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Running Tesla Model 3's computer on my desk using parts from crashed cars
- koinedad 6mo agoReally cool breakdown. You’ve got a full Tesla gaming rig now!
- owenthejumper 6mo agoCould 'lb' be load balancer?!
- trsohmers 6mo agoIt actually stands for "lizard brain"... it is (or at least was) an Infineon Aurix control and monitoring microcontroller, they may have changed to a newer one.
- LikeBeans 6mo agoVery cool. Over a year and a half ago I installed a towing brake controller in my Tesla Model Y. Found the location of the plug, how to access and the pinout online (confirmed via a voltmeter..) so the car's side felt straight forward. But then I needed to find a brake controller that can work with the higher voltage (14.4v vs the normal 12v). Then built a cable from the brake controller to the connector that plugs into the car that I found on eBay. I velcro'd the controller under the dashboard. It works pretty well. I towed my small camper several times with it last year with no issues. Yay! However my little project is nothing compared to this post. Love people hacking away. So cool.
- ferongr 6mo ago>then I needed to find a brake controller that can work with the higher voltage (14.4v vs the normal 12v) Put a voltmeter on the battery terminals of a regular car at 2000rpm and note the voltage. You'd be surpised (the alternator can produce as high as 15V on some cars).
- AlotOfReading 6mo agoAutomotive transients can be wild. I did a bringup with a board that had specified 100+v range specified for transients and finicky quality requirements on the output. The power supplies took up most of the (very large) board.
- mixdup 6mo ago14v is not a transient, if your voltage was 12v with the car running, there's something wrong with the charging system (DC-to-DC in an EV, alternator/generator in an ICE) 13-14v is normal in all 12v automotive systems as the charging voltage
- nandomrumber 6mo agoIf I recall correctly, a fully charged lead acid battery has an open circuit voltage of 13.6V. So the alternator has to put out at least something higher than if it’s planning on recharging the battery after 500 to 700 amps have been pulled from it for a few seconds to start the engine.
- numpad0 6mo agoYeah, max CV charging voltage is ~14V, max charging C rate is ~0.2C, open circuit voltage at 100% is that 13.x range. And lead acids like to stay at 100% unlike Li-ion which likes 50% +/-30%, so "12V" ICE cars just use a bus voltage of 13-14V and wire the battery there. At any given moment, the car's "12V" bus voltage MUST be above 13.x and below 14.4(absolute max). It's a bit perplexing that those lead acid systems are referred to as "12V" systems when that figure is effectively the 0% voltage, whereas 3.7V for single Li-ion cell is the 50% voltage. e: also, ICE transients can be in kV range, coming from ignition mechanisms. I've heard that you can literally measure engine RPM by selecting 1/dt on an oscilloscope and dividing that by cylinder count.
- K0balt 6mo agoThe nominal range for automotive systems is 10-16v. If you are designing anything for automotive use that doesn’t work reliably in that range, you are manufacturing problems for people.
- silisili 6mo ago> But then I needed to find a brake controller that can work with the higher voltage (14.4v vs the normal 12v) Not understanding this sentence. Most running ICE vehicles product closer to that 14.4 than 12v. I think a standard controller would have worked fine?
- serf 6mo agoyou're correct. a '12v ICE' alternator generates up to 14.8-15.2v. Most automotive stuff can operate between 9ish-16ish-v , of course totally depending on the product. of course this is just a modern interpretation. older stuff runs at 6v and some weirdo offbeat cars have a 24v/48v rail sitting around somewhere. Cop cars often had alternators that put out weird voltage ranges for certain equipment, or dual 12v for high amperage output.
- londons_explore 6mo agoWhilst cranking, an ICE car will drop to around 6 volts (then maximum power is extracted according to thevenim's theorem). That means all computers etc will work at 6v.
- toast0 6mo ago> Whilst cranking, an ICE car will drop to around 6 volts (then maximum power is extracted according to thevenim's theorem). > That means all computers etc will work at 6v. Not necessarily all of them. Plenty of stuff will drop out while cranking; hopefully not the computers that run the fuel injection and ignition, though.
