Firmware Hints That Tesla’s Driver Camera Is Watching

October 13, 2020 by Tom Nardi 163 Comments

Currently, if you want to use the Autopilot or Self-Driving modes on a Tesla vehicle you need to keep your hands on the wheel at all times. That’s because, ultimately, the human driver is still the responsible party. Tesla is adamant about the fact that functions which allow the car to steer itself within a lane, avoid obstacles, and intelligently adjust its speed to match traffic all constitute a driver assistance system. If somebody figures out how to fool the wheel sensor and take a nap while their shiny new electric car is hurtling down the freeway, they want no part of it.

So it makes sense that the company’s official line regarding the driver-facing camera in the Model 3 and Model Y is that it’s there to record what the driver was doing in the seconds leading up to an impact. As explained in the release notes of the June 2020 firmware update, Tesla owners can opt-in to providing this data:

Help Tesla continue to develop safer vehicles by sharing camera data from your vehicle. This update will allow you to enable the built-in cabin camera above the rearview mirror. If enabled, Tesla will automatically capture images and a short video clip just prior to a collision or safety event to help engineers develop safety features and enhancements in the future.

But [green], who’s spent the last several years poking and prodding at the Tesla’s firmware and self-driving capabilities, recently found some compelling hints that there’s more to the story. As part of the vehicle’s image recognition system, which usually is tasked with picking up other vehicles or pedestrians, they found several interesting classes that don’t seem necessary given the official explanation of what the cabin camera is doing.

If all Tesla wanted was a few seconds of video uploaded to their offices each time one of their vehicles got into an accident, they wouldn’t need to be running image recognition configured to detect distracted drivers against it in real-time. While you could make the argument that this data would be useful to them, there would still be no reason to do it in the vehicle when it could be analyzed as part of the crash investigation. It seems far more likely that Tesla is laying the groundwork for a system that could give the vehicle another way of determining if the driver is paying attention.

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The Potatoes Of DOOM

October 13, 2020 by Matthew Carlson 25 Comments

Over the years, the 1993 classic Doom has gained an almost meme-like status where it can seemingly run on anything. Everything from printers to smartwatches has been shown off running the now-iconic first level of Doom. Looking to up the bar, [Equalo] set out to run Doom on potatoes. However until we develop full biological computers, he had to settle for running Doom on a device powered by potatoes. (Video, embedded below.)

As we’ve seen with other hacks before, potatoes are a decent power source that just requires potato, zinc, and copper. Some have attempted to make it easier to scale potato power and others have focused on making the individual potatoes more powerful. The biggest obstacle when working with potatoes as a battery is that even though each potato can put out almost a volt, the current is laughably small.

The lack of current is what drove [Equalo] to dramatically scale up the typical potato battery. With a target device of a Raspberry Pi Zero requiring around 100 mA at 4.5V, this means he needed over 700 potato slices. After boiling hundreds of potatoes and with a bit of help from friends and family, the giant potato battery was constructed, and we can’t help but marvel at the sheer scale and audacity. The challenge of scaling up a potato battery is that by the time you’re wiring up the 400th potato, your first potato has already started to corrode.

Next time you’re looking for some inspiration for a monumental task, perhaps watch the tale of [Equalo’s] giant potato battery and remember what can be accomplished with some determination and a hundred pounds of spuds.

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USB Adaptor Isolates Multiple Serial Interfaces

October 13, 2020 by Chris Lott 34 Comments

You need a Swiss Army knife of serial communications? Ollie is a compact isolated USB adaptor that provides USB, CAN bus, and two UARTs at logic, RS-232, and RS-485 signaling levels, as well as an isolated power supply. [Slimelec] has managed to squeeze all this into a package the size of a harmonica. We like the technique of making the enclosure from PCB material, complete with clearly labeled switch, LED and connector pinout names.

So far, only the compiled firmware is available for this project, but hardware files, and presumably the source code and documentation, are coming soon.

The central themes here are isolation and flexibility. We can’t find the isolation voltage in the project specifications, but the CANable project on which this adaptor is based provides 2.5 kV galvanic isolation. A single isolated USB interface is also provided over a standard Type A connector. The four-wire logic-level UART signals are available on a 2 x 7 box header, and are voltage selectable. The RS-232, RS-485, and CAN signals are on an 8-pin pluggable screw terminal block, or you can use a DB9 connector with a pluggable adaptor board.

Whether you need a troubleshooting aid for field testing, are using CAN bus on your projects, or just want to isolate your expensive computer from sketchy prototype hardware, have a look at this project.