asong1

With the help of @maraca taking the first pluge on installing the Commai Ai / Open Pilot System on the LC 500, I thought it deserves a thread of it's own to share and accelerate the 'official' support for the LCs on Comma Ai's Open Pilot software. Many cars are already supported, and many more are out there working as an 'unofficially supported' models. Open Pilot is an open-sourced software which has a pretty good sized development community to impove and add additional vehicle support. This is key since Comma Ai cannot afford to buy every single vehice out there. So to clarify: Comma Ai company started by George Hotz sells the device and the required wiring harness. They've developed their software to run on these devices and it's called 'Open Pilot' which is now a open-source software.

Comma Ai / Open Pilot needs only 2 things to make it work with your (any) vehicle:

1. Adaptive Cruise Control (for safety reasons)
2. Electric Power Steering: Open Pilot communicates and commands your EPS via the car's can bus for steering & lane centering + lane changes.

With these two things in place, the system connects to your OBD2 port and controls the power steering while letting the car's original adaptive cruise to do its thing and keeping a safe driving distance. There are many install videos out there. But you just need to connect / piggy back the power module to your rear-view mirror housing, then mount the actual unit to the winshield (as high as possible). Once the are installed and able to power on, you then route the OBD2 plug adaptor. The adaptor has an ethernet connector. You simply plug in the piggy back adaptor, and route the flat/thin ethernet cable from the OBD2 port to the unit that is connected to the mirror housing for the juice it nees to power. The main unit then powers itself by connecting to the mirror housing unit via USB-C cable. It may sound complicated, but it's really simple. You are just connecting 3 cables, and only 1 of them (ethernet cable) to the OBD2 which can be routed and hidden behind the windshield trims. No need to remove the windshield trims, the ethernet cable is so thin, you can just tuck it in. And if you buy the extra wire-harnesses, you can install this on multiple vehices, and simply connect the Comma Ai device on different cars on different days.

Regarding the Wire Harness: This is the biggest pain in buying this for the unsupported vehicles. Not all harnesses required are available unless you take the risk of spending $200.00 for the harness and make it work your self. There are many discord channels available where people with the right knowledge are making these harnesses for you to purchase. We, the LC owners are lucky since most of the Toyota models will use the same connector (Toyota Type A). When in doubt, just order the 23 Corolla wiring harness from Comma Ai.

I already have one full time in my truck (Ram 3500 / AEV Prospector XL). This was pain to make it work since the truck is lifted + 40 inch tires with steering stablizer which also threw off the standard EPS values. Not to mention with added truck height, we had to calibrate the Comma Ai's camera within the software to compensate for what the Comma Ai was acutally seeing (for accurate lane centering and curve management). But workng directly with the developer, my truck was the first Ram 3500 in the world to use the Open Pilot on. This thread is dedicated for the LCs, but if you are interested in other vehicles, I'd suggest you join the Sunny Pilot or other fork's discord channel and enquire about your vehcle, feasibiity & most importantly, find someone to make a harness for you.

You can just buy one Commai Ai and move it from one car to another if you purchase the additional wiring harness for all your vehicles. But for me, moving it from car to car is a nuisance due to the need to re-download the vehicle specific driving model software every time you change the car. As of this wring, Comma Ai does not support storing multiple vehicle software in the device and switching them on the fly. You must re-download and install each time, which can be very time consuming. So I ordered another one dedicated to the LC and occasional usage on the my SUV.

@maraca Used the 23 Corolla softwre and made it work with the LC. What I don't understand is why he chose the Corolla, instead of Lexs IS model which is fully supported. Maybe he can chime in here. Once I get the unit next week, I'll initially follow his footsteps to get it working and test it out (using the Corolla model just to confirm). Once that is done, I'll use different car model software within the Toyota fleet that is more closer to the LC's capabilities (I think IS model would be the first test target, then move to other vehicles to see if there are any differences)

The ultimate goal here isn't to just get it working. For some, this may be enough, but for me, I want to get the LC 'finger printed' and introduce it's vehicle settings into the Open Pilot software so that it can be officially supported.

Please keep in mind that I will be doing this on a 2024 LC 500 Convertible. But I don't see why it would be any different on any other models.

Disclaimer: If you are doing this on Coupe w/ variable steering, I'm not sure how it would work at first, and also not sure how long it will take the Ai to learn the variable steering differences. I'm guessing, not much of difference since on normal driving, you're not making sharp 90 degree turns in autonomy mode for the variable steering to kick in, and the standard LTA for that matter. We're talking minor movements for normal driving.

And because Open Pilot is an open-source software, there are several software 'forks' out there which different features and unofficial vehicle support. But the main driving models are all same and uses the same core engine. My plan is to work with the Sunny Pilot fork, and once confirmed working, I will work directly with the fork author / owner to dump the LC's component data and introduce it to the main fork (Open Pilot). Only then the LC can be 'officially' supported on all forks.

I'll get it installed next week and provide the feedback here. Stay tuned. In the mean time, for your own research, here are some links to take a look at:

Comma Ai: https://www.comma.ai/vehicles#lexus
Open Pilot: https://www.comma.ai/openpilot
Sunny Pilot: (a modified fork of Open Pilot): https://github.com/sunnypilot/sunnypilot




Open Pilot full autonomy (perhaps Level 3 - 3.5 Autonomy) Beta (not public beta)

azmojo

If you watch carefully the car must be going really slow. Everyone is just blowing by.

asong1

it’s a proof of concept / demo. That was done over a year ago. not available to general public.

Here is the explanation of what they’ve achieved and what else being worked out.



End to end driving is now available as a public beta.

asong1

we are lucky to have this working on the LC and no encryption / lockouts to deal with.

nomoreeuro

Having this functionality on the LC 500 would almost get me to switch from my GS F. I have Open Pilot running on my 2016 GS F, but due to the limitations of a ACC, the system will deactivate below 20mph. My primary use is just for long open stretches of road, but it's cool that the LC 500 could be upgraded to this functionality.

I'm curious how OpenPilot is able to merge onto the highway without and side view cameras though. Is it able to utilize the signals from the blindspot monitoring system?

asong1

Based on Comma-con key note, Comma 3/3x would use the combination of blind spot sensors & driver monitoring rear view camera to double check the blind-spots when that feature becomes beta. Unless we get to true level-4 autonomy, I really don't trust any systems out there. For me, heavy traffic stop n go + long haul autonomy is all I want at this point. I love my Comma 3 on my truck. Can't wait to get the 3x next week and slap it onto the LC. It's going to be EPIC!

microsup

I wonder how that little box intercepts the navigation route? I can understand if it reads the feed from camera and sends additional commands into can bus overriding commands of onboard unit. But what about navigation? It doesn’t have self navigation module but on video it looks like it does.
looking into source code, trying to understand what is going on.

microsup

Oh, didn’t realize that it uses additional module with cameras and display. I would be more interested if it could be connected to existing cameras and utilize headunit to show navigation plus do keep line assist, and be connected as android auto or CarPlay .

asong1

No. not every car has front camera. They have to make it consistent for the Ai training. Same goes for the rear cameras. Some rear cameras are too wide angled (fish-eye effect), and some not as bad. Ai can't learn this way with so much variables and artifacts. When you have a moment, watch the drive to taco bell session. They go into this subject very deeply regaring all associated challenges in creating a simulation environment. I posted the video above. It's fascinating how challenging it is to teach an Ai to drive like a human.

asong1

@nomoreeuro
Would you mind sharing your settings with us? Are you using Open Pilot or some other branch such as Sunny Pilot. Do you have a GS F selectable model in the fork you're using? The reason I ask is that from what I know, the vehicle to certain degree, self-tunes itself. But it needs a good starting point such as weight, height wheel-base etc.., Although some are apparantly using the Corolla model, but to me this isn't the best way to go. I think GS F would be the better target (GS F's attributes are included in some branch somewhere). In my truck's case, it originally started with the official support of Ram 1500. Then many people jumped in and modified much of that driving model to accomodate to the 2500. Although the trucks may look similar, these are completely different vehicles. Commai Ai takes into account just about everything you can think of in order to compensate for the differences in the vehicle's driving dynamics and physics.

asong1

ES hybrid


RX 350

asong1

They do have navigation but requires a sim card (which is good to have) + subcription services for the maps. I hope in the future they'll reduce this monthly fee and allow google, waze & apple maps to work with it.

There are othe forks so perhaps one of them will implement this in the future. To be honest, since this is an adroid based device, they should be able to implement an integration to google maps easily as long as you have a hot spot or the sim card. All comma 3 models have a sim slot. Definitely works on T mobile or ATT (GSM based). Some report that if you pre-activate a sim card with verizon with an existing supported phone, and transfer the sim to the Comma Ai device, it still works (no 5G)

I am all Verizon. So I will be exploring this option. Before the LC, I've been using the Comma Ai on my truck. But because I have onboard full-time starlink satellite / wifi on the truck, never needed a sim card for things like this. but I did use a pre-paid t-mobile sim card when I didn't have the starlink system flat-mounted onto the truck. But on the LC, I will need to get this to work. Firmware updates will drain your hotspot minutes pretty quickly as I learned during last year when I was troubleshooting and getting my truck finger-printed with Sunny Pilot.

nomoreeuro

I am just using the stock OpenPilot fork since the 2016 GS F is an officially supported vehicle. I haven't tried Sunny Pilot yet since I haven't seen the support available in the release notes.

asong1

Sunny Pilot has it's own set of features and tweaks, including 'Unofficially' supported vehicles. But as far as I know, all of the open pilot supported vehicles are by default supported because it's a fork of the Open Pilot. It uses Open Pilot's models as a baseline and adds its own features and other not yet supported vehicles. And their software updates are usually 1 week or less of the Open Pilot updates. As soon as a new version of Open Pilot is released, Sunny Pilot release ther software using the same version numbering. Wouldn't hurt to give i a try. Most people who uses different forks love them more than the standard Open Pilot.

asong1

Just installed Comma Ai wire harness. No photos.. this has to be the easiest one to do. just grab the plastic housing behind the rear view mirror. grab it from and slide it down (not down to your lap, but along the wi shield). Popped out so easily. once removed plug in the wire harness. the rest is no different than any other installs on youtube. Self explanatory.

The USB-C cable (very unique right angled usb c cord), they sent me was defective. So they are sending a replacement. Will report my results once i get the cable and test. Instead of using the Corolla model, i’ll start with ES 300 Hybrid model instead. should work without issues. Since no LS models are supported, 2024 ES 300 Hybrid is likely the best choice given the height of the vehicle, weight + Lexus Safety System 2.5+ (in case there are any communications changes between Comma & CanBus)