Self Driving/Comma2 Build - 2018 IS 350 F Sport
10-28-20, 08:36 PM
#1
Driver School Candidate
Thread Starter
Self Driving/Comma2 Build - 2018 IS 350 F Sport
Hey community, I'm a bit of a lurker, but figured I'd share my small self-driving journey with y'all. And probably help some of the semi-technically inclined if they would like to go down this route as well.
So, I've wanted a Tesla for a while, and would've sprang for the Model 3 a while back, but decided I needed a gas driven car for the long road trips, especially, when I would have to drive 700 miles to the in-laws twice a year and charging would've been quite tedious due to the lack of superchargers. Recently, I saw that Comma AI (George Hotz's company, guy who jailbroke the first iPhone @ 16) had some media articles about the Comma's product on thedrive.com and I saw that Toyota/Lexus was supported. To my delight, I saw that my car was on the list, so I impulse spent $1200 and bought the Comma2.
What's the Comma2?
It's basically a kit with a modified Android cell phone and some custom hardware & harnesses that interfaces the phone to the car's CAN bus. The secret sauce here is the AI driving model that Comma has developed from its early adopters driving data. To get some potential confusion out of the way, this ISNT "FULL" SELF DRIVING per se. What it really is, is a really solidly upgraded cruise control with hands free lane centering that works really well. The phone runs custom open sourced software called OpenPilot which uses the phone's camera to "see" the road, then sends CAN messages to the car to keep the car centered in lane. Simple to describe, insanely hard to implement.
Why not Toyota's Lane Keep Assist or Honda Sensing
Most of the manufacturers also have some type of lane centering now, self driving, but if you look at the videos, they usually suck and disengage about every 10-15 seconds because it doesn't really know how to read the environment. There's really no way to enjoy your drive if you have to intervene every 10 seconds. Anyway...
Impressions
The first time I activated cruise control, it was a eureka moment. It was surreal seeing the algorithm at work keeping the car perfectly in lane and didn't take long for it to gain my trust on mildly curvy roads and highways. It was similar to the feeling I had driving my friend's Model 3 and seeing it drive itself, but this time with some enjoyment that I had it on my IS. On day 2 of getting the comma2, I did a road trip from Philly to and from NYC and it was one of the most relaxing drives I've ever had. The Tesla requires that the driver's hand be on the wheel, but the Comma doesn't require any hands on the steering while driving. What they do instead is that they utilize the front facing selfie cameras to monitor the driver's face to ensure that it's on the road. For the ~2 hours I was en route to NYC, I got to enjoy just relaxing. It really is like the slogan, "make driving chill"
So when driving, there's really not much to do but look at the road and take over occasionally, when there's exits to take and local stop and go driving to do. It's hard to quantify how much stress there is constantly watching a road and keeping a car centered for even minutes at a time, but that stress completely goes away. What's left is intervening for other crazy people on the road and when you need to taking exits. Long drives have become an absolute joy. It's a total game changer and quality of life improvement that's not only available for Teslas and GM Supercruise cars. What's important to understand are its limitations as that's where people have to come in to intervene, but 1-2+ hour monotonous drives are pretty much the chillest experience ever. I'm actually looking forward to being kind of bored on my drive to Chicago soon.
Generally, I'm always in the left lane going as fast as possible to reduce my driving time and would pass people like it was a game, but now I just chill in the right or middle-lane and let the algos do their work while I comfily watch the world around me as a bystander.
Limitations
For my specific model of Lexus, the 2018 IS doesn't engage cruise control below 22mph, so any time my speed falls below 22mph, the cruise & openpilot disengage and I have to take over driving again. The algo doesn't recognize objects, so it's important to understand that the car won't necessarily stop for a random object unless the Lexus adaptive cruise control's radar detects it and stops for it. The other safety feature that exists is that the interface between the the phone & car runs safety code that limits how much torque can be applied to the wheel, so that the algo can never go haywire and jerk the steering wheel and lead the car off the road instantly. Thus the limits of what the algo can do for you tend to be aggressive curves. In these cases, the car will slightly understeer, so the driver merely needs to give the steering wheel an some extra rotation to stay in lane.
Installation
Having previously installed radar detectors and the like, the physical installation was pretty straightforward. Open up the front camera plastic above the rear view mirror, hook up the Comma harness, peel off the sticker mounts and attach the comma2 onto the windshield. Route the flat rj-45 + ODB-II connector cable to the through the A-Pillar to the ODB-II port and voila, it's installed. The physical installation is easy, but the software portion is where it gets slightly tricky, since some cars haven't been "fingerprinted" but the 2017-2019 Lexus IS family is supported (along with other Toyotas/Lexus), there's some friendly folks to talk to on Comma's discord chat that will be able to add support for other sub models. There is some technical trickery to install the latest OP software, but it's usually pretty quick.
Here's a short 12 second clip of me driving it in action.
Pending Issues
It looks like I might have a faulty harness box that connects the phone to the car, so occasionally cruise disengages and it loudly beeps at me that I need to take over, but since I'm already looking at the road, it's more annoying than traumatic. Comma is sending me out a new one, so once the replacement comes in, I'll be cleaning up my installation and placing all the panels back.