- anigbrowl 6mo agoI have no wheels and I must drift
- MengerSponge 6mo agoFun linguistic quirk: Americans tend to call it a "wiring harness", whereas Brits prefer "loom"
- Dan_- 6mo agoSo what do you call the tubing around the wire bundle? That’s what we call “loom”.
- stackghost 6mo agoIn Canada we generally call it the sleeve, or the wrap.
- MengerSponge 6mo agoI'd understand either of those, but I'd go with "tubing" https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/electrical/wire-cable/tubing-molded-parts/heat-shrink/i/automotive/ https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/electrical/wire-cable/tubing...
- pitaj 6mo agoThat's heat shrink tubing, but we're talking about one of these: [1]: https://www.holley.com/products/engine/engine_dress_up/hoses_and_coverings/parts/573-109 https://www.holley.com/products/engine/engine_dress_up/hoses... [2]: https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/c/dorman-conduct-tite/lighting---electrical/connectors---terminals/wire-conduit---looming/a5915b122640/dorman-conduct-tite-3-8-inch-black-wire-conduit/cti0/86663 https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/c/dorman-conduct-tite/lig...
- MengerSponge 6mo agoFor performance vehicles I used adhesive-lined heat shrink tubing for basically everything. [1] Braided tubing and [2] conduit, respectively.
- 6mo ago
- girvo 6mo agoIt's funny to hear LVDS be described as an "automotive" cable when all of my run-ins with it are for connecting laptop displays to their main-boards! (though that has a very different connector on it, and its a very general term for the signalling protocol from what I remember)
- inamberclad 6mo agoSpaceWire is also just LVDS with an uber-minimal routing protocol. It runs on a lot of satellites.
- slfnflctd 6mo agoNot saying there's anything wrong with your perspective (lots of terms get in muddied waters, it's common and not a problem if everyone is on the same page), but this is what I just found on Wikipedia: "Early on, the notebook computer and LCD vendors commonly used the term LVDS instead of FPD-Link when referring to their protocol, and the term LVDS has mistakenly become synonymous with Flat Panel Display Link in the video-display engineering vocabulary." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-voltage_differential_signaling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-voltage_differential_signa...
- girvo 6mo agoYeah I saw that too which is why I posted my comment, it's surprising to me :) LVDS for display cables was an incredibly term in that context. Even still is sometimes despite them mostly being eDP (embedded-DisplayPort) now, which is quite incorrect hah
- Dylan16807 6mo agoIncredibly what? And eDP is a differential signal at 200 or 400 millivolts so I don't see how that's "quite incorrect". It's not "the" LVDS but it's still in the category.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- dogman1050 6mo agoI love that it has a standard RJ45 ethernet connector.
- bombcar 6mo agoI thought I saw an HDMI connector, but maybe I was wrong.
- inventor7777 6mo agoHa! Reading this comment made me curious, so I went back and looked at the article and there does seem to be a full sized HDMI connector. I wonder if it is enabled, or just for Tesla internal testing?
- flutas 6mo agoIt's only a debug port and not actually HDMI signaling, unfortunately.
- 2postsperday 6mo ago[dead]
- asimovDev 6mo agoi wonder if usb-c next to is like these diagnostic ports on Dell servers?
- wds 6mo agoHow many PoE adapters would it take to charge a Tesla?
- MBCook 6mo agoMostly depends on how fast you want to charge.
- kube-system 6mo ago> Turns out that actual cars don’t have individual cables. Instead they have these big “looms”, which bundle many cables from a nearby area into a single harness. This is the reason why I could not find the individual cable earlier. They simply don’t manufacture it. I was really surprised to read this at the end of the article -- how could someone be this deep into a project of this depth and not realize this?! Not only because all cars (...er... all vehicles) are wired this way, but also because the documentation they were referencing has plenty of detail to show this... there's even a whole picture of it (and to Tesla's credit they have amazing free docs): https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ServiceManual/2024/en-au/air/GUID-69EED053-DAD4-40B0-BCFC-B789B96D479D.html https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ServiceManual/2024/en-...
- entropie 6mo ago> how could someone be this deep into a project of this depth and not realize this I think this is a software guy who occasionally dips into hardware things (to hunt bugs).
