Saturday, December 26, 2020

Merry Christmas - Tesla Update 2020.48.25 - New UX!!!

Nice little Christmas present from Tesla. Got the 2020.48.25 Update on Christmas Day! Thanks Tesla.
Unwrapping this present gave a brand new User Interface and Experience and I love it. Without any more delay here are the goodies:
  • New Release Notes format
  • New Instrument Cluster (aka left side of screen) - lots of improvements here such as camera and wiper button re-location, all new vehicle graphics, etc.
  • Scheduled Departure Improvement
  • Supercharger on Map Display improvement - no more counting red lines, a number simply shows available spots
  •  the Tesla "T" is gone from the top menu
New UX!

The details of the update and a quick walk though some of the changes are below:

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Pi Zero Time Lapse Camera App and Enclosure


Background



My daughter got her first hand-me-down Google Pixel phone last spring. She was excited to have a camera of her own and started taking pictures of the willow tree in our backyard every morning. She wanted to make a time lapse of the willow tree sprouting leaves.
There was a slight problem with her approach though - she was not always capturing pictures from the same angle, or at same time of day or on some days she completely forgot to take pictures in the rush to get to school and other activities.
So as "daddy-daughter project" over a weekend, we built a camera using a Raspberry Pi Zero that would do the work for her. This description outlines the work we did and provides instruction to anyone who maybe interested in doing a similar project.
Example of Results Captured


Upon completion, we scheduled a time lapse over 2 days (every 4 hours) and captured some pictures which we converted to an animated gif. Luckily, we caught a late spring snow flurry weekend in May.
Willow Tree in May - Two Day Time lapse

To make your own ...

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Oh Oh! I was a bad boy....got put into Autopilot jail.

I was cruising along at the speed limit on autopilot, and it automatically changed to the left lane to overtake a semi carrying giant pipes. Quickly from behind came a car charging at 95-100 mph, so I quickly sped up to get around the semi....big mistake...Autopilot was not happy with me.  Probably I should have let the speeding butthole slow down behind me, but that would just propagate more Tesla hate.

For the rest of the trip until I stopped Autopilot could not be engaged.

Autopilot Jail


Monday, December 7, 2020

Dec 2020 Update - New Text Message App & Sentry Mode Updates

Got the December 2020 software Update last night. Huge improvements to text messaging. The overall improvements are:

  • Ability to view messages under Calls Menu
  • Double click to dismiss a message and one click to respond.
  • Trax v0.2 redesigned to be easier on the screen
  • Sentry Mode of last panic event is stored onto onboard memory  and can be download to USB  via the dashcam viewer.
Here are the release notes:
Text Messaging is now much easier

Continued: