Tesla Light Show xLights Guide

https://github.com/teslamotors/light-show

by judge2020 • 5 years ago

242 98 5 years ago

github.com

bhauer• 5 years ago

Now we just need a marketplace/forum for sharing custom .fseq files.

toomuchtodo• 5 years ago

A GitHub repo? awesome- type list [1].

[1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

juanriaza• 5 years ago

http://teslalight.show

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

This seems like a lot of work for a marketing stunt

judge20203• 5 years ago

It's been a thing for a while on the X, they've just opened it up to running custom scripts from a USB. I'm sure it's generated thousands of sales for them at this point.

The X light show: https://youtu.be/-jyPkg0yXzM?t=6

winternett4• 5 years ago

People have been doing that with Honda Civics for decades... Now if they put all that energy into build quality and making sure that auto pilot doesn't kill anyone, we'd have something impressive... :/

intellix• 5 years ago

I find it ridiculous that something negative about a Tesla gets downvoted and essentially hidden

anchpop2• 5 years ago

I guarantee the team that worked on this is doing it entirely in parallel to whoever’s working on build quality and autopilot.

joezydeco• 5 years ago

If it creates an endless stream of YouTube videos featuring Tesla cars, all for free after this point mind you, it seems like a win to me.

Gys• 5 years ago

No video :-(

solarkraft• 5 years ago

Here's a video of the pre-loaded light show on the Model X: https://youtu.be/Xg_0NRi-OxE

zaroth2• 5 years ago

Amazing to read through that repo and then come to realize that’s not some reverse engineered hacker project, but actually a trillion dollar car company publishing that on their own GitHub page. Very cool.

e402• 5 years ago

This sort of proves they are the hacker car company. There were definitely features before that screamed it (frequent over-the-air updates), but this seals the deal.

EDIT: and the README.md on that page is better than 99% of open source projects I've looked at.

the_pwner224• 5 years ago

Yet the firmware is locked down and they aggressively pursue and punish people who try to control their own cars... they may be the hacker car company, but overall they are very anti-hacker.

bmitc• 5 years ago

It's called marketing.

oliv__• 5 years ago

If it were simply marketing, then everyone would be doing it

comeonseriously2• 5 years ago

Is this legal? Seems a great way to distract other drivers.

corndoge• 5 years ago

I can think of a bunch of scenarios where that concern doesn't apply, and so can you.

comeonseriously2• 5 years ago

Of course, but I am positive plenty of "look at me" types will drive around with it[0]. And I'm sure you know that, too.

[0] If possible. I don't see where they explicitly say you can't.

jedberg2• 5 years ago

It only works when the car is stopped and the driver is outside.

lastofthemojito• 5 years ago

Supported Vehicles
Model S (2021+)
Model X (2021+)
Model 3
Model Y

Someone didn't get the memo from Elon that proper Teslexicographical sorting is S, 3, X, Y.

winternett4• 5 years ago

There's a workaround... Just manually flip the high beams, shift through drive modes, vigorously alternate turn indicators, and pump your brakes furiously.

MaxDPS• 5 years ago

That’s is a hilarious visual lmao, I want to see someone try that now.

mciancia• 5 years ago

Fixed now xD

devnulll• 5 years ago

The PR for the fix is here: https://github.com/teslamotors/light-show/pull/3/files

Amusing. :)

ximeng• 5 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfucQM07tGQ here's the demo in order: "S3XY Light Show"

fnord77• 5 years ago

this seems like an RCE waiting to happen

aaomidi• 5 years ago

Probably CE, not sure how this opens the door to an RCE.

bayindirh2• 5 years ago

It can open the doors alright it seems.

kwhitefoot• 5 years ago

My 2015 Model S 70D is not supported :-(

gfodor2• 5 years ago

Lol all the negative replies here really drives home the “hacker” spirit in “hacker news”

lostlogin• 5 years ago

If Ford made the lights on some cars flash, would it be a mega corp trying to go viral, or the hacker spirit alive and well?

I like it, the the cynical angle has some merit.

gfodor2• 5 years ago

There is an awesome GitHub repo with lots of cool stuff to hack on for Christmas on millions of electric cars. This is about as hacker worthy as it gets.

potatochup2• 5 years ago

Is it not possible for an individual engineer within Ford to have some creativity? To hack on something they weren't supposed to? Not every output from a company is top-down, corporate-overload, profit maximizing.

akira2501• 5 years ago

It's parsimonious of me, but "hacker" includes the idea of "pushing hardware into uses not intended by the manufacturer."

This is an API that's being straight-up handed to you by the manufacturer, a manufacturer that historically has had a challenged relationship with the various hacker communities that have formed around their products.

potatochup2• 5 years ago

Do you really think this was originally a planned feature by Tesla? That some cynical marketing manager sat down ans though "if we do this we'll get X impressions leading to Y new sales, lets allocate 0.7FTE engineers to the task"?