- kube-system 6mo agoThat's what I figure -- but it was wild to read that after reading the part about component-level PCB repair lol
- trebligdivad 6mo agoYeh, it seems odd to have the cut off cables, the wiring information...and then to go and buy a loom rather than bodging a cable at that point.
- MBCook 6mo agoI will say I’m surprised how far apart the two boxes are in the car. I guess they’re not where I thought. I would assume they’re both up near the dash.
- kube-system 6mo agoThe passenger side kick panel or behind the glove box are two very common places for vehicle computers -- some cars have them under the hood, which I always thought was a bad idea.
- caycep 6mo agoGranted, I think it would be valuable to look at all sorts of automotive ECUs. I always wonder how the tuning industry does their thing; I shudder to think they're just sitting there flipping hex codes directly in running software...
- bluGill 6mo agoI used to work for a company that made third party scan tools. We had racks of ecus disconnected from the car with just a diagnostic connector and power. nothing got to a real car without first trying it on the rack. I remember on time we figured out a bmw (pre obdii) had the bytes offset from the standard documentation (it was a semi-standard protocol that some other cars used at the time), we went from we communicate but nothing is wrong to a very long list of dtcs on that controller. (All our competitors also showed nothing wrong, but the official bmw tool showed dtcs)
- nandomrumber 6mo agoDiagnostic Trouble Codes?
- KindOne 6mo agoYes.
- colechristensen 6mo agoI spent the last week successfully reverse engineering my car / various scan tools to get the right information to diagnose a fuel pump problem (and to do so without the incredible awkwardness of many of the tools) It's pretty amazing what Claude + Ghidra + knowledgable coaching can accomplish. It was basically just setting direction, setting up an incremental workflow with the right kind of documentation, and questioning some of its theories and assumptions from time to time. I'd love to release a lot of it but I'm torn between releasing artifacts created with expensive software I paid for and thinking that many of those things should really be freely available to anyone (specifically the things which definte the protocol to talk to the car and mapping of what various things are reported vs what they actually mean.
- tclancy 6mo agoWait, why wouldn’t you post it/ write it up?
- 6mo ago
- kotaKat 6mo agoI'm amused reading the terms and requirements the author mentions in the bug bounty program for researchers gaining root access (under 'Vehicle Targets') - https://bugcrowd.com/engagements/tesla https://bugcrowd.com/engagements/tesla "To promote further security research, Tesla offers security researchers the opportunity to retain root access on their infotainment system even after their reported vulnerability has been patched. In order to qualify, a researcher must send in a valid report describing a novel way to gain root access on a Tesla infotainment system. Upon confirmation, Tesla will instruct the researcher on how to use their existing root access to enable the researcher SSH feature, along with an SSH certificate for the researcher's public key (tailored to their specific hardware ID). The certificate restricts SSH access to the local diagnostic ethernet link. Tesla may renew the certificate as long as the researcher continues reporting vulnerabilities." Very neat.
- denysvitali 6mo agoYou can run QtCar (the Qt-based app that Tesla uses for their UIs) on QEMU - if you have the firmware. https://x.com/i/status/1722717318009041104 https://x.com/i/status/1722717318009041104 DM me if interested
- generalizations 6mo agoJust put it online somewhere
- denysvitali 6mo agoIt's on GitHub, but I want to avoid Tesla DMCA-ing it
- Trung0246 6mo agoHi, can you DM the firmware?
- denysvitali 6mo agoI'm not sharing the firmware for legal reasons, but IIRC https://lunars.dev/ https://lunars.dev/ does provide them
- rconti 6mo agoI _do_ find it weird that the LCDs from crashed cars are so expensive. I wonder if newer models have better screens, so people with older cars upgrade? Or if they're a common failure point? I have a Model 3, but I can't say I follow the forums.. but I've never heard of screens failing -- I'm sure it happens but I think if it was common problem I'd have heard of it.
- kube-system 6mo agoI'd guess they fail not on their own, but because they are human interface devices and take the brunt of abuse... e.g. iPhone screens are a popular repair despite being reliable components.
