Flowpilot Rebooted
Fixing the fundamentals.
The F3
Developing flowpilot has been fun but also a constant battle in itself. We have been mostly silent for past two months because we were unsure if we could pull off what we promised, that’s running comma 3 capable software on any $100 smartphone. Today we are announcing that it’s possible and would soon be in your smartphone driving your car. This version of flowpiot will now be referred to as F3 (newest models, nav, wide camera, etc). The F2 is the revamped version of whats currently in the master branch and will have all the comma 2 capabilities.
All the hard work is now available behind this “magic“ toggle (enable F3) that converts your smartphone into a comma 3.
What’s new
Other than this, their have been a lot of fundamental issues that are fixed that make flowpilot good for everyday use. Let’s go through these one by one.
1) Onroad / Offroad states
Earlier development of flowpilot has been dedicated to validating the proof of concept. Since now it has been proved, the main focus would be to make it stable and capable for everyday use.
Until now, the app was always in ‘onroad‘ state. Now, it will only go into onroad state upon car ignition like the original openpilot. You can now leave your phone in the car without restarting/ closing the app. Based on ignition, the app will automatically go into offroad state and save battery and turn off screen.
Spoiler alert: the background changes with the time of day!
The big ass box is for displaying new updates/news/alerts regarding flowpilot.
This will also feature community news and other stuff.
2) Flicks
flicks is the new connect where you can watch your drives, share them with community for debug purposes or just.. fun.
Flicks will be linked to the account you login with. Now your phone can function as dashcam and you can revisit to view your earlier drives.
3) App optimizations
Until now the data processing pipeline in flowpilot has been naive which worked on cpu. Using this pipeline was out of question with new models because new model takes in two images that are double the size. This quickly became a huge bottleneck making us look for other ways. We finally implemented OpenCL based image processing inspired by openpilot as well as shifting other parts of pipeling like yuv→rgb conversions for ui on gpu too. This lead to highly improved performance and now a 50$ second hand phone is capable of running at least f2.
4) New backend
We are guilty about putting out such a lousy registration backend that immediately becomes a barrier for anybody new trying out the app. This has been fixed with the new backend. No `invalid token` errors now promise.
The login is important because it will link to flicks and other flowdrive based future services.
5) Added Lane Changes
Lane changes now work as normal openpilot.
6) Adaptive cruise control
ACC, that is controlled by radard would be now enabled by default.
7) Loggerd
loggerd will now be on by default. It will always save video and logs that you can play with later.
8) Overall code refactors
The refactoring makes wasy for other developers to understand and work with the codebase.
9) Sounds
Alerts will now play sounds as normal openpilot does.
10) UI improvements
The stretching of ui on phones has been fixed. Overall UI has been improved. Rounded buttons, backgrounds, etc
11) The flowpilot shop
Now the biggest update. Developing flowpilot is tough and requires significant amount of skill, time and effort to support and maintain the software. And right now, we are just two developers. With flicks and mapbox navigation in F3, the server costs are also a big thing to manage. We see a great potential in future of flowpilot if it’s implemented and supported by community correctly.
Some of the above features would only be available in flowpilot premium, which would be a paid app. The price point would be nothing high, but we expect it to be very low (lower than your netflix bills). The funds would directly go into development of flowpilot, it’s community and nothing else. Your support is necessary for the success of vision “driving your car with your smartphone“. It’s been 7 months since the first public release of the project and we have gone above and beyond to develop this. We have made multiple exceptional promises and took hard challenges publicly on our discord and have delivered them without fail. I think we have built enough trust. Your donation and app purchases will directly be proportional to the app quality and support.
Apart from this, there would always be a community version which will remain free and opensource forever.
More details soon
We will be starting a beta program for the new app. All the beta program members get everything paid free of cost.
12) Teaser
There’s more to come, cc @ RetroPilot ;)
Have a nice day, Don’t take too much stress, stay hydrated, have fun.
~ flowdrive.ai
Wow how do you register
Plus it says no more errors..I get errors and can't get passed register page
How to sign up for the beta/premium? Is it available yet?