Coding for TJA without the Quidzel?

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loudog3114

Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
11
I can't find any information on this... can I code my car for TJA without the quidzel dongle? Or will it throw a bunch of errors/not work? I know the dongle emulates a steering wheel touch. Just wondering what happens if I don't get it. I have a shop that will code it for much less than the dongle costs.
 
It will probably throw an error every time that you enable ACC (or possibly even turn the car on), since adding the option code for TJA makes the car check for all of the hardware. It will most definitely not engage TJA without the steering wheel touch hardware or an emulator such as the Quizdel.....
 
loudog3114 said:
I can't find any information on this... can I code my car for TJA without the quidzel dongle? Or will it throw a bunch of errors/not work? I know the dongle emulates a steering wheel touch. Just wondering what happens if I don't get it. I have a shop that will code it for much less than the dongle costs.

Besides needing 5AT

I think what you'll see is after the coding is "TJA failure". if you try to code the error message away you'll likely see "TJA cannot be activated". It likely will not function.
 
My Quidzel was connected badly the first time I connected it (loose wire, had to fiddle with it until it got in there right.).

Coded, and TJA was "available" but threw a huge error message on the dash and center screens when I tried to activate it and of course the car refused to let TJA work.

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Obviously, once I fiddled with the cable, it started working, without needing re-coding.
 
Until we actually get cars that reliably can drive themselves, it's kind of imprudent to not actually be paying attention. Take a recent Tesla thing where the guy was on 'autopilot' (really bad name at this time!), checking his dog when the car ran into the back of a parked police car...not the first time one of the Teslas failed to recognize a potentially deadly situation.

IMHO, there's just too much temptation to let your attention wander when you aren't required to actually be touching the critical control device in your vehicle. It's going to take a few more years before the sensors and tech (primarily software development) get to the stage where it's a set it, then take a nap type situation. Until then, the person needs to be ready right away to take over to handle some of those what-if situations. Things can happen really fast sometimes.
 
jadnashuanh said:
...the guy was on 'autopilot' (really bad name at this time!)...

I've always thought of "auto pilot" as an apt name, but that there's a misconception over what a real autopilot actually does. It's just a workload reduction device. It needs to be actively managed. It doesn't absolve the pilot of flying the plane. Just like in a Tesla, an airplane's auto pilot would allow a pilot to pet his dog, watch a video, take a nap, do a crossword, etc., but that's ill advised at best, and verboten for a working pilot.

I'm curious about the TJA. From the videos, I can't tell: does it decrease following distance in heavy traffic / creep mode (compared to the i3's active cruise at speed)? Compared to the radar cruise in our other cars, the i3 is very standoffish. Radar cruise gets me closer than comfortable when select a closer gap. But it's also better at detecting a sudden slow-down ahead.
 
The camera processing first must recognize the thing ahead is a vehicle, then, it uses its resolution to decide if the image is taking up more pixels (getting closer) or less (getting further away). So, a lot of that capability is based on the resolution of the camera as to whether the image is shrinking or expanding in its field of view. Throw in the processing required to analyze that, and to be safe, the gap must account for the processing delay.

With radar, it's constantly 'pinging' the area ahead, and determining the actual range is fairly easy and quick compared to the sample rate of the video imaging.

The vehicles trying to do real self-driving are using a combination of lasers and all sorts of other sensors to produce a near 3-D image, then process what it thinks it sees and then evaluate the threats or necessary actions to accomplish the goal of staying on the road, staying in lane, and not hitting anything while detecting a stop sign, cross-walk, or traffic light, and obviously other traffic that might impact its chosen path of operation.

Doing all of that in real-time when things can happen quickly is a real challenge at an affordable and reliable manner. We'll get there, eventually. We're a long ways from it right now. Prototypes don't necessarily represent marketable products people can afford and depend on. Processors and sensors get better and cheaper. The human brain, when applied, is a formidable thing when paying attention to the task...it's just that it's hard on a boring task to maintain that attention. The problem with today's aids is that first, people don't understand their limitations (or ignore them!), and expecting them capable of doing more and then finding themselves in danger when the thing doesn't do what a human would. Stories of people watching movies, reading a book, tending to their dog in the back seat, or snoozing, are just an accident waiting to happen. Each iteration gets better.
 
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