- denysvitali 6mo agoSome newer models have better (bigger) screens, and some are incompatible since they've slightly changed the connector. Old models (pre highland/ jupiter facelift) have used the same display shown in the article for a very long time across M3 and MY. What usually happens is that they physically break because people are not that careful, so the touch screen ends up breaking - although you really have to put a lot of force to break that display.
- cbeach 6mo agoMy 2016 Model S LCD panel developed the well-known fault of delamination and leaking some kind of sticky fluid. Turns out the early Model S vehicles used consumer grade LCD panels that weren’t designed for the prolonged high heat you get in a metal and glass box left outside in the sun all day. Tesla since upgraded their vehicle screens to proper automotive-grade LCDs which are excellent. My point is, automotive-grade hardware is higher spec than regular consumer computer hardware, hence the high prices. As an aside, I upgraded my whole computer and screen from MCU1 to MCU2 and it was worth the upgrade. Credit to Tesla for building a retrofit computer upgrade for old vehicles. Thats a non-trivial thing to engineer and I appreciate their effort. Other car manufacturers would prefer you were compelled to buy their latest vehicle instead.
- jp191919 6mo agoI have a 2023 model 3 and my screen had a small defect develop, a slightly darker area in a roughly half cm diameter area. I think most people would have never noticed but I pointed it out to Tesla service and they replaced the screen.
- a-dub 6mo agoi wish the ui on those things was more visually appealing. between the cheap looking gloss finish on the display itself and the unextraordinary ui, it's just kinda blah. one can have a debate about to screen or not to screen or whether to use vfd displays or whatever and i get the importance of cost control but it should look good and it really doesn't. the graphic of the car looks like a cartoon.
- sneakymichael 6mo agoInteresting take–– I feel the total opposite; I love the UI.
- a-dub 6mo agoi think a lot of people do. i don't know what it is, there's maybe just something about the car graphic that doesn't sit right with me. the front/side view when parked just seems cheesy for some reason. maybe because it's meant to show unclosed doors or something and when everything is set the car's status is car which is redundant.
- Rohansi 6mo agoIt does show open doors etc. but if not that then what would you show on the screen? You can already shrink it so the rightmost 3/4 of the screen is the map, leaving just 1/4 of the screen for the car visualization and indicators.
- a-dub 6mo agomaybe it's the quasi-photorealistic nature of the car image that bothers me. it's not a photo, it's not a schematic, it's not a diagram. it's too artificial to look like a photo, yet too realistic to look like a schematic. or maybe the physically implausible lighting.
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoAnimations could probably be faster and touch areas for opening trunk/frunk could be larger. But then I'm driving brand new Fiat RV with CarPlay this week. Cruise control by itself has 2 or 3 bugs, and that's not even trying to be picky. Or how's this - can't hotspot from me while phone is in carplay. Can't pinch-zoom or pan maps in 2026 and myriad other things that makes me cringe when people moan they don't buy Tesla because lack of carplay.
- 0xbadcafebee 6mo ago> Unfortunately I had no other choice but to buy this entire loom for 80 USD. Fwiw, mine costs $450 from Ford. Also in the US we call this a wiring harness, with the loom being the material that goes over the wires
- denysvitali 6mo agoThat particular statement is also wrong. For this particular setup you can also buy the correct cable (making sure to not get the one that inverts some pins!!!) for cheaper. Mine was around 15$. Violet HSD Code D 4+2 Pin Female to D Female Jack Connector 6 Pin HSD LVDS High Speed DataTransmission Harness Wire LVDS Cable https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuGOh9e https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuGOh9e
- anilakar 6mo agoParts and labor combined that would be a 4000-5000 eurobuck job. A Nissan importer tried to weasel out of a warranty replacement on a friend's X-Trail so they first offered to completely refund options that had become unusable. The car was full of issues and probably spent more time in the shop than on the road. Nissan finally had to buy it back after service techs failed to tighten the oil drain cap after an engine overhaul.
