Introduction#
Comma AI is a company that specializes in developing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for cars. The Comma 3X is their latest product, which is an ADAS device that can be installed in your car to provide features such as adaptive cruise control, lane centering, and automatic emergency braking. OpenPilot is the software that powers the Comma 3X, and it is an open-source platform that allows developers to create custom ADAS features for the Comma 3X. With OpenPilot, you can customize your driving experience and add new features to your car that are not available with traditional ADAS systems. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
Key Features#
The Comma 3X provides adaptive cruise control, lane centering, and automatic emergency braking. OpenPilot is the software that powers the Comma 3X, and it is an open-source platform that allows developers to create custom ADAS features for the Comma 3X. With OpenPilot, you can customize your driving experience and add new features to your car that are not available with traditional ADAS systems. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
Installation#
When you purchase a Comma 3X, you must also purchase a harness that is specific to your car model. Comma supports more than 200 cars and makes finding the correct harness very easy. The installation process is simple and easy to follow, with a step-by-step guide provided by Comma. However, each car is a little different, so I had to get some help from YouTube videos. The installation took about 20 minutes and was straightforward, and I didn’t break any pieces.
One of the challenges I faced while installing the Comma 3X was the mount. The installation guide requires the mount to be placed in the middle of the windshield to provide maximum visibility. It took me a while to get it centered and properly mounted, only to learn that perfection is not required. Placing it straight and center is great, but the device will also go through calibration once turned on that overcomes any minor imperfections.
You will end up with some running wires. I hid mine as much as I could, but I was left with two inches of wiring visible. The rest were neatly tucked into the car’s interior.
The Comma 3X turns on automatically, and after you connect it to Wi-Fi, you are left with a screen to install the software. Upon initialization, the Comma 3X has no software, and as a user, you need to type in the link to the GitHub page to install OpenPilot. It took me a minute to figure this out, but after I found the GitHub link, the Comma 3X installed the software quickly and was ready to go.
At this stage, you have to go through training that consists of a list of slides teaching you all the basics and provides all the necessary safety instructions. It is an interactive onboarding process that ensures you know what you are doing after it’s completed. This was a very pleasant experience and was the best part of installation.
Finally, once everything is done, OpenPilot asks you to drive over 15 mph.
Driving#
The OpenPilot is easy to engage. You can turn it on exactly how you would turn on Cruise Control. From that moment, OpenPilot will take over. On its standard configuration, OpenPilot will be a step above what you expect from your regular cruise control and lane centering features. It will be able to adjust the speed to keep a safe driving distance from the cars in front of you, Stop and Go automatically, stay in lane even on turns your regular cruise can’t handle, and best of all, stop that annoying prompt to keep your hands on the wheel, which all car manufacturers require. The way it overcomes this requirement is by using the front-facing camera of the device and monitoring how attentive you are to traffic. If it detects that you are being distracted, it will ping you.
If your stock cruise control is a 3/10, this will take your experience to an easy 6/10.
But this is where the fun begins. OpenPilot 0.9.4 enabled Navigation on OpenPilot. You can enable this feature by turning on experimental features and getting a Comma Connect Prime account.
Essentially, OpenPilot now knows where you are going and uses map data as input to make intersection decisions. This also means that OpenPilot can read traffic lights and stop signs and behaves accordingly when faced with any. From my experience, OpenPilot does a better job with traffic lights than stop signs. It seems to roll further with stop signs, and it doesn’t always make sure that there is no traffic before starting to drive.
On highways and driving without 90-degree turns, OpenPilot can easily take over. I drove more than 80 miles with almost no intervention. If you want to change lanes, you simply turn on the blinkers, check for cars, give the steering wheel a nudge, and it will complete a lane change. When approaching a 90-degree turn, OpenPilot will struggle. While it can make 90-degree turns at an intersection, it is still not ready to deal with all the variables.
OpenPilot Forks and Community#
OpenPilot is an open-source project with a community of developers who are very creative and have already built other forks that you can easily install. Support for car types and models varies, but they mostly commit to safety protocols set by Comma and OpenPilot. Forks allow for additional configurations, making OpenPilot even better. One of the well-known forks out there is SunnyPilot, which seems to have community support. However, I haven’t tested any of the forks, so I won’t be able to comment on them.
There is an active Discord community that is very helpful, and you get to see the software evolve and learn from other drivers’ experiences. You will need an invite to get in, but the community is more than happy to invite you if you ask on r/Comma_ai.
Other Autopilot systems#
OpenPilot is a feature-rich driving assistance system that sits somewhere between Tesla’s Advanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving. While it has more features than Advanced Autopilot, it is not quite at the level of Tesla’s FSD. This is mostly because OpenPilot is not integrated with as much hardware as Tesla’s FSD, and the experience from one car to another could vary. Some cars have blind spot assistance, while others don’t. Some have distance control, while others might not. OpenPilot will try to use as much of the sensors that the car has to offer, but that makes the experience different from one car to another. However, considering its price, OpenPilot offers great value for the money.
Price#
The Comma 3X is a device that costs $1250 and requires a $300 harness specific to your car. It comes with a 30-day cashback guarantee and a 1-month free trial of Comma Connect, which costs $24 per month. Comma Connect adds the ability to save videos from your drives online and allows dash-cam functionality. You can also snap a picture of your car wherever you are in the world if you parked your car somewhere and needed that extra layer of security and assurance. Comma Connect is also how you enable Navigation on OpenPilot.
The Comma Connect App#
https://connect.comma.ai/ Comma has a Progressive Web App (PWA) that interfaces with your account and communicates with your Comma Device. It is an amazingly simple app that gets the job done. You can search for a location on the map and ask OpenPilot to navigate there. However, it is worth noting that all of this is happening through their servers.
The app is intuitive and allows the user to upload their drives and create short 5-minute videos to share. Each trip is recorded individually and presented in a list with a strip of blue, green, and gray colors over the timeline of the trip. Blue indicates driving without OpenPilot, green is when OpenPilot is engaged, and gray indicates periods when the driver overrides the system, for example, stepping on the gas pedal to go faster than how OpenPilot is behaving at the moment. The trip timeline also shows a red strip for when the driver disengages the system.
Overall#
I am impressed with the Comma 3X and OpenPilot. If anything, I am starting to get bored when I drive, as I am not sure what to do. This is only true on highways, of course. It is quite easy to forget that you are still driving and need to keep reminding yourself that OpenPilot is there to assist and not take over.
It is definitely better to undersell this product than oversell it. And I hope that I did not oversell it in any way. It is still early, and the driver needs to go through some forming and norming as they learn how OpenPilot behaves in different situations. It does not take a long time to get used to it. But as I mentioned, other drivers on the road might not know what’s going on and be a little bit surprised by the way it navigates the roads.
This is a very fun project to try, especially since the price went down significantly in the past year. But please stay safe; you are still responsible for what the car is doing on the road.
Comments
No comments yet. Start the conversation.