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

Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 151 posts

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#131

Post by oh_sigh »

commaai wrote: post #119
morogop wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His arrogance is orthogonal to the issue. The issue is that he was obviously lying. He claimed he was weeks away from autonomous cars. If this was true, he would've sold the tech for a staggering pile of cash. Instead, all the evidence looks like he thought he could solve the problem on his own, in record time. Then he made a pretty basic POC (able to handle a small number of very simple conditions). Then he realized…

Autonomous vehicle technology, and it's free --> https://github.com/commaai/openpilot Working, video by a user --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VN1YcC83nA Where's the snake oil?

Brightly lit streets, no traffic, clear lane markings. Does the system work without any of those three things?

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#132

Post by awfullyjohn »

Animats wrote: post #73
agumonkey wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm it seemed to me their product was way more advanced than commaai One product.

Cruise had lane following and smart cruise control, which everybody in the industry has and can be bought as an option on many high-end cars right now. They hyped this heavily and GM bought it. That was surprising, because GM had a good self-driving effort with CMU, and had progressed to driving in Washington DC traffic autonomously.[1] That was way ahead of Cruise, and working in 2013. Then, somehow, GM totally blew…

Not only high-end cars.

Every Toyota comes equipped with lane following and smart cruise control. They call it Toyota Safety Sense, and even the lowest priced, $18k Corolla has it.

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#133

Post by oh_sigh »

commaai wrote: post #129
oh_sigh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise sold for >$1B. If he thought his company was better off than that, it is supremely irrational to not put up with the pain of the NHTSA. Hell, just hire a lawyer to do everything and you don't even need to think about it. No, from my guess, Hotz copped out when he realized that his prototype, while fun, was no where near production ready and would be completely illegal to ship to any customers.

73 people are using our technology today, that's actually more than Cruise, even over a year later...

That's great, but I'm not sure how it is really relevant to the point...

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#134

Post by dang »

morogop wrote: post #89

If you mean what you say: buy this thing, install it on your car, and use it daily. I dare you. Oh right, you'd never do that, because some tiny part of you knows that George Hotz was lying his ass off about his tech, and that you'd have to be a crazy person to trust such a flagrant liar with your life.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14719644 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#135

Post by dang »

morogop wrote: post #88

That's nonsense. if his claims were true, he could've sold the lot for nine or ten figures to somebody who was willing to deal with NHTSA. It is exceedingly foolish to believe George Hotz's extremely obvious lies. George Hotz is a smart guy who made some big mistakes, and isn't man enough to admit that he was lying.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720083 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#136

Post by ktta »

oh_sigh wrote: post #125
ktta wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, he seems to the the kind of person that knows about the bureaucratic nature of NHTSA and cut his losses.

Cruise sold for >$1B. If he thought his company was better off than that, it is supremely irrational to not put up with the pain of the NHTSA. Hell, just hire a lawyer to do everything and you don't even need to think about it. No, from my guess, Hotz copped out when he realized that his prototype, while fun, was no where near production ready and would be completely illegal to ship to any customers.

This is my personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

Hotz never seemed like the guy who would do things similar to what Cruise did. Vogt had already sold two startups prior to Cruise, and he was well versed in the tactics of the startup world. Have great articles put out, polished PR touches, the whole works.

OTOH, Hotz had this 'Hacker' air to whatever he does. From the iPhone, to PlayStation, to even hacking the cars he was building the tech with, he had a very different attitude compared to the let's-be-poised-for-a-buyout vibe that many startups give. Startups like Cruise are scared of breaking rules, worrying about how it might bite them later in the day.

If you ask me, Cruise was never going to make it on its own. The major car companies have decades of supply chain process management and huge amounts of capital behind them. Cruise couldn't never do what it said it would do, and I would imagine, a buy out was always on the founders minds.

Comma.ai is a different beast. They aren't really worried about rules. That's terrible attitude for a 'startup', I agree. People here have valid arguments about thinking about the NHTSA before hand, but I think they just dared to go ahead without giving a crap. It backfired, but I wouldn't attribute his decision to failure in building a working product.

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#137

Post by lemiant »

Animats wrote: post #85

I saw a new player in self-driving yesterday - a blue Peterbilt truck equipped with many cameras and some of the puck-sized Velodyne laser scanners. Nevada license AU 0030. They were driving on US 101 southbound from Menlo Park to Mountain View, where they exited the freeway and got back on, northbound. They were bobtailing; no trailer. In that location, I'd first though it was one of Google's vehicles But why the Ne…

Hi John, I'm Alex Rodrigues, CEO at Embark. Thanks for your interest. Our testing is legal and we are in close communication with the DMV to ensure we stay that way. In California we restrict our system to Level 2 (like Tesla autopilot), in order to comply with regulations.

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#138

Post by BenjiWiebe »

Devthrowaway80 wrote: post #27
en4bz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ODB2 Bluetooth readers for Smartphones can be had for $10 [1]. I guess the hard part is writing the software that logs all the data. Currently most Android apps simply display the data and don't log it. The logging/software aspect of this is certainly where the value is added. [1] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_9?url=search-alias...

Not sure if you're interested in such things, but I've written a Python data acquisition framework (and a shitty GUI for my RaspPi) that works with those cheapo $10 dongles that I'll be releasing under the MIT license as soon as I can be bothered. Main reason I haven't released it yet is that the connection management, while quite resilient, is so hackish that I am bit embarrassed by it.

Are you the author of pyobd-pi?

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#139

Post by lovemenot »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #100
en4bz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ODB2 Bluetooth readers for Smartphones can be had for $10 [1]. I guess the hard part is writing the software that logs all the data. Currently most Android apps simply display the data and don't log it. The logging/software aspect of this is certainly where the value is added. [1] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_9?url=search-alias...

I've been using Torque[1] for about three years now. It's got a pretty nice UI to show just about anything your car outputs via OBD-II, and lots of things that can be derived from that, as well as integrating GPS and accelerometer data. You can log the data to your phone, as well has have it uploaded to the cloud. The only time I've really used that data was the time some jerk stopped me, cursing at me for driving li…

Legal compliance is not equivalent to courteous driving. The other guy may or may not have been a jerk, but there are also plenty of plausible scenarios in which you were also the jerk, even though fully compliant. e.g. rapid acceleration, scary engine rev noise, aiming the vehicle towards the kids as they were moving off the street. Not to say you did any of those things, but I just wanted to point out that being within the law and not-being-a-jerk are somewhat orthogonal .

Re: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

#140

Post by kchhina »

ljf wrote: post #112
kchhina wrote: post #7

Excited about this. I've been looking for something like this for a while. Tried a couple of different types of OBD-II adapters from Ebay, but trying to get data from them over bluetooth or wifi was just a pain. Panda with a direct interface to my laptop will enable me to get all the information I've been trying to get from the OBD-II port of my car, specifically steering angles, acceleration and braking. Using them…

Odd - I got the cheapest odb2 I could find on ebay and never had any issues with it over Bluetooth using the Torque app for android.

I was able to use the "apps" to get obd2 data's. What I wanted to do is get acceleration, steering and breaking data and along with feeds from two cameras try to train deep learning models. Getting that working over Bluetooth or wifi was a pain due to poor documentation.
Post reply on HN