- mixdup 6mo ago"tuner" almost certainly refers to a radio (think AM/FM/SiriusXM) tuner module
- a1o 6mo ago> A DC power supply capable of providing 12V Hey, I just remembered my school used to have ages ago some cool power supplies (I think from Agilent?) that were very idiot proof, they had current limit with a dial that I think didn’t went over 1A or perhaps even less, and they would instantly disarm on short circuit (and indicate it with a led), and also the voltage dial I think wouldn’t go over 25V. I remember it was very big and heavy, but it survived countless students that used the lab daily. Nowadays, is there any power supply available that is that resistant or is the recommended approach to get an used old one? Does anyone have a power supply at home that is also used by kids with a brand/model they would recommend? Thanks!
- bombcar 6mo agoThose were called something like desktop power supplies. https://www.mouser.com/c/power/power-supplies/power-supplies-bench-top/ https://www.mouser.com/c/power/power-supplies/power-supplies... AT $5k it better make me breakfast, too.
- virtue3 6mo agoThey have variable dc power supplies on amazon on the cheap. If you want that sort of reliability it will probably go towards 100$.
- duskwuff 6mo agoWhat you're describing is a lab power supply. (The "instantly disarm on short circuit" is overcurrent protection, which is a standard feature.) The name brands like Keysight or Rigol are kind of expensive, but there are a lot of no-name models on Amazon which will do the job well enough.
- budman1 6mo agoKeysight == Hewlett-Packard Old School.
- rickdeckard 6mo agoOr Agilent, at some point in between
- guyzero 6mo agoCongrats, OP has recreated a test/development bench, the bane of developers working on automotive software development all around the world. They're so close to being a real vehicle that you think you'll be able to get a lot of work done, but they're not, so you don't.
- sho_hn 6mo agoHonestly I love it. Few things develop a more fun camaraderie than a bringup bootcamp with two precious/priceless new samples on a large conference table, and everyone being very careful to keep cups/mugs very far away. And a soldering robot with a specialist a few rooms away to beam down the latest errata into physical form, at times. Tracy Kidder just died, and Soul of a New Machine was a favorite of my formative years as an engineer. Once I started in headunit ECU development it felt very familiar to me at times. I'm a software guy, but the gear has a lot of allure.
- jeffreygoesto 6mo agoHaha, don't forget your wristbands.
- JSR_FDED 6mo agoSoul of a New Machine, absolutely awesome book!
- Phelinofist 6mo agoCan confirm. We are required to test all of our stuff on a bench, but no one really trusts this, because everything is mocked anyway (RSI).
- completelylegit 6mo agoPeople need to request the source code.. There’s a ton of open source they use that forces Tesla to give you source if you’re a customer and you ask. I don’t get why security people aren’t doing this already.
- bluGill 6mo agoYou get the linux kernel and a bunch of other things you can find on github anyway. You can't do anything useful with that, except what you already can get from any linux package manager. Sure someone should do it just to verify the process works, but it isn't really useful. (in general companies are very careful to not violate GPL license terms, often refusing to use GPL3 at all)
- dwa3592 6mo agoInteresting. > A REST-like API on :8080 which returned a history of “tasks” I am curious to know what kind of historical tasks- since it's a media control unit; does it show what kind of media was being played in the last trip? does it reveal any other info about the driver?? There might be a privacy angle here that you could exploit and share it with Tesla.
- denysvitali 6mo agoThey hit Odin. Odin is the diagnostic tool of Tesla. The tasks they've seen are like "TEST_BRAKE_X_STIFFNESS-TEST-PRESSURE-BURNISHED" and are used to test different components of the car. They're also used for example to reset FSD strikes. In Tesla terms, the infotainment does much more than just playing music - it has full access to the rest of the car.
- shibapuppie 6mo agoI remember back when Chrysler did that and researchers were able to shut a Jeep down mid-drive by attacking the internet-connnected infotainment. This doesn't sound great.
- denysvitali 6mo agoYou need to be physically connected to the ethernet port and service mode must be enabled. On top of that, to run these you need service mode plus, which requires a subscription (signed JWT). Additionally, IIRC, most of these can't be run if the car is not in park.
- wodenokoto 6mo agoSay what you will about Tesla, but from a hacking point of view this is some of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while!
- softbuilder 6mo agoGreat project. This begs for real-world feedback though. A go kart would be fantastic.