What's next
Next up is, there's a Chinese DSU (computer assy, driver support unit, pn: 88150-XXXXX) that supposedly enables cruise control below 22mph, so I can get stop-n-go working, while still retaining the safety of Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB). Anyway, feel free to ask my any questions. I'll post some better pics soon.
Lots of youtube reviews have likened it to about 95% of Tesla's self driving. Obviously Tesla just release Full self driving, which open pilot in its current incarnation won't be able to do (needs more cameras & map development) but it's pretty amazing as it is, even if I have to drive below 22mph like a peasant.
Am I shilling for Comma? Yea totally... It's just that great.
So, I've wanted a Tesla for a while, and would've sprang for the Model 3 a while back, but decided I needed a gas driven car for the long road trips, especially, when I would have to drive 700 miles to the in-laws twice a year and charging would've been quite tedious due to the lack of superchargers. Recently, I saw that Comma AI (George Hotz's company, guy who jailbroke the first iPhone @ 16) had some media articles about the Comma's product on thedrive.com and I saw that Toyota/Lexus was supported. To my delight, I saw that my car was on the list, so I impulse spent $1200 and bought the Comma2.
What's the Comma2?
It's basically a kit with a modified Android cell phone and some custom hardware & harnesses that interfaces the phone to the car's CAN bus. The secret sauce here is the AI driving model that Comma has developed from its early adopters driving data. To get some potential confusion out of the way, this ISNT "FULL" SELF DRIVING per se. What it really is, is a really solidly upgraded cruise control with hands free lane centering that works really well. The phone runs custom open sourced software called OpenPilot which uses the phone's camera to "see" the road, then sends CAN messages to the car to keep the car centered in lane. Simple to describe, insanely hard to implement.
Why not Toyota's Lane Keep Assist or Honda Sensing
Most of the manufacturers also have some type of lane centering now, self driving, but if you look at the videos, they usually suck and disengage about every 10-15 seconds because it doesn't really know how to read the environment. There's really no way to enjoy your drive if you have to intervene every 10 seconds. Anyway...
Impressions
The first time I activated cruise control, it was a eureka moment. It was surreal seeing the algorithm at work keeping the car perfectly in lane and didn't take long for it to gain my trust on mildly curvy roads and highways. It was similar to the feeling I had driving my friend's Model 3 and seeing it drive itself, but this time with some enjoyment that I had it on my IS. On day 2 of getting the comma2, I did a road trip from Philly to and from NYC and it was one of the most relaxing drives I've ever had. The Tesla requires that the driver's hand be on the wheel, but the Comma doesn't require any hands on the steering while driving. What they do instead is that they utilize the front facing selfie cameras to monitor the driver's face to ensure that it's on the road. For the ~2 hours I was en route to NYC, I got to enjoy just relaxing. It really is like the slogan, "make driving chill"
So when driving, there's really not much to do but look at the road and take over occasionally, when there's exits to take and local stop and go driving to do. It's hard to quantify how much stress there is constantly watching a road and keeping a car centered for even minutes at a time, but that stress completely goes away. What's left is intervening for other crazy people on the road and when you need to taking exits. Long drives have become an absolute joy. It's a total game changer and quality of life improvement that's not only available for Teslas and GM Supercruise cars. What's important to understand are its limitations as that's where people have to come in to intervene, but 1-2+ hour monotonous drives are pretty much the chillest experience ever. I'm actually looking forward to being kind of bored on my drive to Chicago soon.
Generally, I'm always in the left lane going as fast as possible to reduce my driving time and would pass people like it was a game, but now I just chill in the right or middle-lane and let the algos do their work while I comfily watch the world around me as a bystander.
Limitations
For my specific model of Lexus, the 2018 IS doesn't engage cruise control below 22mph, so any time my speed falls below 22mph, the cruise & openpilot disengage and I have to take over driving again. The algo doesn't recognize objects, so it's important to understand that the car won't necessarily stop for a random object unless the Lexus adaptive cruise control's radar detects it and stops for it. The other safety feature that exists is that the interface between the the phone & car runs safety code that limits how much torque can be applied to the wheel, so that the algo can never go haywire and jerk the steering wheel and lead the car off the road instantly. Thus the limits of what the algo can do for you tend to be aggressive curves. In these cases, the car will slightly understeer, so the driver merely needs to give the steering wheel an some extra rotation to stay in lane.
Installation
Having previously installed radar detectors and the like, the physical installation was pretty straightforward. Open up the front camera plastic above the rear view mirror, hook up the Comma harness, peel off the sticker mounts and attach the comma2 onto the windshield. Route the flat rj-45 + ODB-II connector cable to the through the A-Pillar to the ODB-II port and voila, it's installed. The physical installation is easy, but the software portion is where it gets slightly tricky, since some cars haven't been "fingerprinted" but the 2017-2019 Lexus IS family is supported (along with other Toyotas/Lexus), there's some friendly folks to talk to on Comma's discord chat that will be able to add support for other sub models. There is some technical trickery to install the latest OP software, but it's usually pretty quick.