I very much doubt the design requirement for the Model X include a specification for "muat be able to produce Christmas shows". This sure looks like some engineer had a spurt of creativity, which qualifies to "hacking" to me.

typon• 5 years ago

If this was a jailbreak to control the lights, people would be a lot more excited. Tesla closes off their hardware to hackers - not exactly the spirit of hacker news

dang• 5 years ago

Please don't make it worse by being negative about negativity. The only thing that works is to post the kind of thing we want here: curious, informative, thoughtful. When so inspired.

vernie• 5 years ago

Well it fucking sucks, what do you want?

gamblor9562• 5 years ago

Note to Tesla owners: as this modifies the functionality of the headlamps and rear lights, your car is not street legal at night while using this code and you will get ticketed if you use this while driving.

easton• 5 years ago

I’m guessing the prompt to get out of the car means it won’t go while the show is running.

jedberg2• 5 years ago

It only works when the car is stopped and the driver is outside.

gamblor9562• 5 years ago

That's actually false. It starts when the car is stopped but the driver is not required to exit the vehicle to get it to start.

There are videos of people running this program while they remain in their Teslas.

unbanned2• 5 years ago

This is not very cool. This is a tremendous waste of resource and yet more stuff that is added to the Tesla ecosystem which inevitably will go wrong.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

Adding some joy to the world is not necessary a waste of resources.

hutzlibu3• 5 years ago

I very much agree, but I still would like to add, that not everyone enjoys light pollution ...

joshgachnang• 5 years ago

It's a good marketing stunt for a company that doesn't have traditional PR/marketing. And curious how some pre-recorded flashing lights and opening hatches will inevitably "go wrong".

razemio• 5 years ago

I can‘t stand this attitude of yours. Not everything needs to be efficient, has to have a goal, make money or make sense. Have fun for once and put that capitalism brain aside for just 2 seconds.

unbanned2• 5 years ago

You don't have to. Just collapse the comment and move on.

Agent766• 5 years ago

This was probably used internally to develop the built in light show, so open sourcing it wouldn't take much work and could generate some new PR buzz.

groone• 5 years ago

Waste of resources is how other car companies get attention of potential customers.

halfmatthalfcat• 5 years ago

Oh lighten up…Tesla is pumping out a ton of value already.

vmception2• 5 years ago

Tesla has 70,000 fulltime employees and this repo has 2 contributors.

It is impossible for this to be a tremendous waste of resources even if this was the only thing those employees did for the company. Its a rounding error.

petarb• 5 years ago

Would love to see what people come up with

la6471• 5 years ago

Don’t do it while driving

zaroth2• 5 years ago

What?

edoceo2• 5 years ago

It means: Don't code while driving. For safety.

simondotau• 5 years ago

You can't.

vmception2• 5 years ago

Would love to see a video or animated gif example!

upbeat_general2• 5 years ago

Am I the only one that finds this incredibly scary?

Sticking a USB drive into the car so that the primary computer can parse some file and then send some commands over (what I assume is) the CAN bus?

If you can send arbitrary messages over the CAN bus, I’m guessing you can do some serious damage, and even with precautions about what the parsing process can do, that’s still…very scary.

brianwawok2• 5 years ago

You probably wouldn’t enjoy owning a Tesla if that is how you operate. Which is fine, but not for who this repo is for.

Did you know you can start a Tesla from a phone and someone can drive it away with no key?

throwaway8943452• 5 years ago

Not arbitrary messages and anyway can’t you send arbitrary messages over a CAN bus in an ordinary vehicle? Do most automotive manufacturers implement some kind of authentication of messages these days?

upbeat_general2• 5 years ago

Arbitrary if the sending process is compromised through a parsing exploit of some sort. I’m not sure about CAN message authentication but it’d be much easier to convince someone to plug in a USB for lights/music than it’d be to plug into a diagnostic port making it an easier target.

Geee• 5 years ago

This is the built-in light show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfucQM07tGQ

sprite• 5 years ago

Reading the title I thought it would be something like Audi's Matrix Lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJi240E_ZA

josephcsible• 5 years ago

It does a little bit of that too. This video makes that more visible: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/rnk10o/tesla_h...

Animats• 5 years ago

"The trunk may open during the show"?

Can you bounce the car up and down using the active suspension? Lowriders would go for that.

sydthrowaway• 5 years ago

What colours are available?

kevindeasis• 5 years ago

Curious if this has any effect on warranty, since theres always been different comments on tesla warranty.

ie: even something like wrapping your tesla can affect your warranty, is what a tesla employee told me

wumpus• 5 years ago

If you wrap your car with a shitty wrap, and it damages your paint, do you expect the manufacturer to fix it for free?

temporalparts• 5 years ago

Here's a random marketing video from Tesla showing off the lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfucQM07tGQ

bromuro• 5 years ago

Isn’t this stuff a bit creepy? I feel I don’t have the right mindset to even understand why is this a thing.

I dream a future eithiut cars.

atonse• 5 years ago

What exactly creeps you out about this?

It seems like a perfectly good amount of fun for everyone involved. The people making it. The owners and their friends and families.

I can't wait to show this to my family tomorrow night.

cscurmudgeon• 5 years ago

I dream a future without constant complaining about cars.

anchpop2• 5 years ago

How exactly would people who live in rural areas get around without cars?

sylwester• 5 years ago

Do I see correctly from the software that the car is using a WS2811 LED controller for the lights? Or is this just for a simulation?

Tesla Light Show xLights Guide

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