- devnotes77 6mo ago[dead]
- nreece 6mo agoVery cool. Now why didn't an AI think of that? :)
- tuo-lei 6mo agoHuman have a better taste (at least for now :D)
- kklisura 6mo agoNice read. I would LOVE for someone to dump the whole FSD AI/ML model and try to run it in simulator! That would be awesome!
- varenc 6mo agoFrom the article > Tesla offers a “Root access program” on their bug bounty program. Researchers who find at least one valid “rooting” vulnerability will receive a permanent SSH certificate for their own car, allowing them to log in as root and continue their research further. Pretty interesting. Sounds like Apple's Security Research Device Program[0], where you're loaned a rooted iPhone, but with a clear qualification criteria. It strikes a nice balance, because to qualify you have to 1) show you have the skills to get root access anyway and 2) show you're willing to participate in the bug bounty program and get things patched. I would of course love root on everything I own, but I can understand Tesla's motivation here since root for everyone would make vulnerability discovery easier for malicious actors. And if everyone had root on their Tesla, it'd be much easier to make naughty modifications that might catch the ire of regulators. (like disabling driver attentiveness checks in self-driving mode). [0] https://security.apple.com/research-device/ https://security.apple.com/research-device/
- xyzzy123 6mo agoHaving shell is extremely handy for further discovery. SO handy that if they were just gonna patch the bug and lock you out, you would simply not disclose it.
- freerobby 6mo agoThis is what happened. Tesla security received tons of bug reports that required root access to identify, yet they got a vanishingly small number of root vulnerability reports. This policy fixes that misincentive.
- fomine3 6mo agoIf they don't give root, researcher may have incentive to keep vuln secret for root access. Looks reasonable.
- EquallyJust 6mo agoIt's a mixed bag. This only applies to the infotainment system and not the autopilot computer. They've also revoked certificates from researchers personal cars in the past
- magistra 6mo agothis is the coolest shi i've ever read on hackernews
- jeffbee 6mo agoI am surprised that they are surprised that car wiring diagrams are online. People wouldn't accept cars without online service manuals and schematics, and some states mandate them by law. I just looked up this subsystem for my car via my public library. https://appcontent.chiltonlibrary.com/chilton_images/Honda/EWD/2020_KA_KC_KX_TXM/sheet/audio_hfl/sheet2.svg?2$audio_hfl#148832 https://appcontent.chiltonlibrary.com/chilton_images/Honda/E...
- rconti 6mo agoJust peruse the comments here to see how difficult they are to obtain on many cars.
- openclaw01 6mo ago[dead]
- nishanseal 6mo agoThis is awesome. Curious if these are plug and play and if that's the case where is the memory that tells you what the mileage is. If it's attached to the computer than the mileage would be off if you switch/repair it. Completely unrelated. Would be interested if you figure out how to retrofit the new adaptive shocks on performance models to the older cars. Something I would love to do if I had hobby time. I'm pretty sure they fit physically, but needs to be connected to the main computer. I likely would never touch the main computer unless I got root access. In my brain I was thinking about a separate system made with raspberry pi's.
- AndroidKitKat 6mo agoYou can, at the very least, retrofit the Juniper suspension onto the old car [1]. I haven't ridden in the new Performance yet, but I recently got a 2026 Model Y and the suspension is night and day compared to my 2024. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahoyTgkkyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahoyTgkkyU
- nishanseal 6mo agoThat's awesome, I had heard about the new Juniper suspension on premium models retrofitted. I have a 2022 YP and didn't want to change the ride height so I wanted to retrofit the juniper performance shocks. I plan on keeping the car forever so it might be a thing I try to do in the future since it's likely to fit based on the video you sent. I haven't seen any videos on the performance retrofits. One option is to not have the electronic damping and keep the shocks disconnected, but then it will stay on whatever default mechanical setting there is. I could go with aftermarket of course, but this just really piques my interest for some reason.
