipped with the software already preinstalled, it would mean that they open themselves up to liability and other legal issues. So they don't have it installed as it's pretty easy to download and install from their Github

I’m generally not a fan of that kind of fig-leaf (say “we are not sharing weapons, just information” when encouraging people to print a gun-shaped bobby trap that is more likely to blow your hand than change anyone’s mind about gun control) but in this case, the veneer of technical engagement seems to filter for, or encourage people who are excited enough by self-driving that they actually pay attention and send feed…

that wasn't an original plan, but they were prohibited to sell selfdriving kits, this is the workaround that works

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#12

Post by robbedpeter »

bertil wrote: post #8
bitwidget wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, if they shipped with the software already preinstalled, it would mean that they open themselves up to liability and other legal issues. So they don't have it installed as it's pretty easy to download and install from their Github

I’m generally not a fan of that kind of fig-leaf (say “we are not sharing weapons, just information” when encouraging people to print a gun-shaped bobby trap that is more likely to blow your hand than change anyone’s mind about gun control) but in this case, the veneer of technical engagement seems to filter for, or encourage people who are excited enough by self-driving that they actually pay attention and send feed…

It's very likely a deliberate and precise execution of the legal requirements to shield themselves from legal liability, under the advice of lawyers. At each step, from the coding to the hardware development to installation and configuration the responsibility is clear.

The installer of both hardware and software ends up being responsible for the use of the system in a way that is much more legally clear than other automation systems or even consumer software. Deliberate and informed choices are made by entities completely outside the plausible influence of developers.

It could get tricky in cases where the installer is not the end user.

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#13

Post by stefan_ »

yewenjie wrote: post #2

AFAIK Comma.ai is the only open-source company in the self-driving cars space. It is very interesting that they are continuously launching consumer-products with a small team and in a highly competitive space where the other players are quite big.

This does not in any shape or form compete in the self-driving cars space; the thing doesn't have a rear camera!

This is basically the "rsync as Dropbox" approach to augmenting your car with a hacky version of automatic cruise control, with a bonus lawsuit should you ever be in a crash significant enough to warrant the attention (think paralysis).

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#15

Post by sjburt »

evanescent wrote: post #7

Has anyone here tried using one of these? On the surface they seem to be relatively reliable and safe. I am tempted to get try one out since their driver cam gives me confidence that I won't become complacent while using one of these self-driving systems.

I have a Comma Two and have driven maybe 4000 miles on it around the SF Bay area. It is somewhat limited in that they can only steer as hard as the car's lanekeeping system is willing to steer. The driver monitoring helps although I am middle aged and pretty careful anyway so it's only actually beeped at me on a handful of occasions. Honestly, it is not the type of device where you want to take your eyes off the road, I think the DM is actually a little more lenient than it should be. In generally, you are basically as alert as if you are driving. The advantage is that you aren't spending mental energy keeping the car centered in the lane or maintaining a good following distance, or straining your arms holding onto a steering wheel. Long car trips are much more comfortable and less as a result.

It's not very useful on city streets or curvy mountain roads, the places where it shines are freeways and stop and go traffic -- the boring driving.

It has been quite reliable, most of the kinks have been worked out and they have enough users that there are not any serious bugs on the standard releases. I have reported minor bugs and had them fixed in a matter of days, which is always amazing for an OSS project. If you have an uncommon car there can be tuning issues from time to time. There is also a fairly strong user community on Discord that can help you troubleshoot things.

It works best on Toyotas and Hyundais, Honda and Subarus are a little worse, and the other manufacturers is really hit or miss--there may be individual models where someone got it working.

It is not a consumer product, you need to be somewhat capable of troubleshooting the occasional issue, reading documentation, dealing with occasional quirks etc.

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#16

Post by lostmsu »

jalino23 wrote: post #9

huge fan of the CEO. inspired me to use vim 7 months ago and it increased my productivity

In the one I saw he spent 5 minutes (of 30) figuring out a mistake caused by a simple typo, that a regular IDE would wiggle for him the second after he typed it in.

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#17

Post by kyle_martin1 »

yewenjie wrote: post #2

AFAIK Comma.ai is the only open-source company in the self-driving cars space. It is very interesting that they are continuously launching consumer-products with a small team and in a highly competitive space where the other players are quite big.

Not actually open source. The source code that’s available is a thin wrapper around a closed-source ML model. If George really cared about Open Source he would release the training architecture and training data.

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#18

Post by kyle_martin1 »

evanescent wrote: post #7

Has anyone here tried using one of these? On the surface they seem to be relatively reliable and safe. I am tempted to get try one out since their driver cam gives me confidence that I won't become complacent while using one of these self-driving systems.

I use my comma two everyday. Works great. Support from the company is non-existent.

I'm kind of pissed because I bought it in the last few months and now they've come out with another one. There should be a trade-in and upgrade program.

Re: Comma Three Devkit

#20

Post by mgraczyk »

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #17
yewenjie wrote: post #2

AFAIK Comma.ai is the only open-source company in the self-driving cars space. It is very interesting that they are continuously launching consumer-products with a small team and in a highly competitive space where the other players are quite big.

Not actually open source. The source code that’s available is a thin wrapper around a closed-source ML model. If George really cared about Open Source he would release the training architecture and training data.

As somebody who works with video and photo user data for machine learning, I'd say they are much better off not releasing the majority of their data. Unfortunately there are fairly severe legal consequences for commercial use of certain kinds of unconsented user data in various US states (consent of the people filmed, not the people collecting the data), and even companies in complete compliance have to deal with a huge potential legal headache to prove that their datasets follow every local regulation.
Post reply on HN