Here's a short 12 second clip of me driving it in action.
Pending Issues
It looks like I might have a faulty harness box that connects the phone to the car, so occasionally cruise disengages and it loudly beeps at me that I need to take over, but since I'm already looking at the road, it's more annoying than traumatic. Comma is sending me out a new one, so once the replacement comes in, I'll be cleaning up my installation and placing all the panels back.
What's next
Next up is, there's a Chinese DSU (computer assy, driver support unit, pn: 88150-XXXXX) that supposedly enables cruise control below 22mph, so I can get stop-n-go working, while still retaining the safety of Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB). Anyway, feel free to ask my any questions. I'll post some better pics soon.
Lots of youtube reviews have likened it to about 95% of Tesla's self driving. Obviously Tesla just release Full self driving, which open pilot in its current incarnation won't be able to do (needs more cameras & map development) but it's pretty amazing as it is, even if I have to drive below 22mph like a peasant.
Am I shilling for Comma? Yea totally... It's just that great.
10-29-20, 10:28 AM
#2
Pretty sick, I know in the new Toyotas they have a camera installed already which is what another self driving company uses so older cars like the IS were out of luck, seems like this Android phone is what does the trick. The only issue I see in this is that it all deactivates under 22mph. I feel like the whole appeal of self driving is that the car operates itself in bumper to bumper traffic. Tbh, anything above 25 mph, I enjoy driving because at that point it's not an effort. Regardless, very cool. What's the pricing looking like on this?
10-29-20, 01:36 PM
#3
I would be really interested in trying this, but it is only available for the 2017-2019 IS. I am guessing that it probably also will work with 2014-16 if they are equipped with lane departure, but for simplicity's sake, they knew that lane departure is standard on all 17+. Unfortunately for me, I have a 2015 without lane departure.
10-30-20, 06:54 AM
#4
Driver School Candidate
I would be really interested in trying this, but it is only available for the 2017-2019 IS. I am guessing that it probably also will work with 2014-16 if they are equipped with lane departure, but for simplicity's sake, they knew that lane departure is standard on all 17+. Unfortunately for me, I have a 2015 without lane departure.
11-02-20, 10:53 AM
#5
Driver School Candidate
Thread Starter
So presumably, most of the Lexus line up works or can work with some tuning work over in the comma discord forums.
11-02-20, 11:22 AM
#6
Driver School Candidate
Thread Starter
I would be really interested in trying this, but it is only available for the 2017-2019 IS. I am guessing that it probably also will work with 2014-16 if they are equipped with lane departure, but for simplicity's sake, they knew that lane departure is standard on all 17+. Unfortunately for me, I have a 2015 without lane departure.
There’s a motor that provides a small corrective steering adjustment if one leaves lane. This is what Open pilot (OP) controls and is why the 2017+ is supported.
11-02-20, 11:27 AM
#7
Driver School Candidate
Thread Starter
Pretty sick, I know in the new Toyotas they have a camera installed already which is what another self driving company uses so older cars like the IS were out of luck, seems like this Android phone is what does the trick. The only issue I see in this is that it all deactivates under 22mph. I feel like the whole appeal of self driving is that the car operates itself in bumper to bumper traffic. Tbh, anything above 25 mph, I enjoy driving because at that point it's not an effort. Regardless, very cool. What's the pricing looking like on this?
There’s cheaper versions of the first gen hardware, but it won’t be as easy to install.
I’m actually working on the stop and go for the IS, so I’ll report whether the hack works. Shipping from china a la taobao is gonna take a while though. It’s a matter of obtaining a chinese DSU that modifies things to work below 22mph...
the latest 2020 corollas are supported for stop and go operation though.
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Sustenna (02-01-21)
Trending Topics
11-02-20, 04:19 PM
#8
I had a 2015 and it wouldn’t work. The steering needs the automatic lane centering feature to send latitudinal directions to stay centered.
There’s a motor that provides a small corrective steering adjustment if one leaves lane. This is what Open pilot (OP) controls and is why the 2017+ is supported.
There’s a motor that provides a small corrective steering adjustment if one leaves lane. This is what Open pilot (OP) controls and is why the 2017+ is supported.
02-01-21, 05:40 AM
#9
Driver School Candidate
Thanks for the write-up!
Could you link your resources for getting that Chinese DSU working? I've haven't heard of a module that allows for full range CC. Sounds super interesting!
Could you link your resources for getting that Chinese DSU working? I've haven't heard of a module that allows for full range CC. Sounds super interesting!
10-07-21, 04:01 AM
#10
Have you made any progress on stop/go, or operation under 22mph? That's my biggest annoyance with stock dynamic cruise and primarily the reason I never use it, so as excited as I am I think I'd actually wait for that to be a staple of this system for our vehicles.
But aside from that, my only other hesitation is in response to the size of the Comma system when mounted on the windshield. It seems quite intrusive - likely to the point you have to remove it when not in use? - so I'd opt for the DIY route with my own laptop and USB cameras unless there's a better way around that.
Thoughts? Any other improvements or modifications made since your initial post a few months ago? Super interested in all of this.
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