- jabedude 6mo agoI'm actually somewhat surprised the OS fully boots when it's not connected to the expected vehicle peripherals
- asimovDev 6mo agoYeah, I expected some gigantic writeup about tricking it into thinking all other systems are connected to it but maybe it's made this way so it's easier to repair without needing the whole car
- pta2002 6mo agoI work on automotive software (not Tesla), and it's like this partially because it makes development _way easier_. Rather than needing to get a whole car to the dev team, you just give them the specific part that they're working on. Anything that needs outside features usually just fails gracefully (e.g. no speedometer or no location for maps). These are usually mocked for testing, or you add the specific ECU that provides it for your testing setup if needed. Modern cars have tens of ECUs, so if you had to have all of them for testing, that would get unwieldy extremely quickly. Not to mention that cars are pretty resilient to having random parts failing, you don't want to lose the entire dashboard just because the ECU that provides camera data failed, or something.
- bluGill 6mo agoI work on that software too (again not Tesla). One other thing - often the hardware we get is per-production and has a list of errata that will be fixed before production. They don't want to make too many of these for engineers because it is done in a fast turn-around higher cost factory and it is expected that once in a while things won't work at all (someone forgets to connect power to the CPU pin or something similarly stupid that requires a lot of manual wiring to fix on each one). As such you have to justify getting any controller and often share. Once the product is shipping they make many of them and it isn't a big deal to get one on your desk - but you have now moved onto the next thing and so the problem returns.
- nine_k 6mo agoIt's funny how the biggest problem turned out to be a mostly mechanical part, the rather trivial 6-pin connector. Given the presence of the wiring schematics and the mechanical dimensions, I'm surprised that the author did not try to 3D-print the mechanical parts of the connectors, givem that the electrical parts extracted from the BMW connectors did fit.
- dmead 6mo agoYou're going to make it drive an RC car right?
- hahhhha500012 6mo ago[dead]
- jnsaff2 6mo agoAnyone finding this fascinating, please check out Openinverter Forum [0]. Ton of work has been done in decoding CAN messages, DBC files are floating around, open source firmware and controllers are available for Tesla and others components, mostly inverters and chargers but there are overlaps with the VCU and displays as well. [0] - https://openinverter.org/forum/ https://openinverter.org/forum/
- voidUpdate 6mo ago> " I needed this because both the computer and a screen were being sold with the cables cut a few centimeters after the connector (interestingly most sellers did that, instead of just unplugging the cables)." Can't you just solder some extra wires onto the cut off bits, rather than having to try and find a compatible cable? They've left the connectors in, and that's the hard bit, the rest is just wires
- bdavbdav 6mo agoFrom messing around with these units from various cars, which often need more enablement than these, sometimes it’s nice to just know your interpretation of the wiring diagrams isn’t at fault when chasing down “no lights at all” issues.
- smithza 6mo agoLVDS implies differential signals and are designed to minimize EMI and can be hard to splice while still maintaining signal integrity. They can support high data rates (ethernet cables also use twisted pair LVDS). Theoretically this should be feasible up to 100s or even 1000s of mbps
- mNovak 6mo agoHe does that in the write-up, though it's unclear from the photos if he actually soldered it or just twisted up pairs. The discussion of part of the wire melting also raises an eyebrow.. no idea about the authors hardware experience, but I've seen software guys use piddly 24 AWG on a multi-amp circuit
- 4ndrewl 6mo agoI'd say low, given his surprise about "wiring looms" which have been the norm for 50 years? Nice write up though!
- tedk-42 6mo agoBut can it play doom?
- pelf 6mo agoIt could probably run it and learn to play it too.
- yc-kraln 6mo agoI would love to use the drive units from a Tesla in a conversion project. Unfortunately, they're cryptographically paired with the main computer, and there's no way to use them. What a waste.
- fragmede 6mo agoThe trick is to pick up the main computer and the paired drive unit(s) by picking up a whole vehicle (with a salvage title). There are shops in LA, and elsewhere who do conversions this way.
- bluGill 6mo agoThat is done to kill the "chop shops" criminals used to steal cars and then break them up for parts. You can't do that with computers because of that pairing and so stealing a car pays much less and in turn is less common. (it still happens, it just doesn't pay as well)
- rconti 6mo agoThese conversions are super common. What am I missing?
