Syonyk, a hands-on tinkerer, writes about off-grid solar, batteries, electric vehicles, Raspberry Pi builds, and reverse engineering hardware.
One commenter reads every post. HN cites his Tesla throwaway cars argument and his explanation of why home solar fails when the grid is down.
Yes this whole ECU thread has nothing to do with the original discussion comparing EV and gasoline vehicles wrt how easy it is to get replacement parts.
>> I hardly think that emissions tests will be a reason you can't put an aftermarket ECU into an electric car!
> It is stupid, because that's not what I claimed at all.
Yes you did:
> Your aftermarket ECU won't pass emissions tests
You brought up aftermarket ECUs not passing emissions tests, I just (incorrectly) commented that you could probably load a stock (or what I thought would be emissions-passing) map onto an aftermarket ECU because I wasn't aware about the tampering part. I naively assumed they actually tested the emissions from the car when testing it for emissions. :P
For what it's worth, I agree with you about replacement parts being specialized for all types of cars, and for the record I'd be very surprised if an aftermarket ECU ever appeared for the Tesla, given how closed and hostile to any modification (or even repairs!) they are. You can't even get a service manual if you don't live in Massachusetts, and even then you can only buy access to it on a subscription basis! [1]
In fact, at the moment I'd never even consider buying a Tesla because who knows what it's like to own one after the warranty is up? If my Tesla ECU failed, there's nothing to say it would even be possible to put a legitimate Tesla junkyard ECU in there and have it work without their blessing.
Out of curiosity, do places that have…
Tesla sacrifices classic sustainability, the do-it-yourself attitude, and "openness" of their platform.
http://syonyk.blogspot.com/2016/03/is-tesla-building-throwaway-cars.html
I do realize that the Silicon Valley types don't care about this issue, with iPhones behind walled gardens and all that jazz (or at least, SV doesn't seem to care about it anymore... what ever happened to the vision of open source and true ownership?)... but I know plenty of people who are still interested in vehicle with open standards.
Or hell, just a vehicle that can be taken from a junkyard and then repaired in a garage. You're not allowed to take a Tesla from a junkyard and salvage it, not unless you take it to a dealership and have it "reactivated" by Tesla.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1305093/tesla-salvage-release.pdf
The explanation I’ve read (sorry, don’t recall the source) is that this system repurposed a purely advisory one that existed before, for informing the pilot about AoA. Being advisory in nature, it didn’t need duplicate sensors.
Next up: you need to implement MCAS and everything is conveniently there in existing code.
That, plus toxic culture for internal people doing FAA (yes, really), plus what you write, plus business pressure on certification...
Edit: source https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/03/boeing-airbus-tesla-and-automation.html
Honestly, the Raspberry Pi 4 is just fine for what it's meant to do. It's a lot of CPU for the money and it's easy to find resources on the internet.
You could consider the more expensive Jetson Nano if you need a powerful GPU or if you just want to try something different. People tend to assume it's faster, but the Raspberry Pi 4 CPU actually beats it in most cases ( https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/11/battle-of-boards-jetson-nano-vs.html )
Two tech blogs of which I read every post:
http://www.windytan.com/ - Oona Räisänen - great hacker of signal-related stuff (audio, video, wireless, etc), graphics, and more.
https://syonyk.blogspot.com/ - a lot of hacking around batteries, off-grid energy, and teardowns and repairs of various devices.
Non-tech related, Ken White at https://www.popehat.com/ can be quite funny, though he hasn't been posting as much lately.
To add to that, this recent article on HN [1] goes into a lot of great detail on how the economics of a home solar installation are part of the problem.
Basically, if there were an incentive for residential solar installations to include a little bit of storage capacity, it would be a net win for the entire economy.
[1] https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-setup-does-not-work-off-grid.html