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Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

media.mbusa.com

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Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#351

Post by dreamcompiler »

jacquesm wrote: post #243
cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or ditch electrolytic and tantalum caps wherever possible because they're crap. It's often possible to engineer a more expensive, reliable LR circuit for the impedance of a cheap RC one.

Tantalum have their own issues. Yes, they live longer. But they're nice little fire starters and are much more critical than electrolytic capacitors when it comes to voltage tolerance.

It's kind of amazing to me that we can build 3nm chips but we still haven't figured out how to build a uF-range cap that has long MTBF, good overvoltage tolerance, low series resistance, and doesn't blow up.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#352

Post by chokma »

qrohlf wrote: post #5

I was recently an owner of a Merced-Benz commercial van, and the software was by far the worst part of that whole experience. It had obvious race-condition type bugs when it came to the user interface layer, but most frustrating was its tendency to succumb to some kind of memory leak on long drives where the entire head unit would just lock up and crash to a black screen after 6-7 hours of being turned on. Because th…

> It had obvious race-condition type bugs when it came to the user interface layer, but most frustrating was its tendency to succumb to some kind of memory leak on long drives where the entire head unit would just lock up and crash to a black screen after 6-7 hours of being turned on. Because the vehicle kept the computer system "warm" for up to 30 minutes or so to avoid doing a full (and slow) bootup process every time you stopped for fuel, this was a real problem on long trips and couldn't always be solved by power cycling the vehicle.

Had this problem with an A-K200 about 13 years ago - when driving long distances, after a couple of hours the nav system would randomly stop working. Sometimes stopping at a gas station would allow the system to reset by itself, sometimes not.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#353

Post by dreamcompiler »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #328
lh7777 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just ran into this issue in Montana the other day. Weird thing was that it’d sometimes read the 80 mph limit correctly, then a second or two later revert to 60. My Sprinter just beeps at me, though. No brake action if it thinks I’m speeding.

Everyone I know that has discovered this bug, discovered it in Montana. All of the States that have ubiquitous 80 mph speed limits are clustered around that area. It reportedly happens with 80 kph speed limit signs in Canada as well.

Texas has an 80 mph limit on a long stretch of I-10. They have one other highway (130) with an 85 mph limit.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#354

Post by throwaway290 »

krig wrote: post #342
throwaway290 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just use common sense and memory to try and act like the lane dividers, turning lanes, stop lines are still there Isn't this what road signs are for?

Here in Sweden, even the road signs are frequently covered by snow. I’m sure it’s a similar situation in Canada!

Interesting. In Russia roads are entirely covered by thick layer of hardened snow for 4+ months (intercity often more, especially up north) so I'm not even sure markings are normative but signs have to be visible. They tell you changes in the number of lanes and directions etc (something like https://www.drom.ru/pdd/pdd/sign_5_15_2/). At first it was unusual to see such reliance on road markings in other countries

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#355

Post by dreamcompiler »

babypuncher wrote: post #32
qrohlf wrote: post #5

I was recently an owner of a Merced-Benz commercial van, and the software was by far the worst part of that whole experience. It had obvious race-condition type bugs when it came to the user interface layer, but most frustrating was its tendency to succumb to some kind of memory leak on long drives where the entire head unit would just lock up and crash to a black screen after 6-7 hours of being turned on. Because th…

I don't think I've ever used software provided by an automaker that I would classify as "good". Just varying degrees from "functional, but barebones and clunky" down to "so buggy and useless it's a legitimate safety hazard". As a result, I'm firmly on team "make every infotainment system a dumb terminal for your phone" and refuse to buy any car that doesn't support both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

Tesla is the only one I'd classify as good enough for daily use without needing my phone. Possibly because they started as a tech company so they understand software.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#356

Post by [deleted] »

xattt wrote: post #329
jobjobjobjob wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Ontario and it's very common to be driving on packed snow for a few days after new snowfall. You get barely any road markings at all. You just use common sense and memory to try and act like the lane dividers, turning lanes, stop lines are still there. It must be the same in many parts of the US as well. With winter tires and the right attitude its perfectly fine! But yeah if you can't see the road markings due to…

> You just use common sense and memory to try and act like the lane dividers, turning lanes, stop lines are still there. You’re absolutely right. You just do what you need to do. Having some form of inertial navigation supplemented by GPS and visual odometery from features that stick out from the side of the road (like a road sign; memorized by the vehicle on past drives) would help a lot. A HUD UI could show road ma…

[deleted]

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#357

Post by aliswe »

fock wrote: post #317
adornKey wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a young guy writing good software for us while he still was going to school. We still use it to get things done in production. Then he went to university. He came back for a summer job. He had the sudden urge to ditch everything he used to do and to use the newest unproven technology. Also he had a serious urge to install everything from Microsoft. Then he created a piece of slow software full of flaws and per…

MB is also famous for running Kubernetes. At a 1000 individual setups (all automated of course!). I had the pleasure of flamewaring someone who was very proud of this and couldn't really explain to me, why they would not just get two big physical machines with Corosync for like 70% of those (internal) applications. Doesn't seem much worse than a 3-node Kubernetes cluster (which is going to experience serious disrupti…

At my last company we used k8s not primarily because of the scaling capabilities, but as a way to safely deploy applications.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#358

Post by jacquesm »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #351
jacquesm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tantalum have their own issues. Yes, they live longer. But they're nice little fire starters and are much more critical than electrolytic capacitors when it comes to voltage tolerance.

It's kind of amazing to me that we can build 3nm chips but we still haven't figured out how to build a uF-range cap that has long MTBF, good overvoltage tolerance, low series resistance, and doesn't blow up.

Indeed. But... caps are improving, but slowly. The size difference between say a 100 uf 25V cap today compared to one from the 80's is considerable, and if you add another decade it is hard to believe it is the same component.

By contrast inductors have not changed in size at all and resistors are very much limited by power dissipation.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#359

Post by woobar »

kalleboo wrote: post #265
woobar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will still require stupid touch screens and will not integrate with custom hardware (HUD anyone?). It is subpar experience now, and using multiple screens to show even more "widgets" is strange value prop. The widgets I am interested while driving are not coming from some app. I want these screens to show information related to the car - cameras and parking sensors, cruise/lane control data, tire pressure, etc. No…

The 2 main things I look at on my car screen are "now playing" and navigation, both of those come from third party apps and both would be handy to have situated between the dials so I don't have to look off to the side

CarPlay already doing navigation-in-the-instrument-cluster part in my car. It is much worse than built-in navigation integration. It is just a stack of direction arrows. Now Playing works perfectly fine via regular BT over the last 10+ years. Any rental car I had will show it in the instrument cluster.

Interesting, you did not mention speed or gas/charge gauge as the main things to look at. I for one will not trust apple to display my current speed (see mockups shared above). I've seen plenty of cases when CarPlay will pretend that it is working (play music, show message popups) but totally forgets to update navigation position since 10 miles ago.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#360

Post by liamrc »

> The company is confident that this strategic approach to software and hardware development will be the basis for lifetime revenues as well as additional contributions.

Why sell cars when you can sell SaaS? Get ready to pay a $49.99/mo. subscription for access to power steering.

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