- Yanko_11 6mo ago[dead]
- kevinbaiv 6mo ago[flagged]
- ferreyadinarta 6mo ago[flagged]
- ferreyadinarta 6mo ago[flagged]
- denysvitali 6mo agoIt's exactly the same. Why would it be different?
- ferreyadinarta 6mo ago[dead]
- uticus 6mo ago> We ordered the chip and took the board to a local PCB repair shop, where they successfully replaced it and fixed the MCU. What is a "local PCB repair shop"? All the guys who used to fix TVs and radios are gone. Anyone else (not living in China) having trouble locating such an outfit in their neighborhood?
- WarmWash 6mo agoCell phone/laptop repair shops.
- uxp100 6mo agoWhen I’ve brought atypical stuff in to be repaired at one of those shops they have been absolutely willing to solder whatever, however they did have just one “soldering guy” for every shop in the metro area who only came as needed. So just keep that in mind if you’re in a hurry or want to talk an atypical task through with someone. Probably call ahead.
- uticus 6mo ago> Turns out that actual cars don’t have individual cables. Instead they have these big “looms”, which bundle many cables from a nearby area into a single harness. This is the reason why I could not find the individual cable earlier. They simply don’t manufacture it. Typical setup for cars (and lawn mowers). As a software guy my first instinct is, computing power is cheap enough, seems like a CAT5-like thing running between all components would do it. Speaking as a software guy - meaning I'm probably missing a lot of the big picture. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to safety-check a mechanical lockout that physically opens a circuit, than something running on software.
- smallpipe 6mo agoCars are moving towards something like that, mostly because copper is expensive and there are miles and miles of it in even a basic car these days
- moduspol 6mo agoI read somewhere that the reason they don't typically use IT networking cables / tech is because normal IT infrastructure is a lot less strict with things like packet loss. It's actually not a huge deal to drop packets here and there, especially if any given component is at capacity. But in a car, some devices are super chatty and you can't be dropping packets much at all. That said, I'm sure there's gotta be a better way to solve it with less copper. And I think they did something like that with CyberTruck.
- uticus 6mo ago> ...in a car, some devices are super chatty and you can't be dropping packets much at all....there's gotta be a better way to solve it with less copper. I know CAN is a thing for a while now, and in the aviation world they have ethernet-derived standards like AFDX etc. But for some reason cables abound. Meh, even in the IT industry cables abound.
- 23curious 6mo agoAny way to make sure my tesla hasn't been rooted and modified by previous owner, perhaps with remote access?
- devcraft_ai 6mo ago[flagged]
- msarrel 6mo agoI feel like maybe you're headed towards this https://youtu.be/K9a2_3XObNI?si=vkP_utLfo3M0LFGO https://youtu.be/K9a2_3XObNI?si=vkP_utLfo3M0LFGO
- tom-blk 6mo agoPrime example of free will
- bennydog224 6mo agoI see in the attached SS that the car has the "BIFL" FSD (?). Does this mean you could swap this CPU a non-FSD Model 3 and get it? :O
- eschneider 6mo agoECU software development is sort of my day job. If you're going to go down this path, I seriously recommend getting the specialized plugs and connectors and making your own wiring harnesses to whatever size you need. It's absolutely easier than manhandling a full wiring harness or cutting one down. Cheaper, too.
- cjaackie 6mo agoThe author mentions not being able to get the connector in single digit quantities, seems pretty specialized.
- eschneider 6mo agoThat sorta surprised me. Once I could identify a connector type from a schematic, it was almost never a huge problem getting them in small (1 to 5 piece) quantities. It's mostly a question of finding the right distributor.
- JohannesCortez 6mo agoThis is cool, how exactly did it boot?
- caffeinedoom 6mo agoExcellent detective work. I had no idea you can get a Tesla's computer off market. I wonder if these may be the last decade that we may be able to get root access to our on hardware consumer products. Keep the good work up.
- ge96 6mo agoMakes me think imagine finding a crashed drone somewhere and you pull its guts out, use it for the home automate something, run a shed, plot point in a story It could be clout like "I turned a Shahed into a gaming PC"
- A04eArchitect 6mo ago[dead]
- peterisza 6mo agoDigital Optimus on your desk! /s
- paxrel_ai 6mo ago[dead]