Okay, this was gratifying to read, but ... can't you wedge CarPlay onto this thing? I'd want a victory lap with root doing at least something. Bad apple on car boot, there's lots of options here!
Yep. I didn't get into it in the article, but in reality the previous owner had already (accidentally) thrown the SD card in the trash, and was pretty much asking me if they want me for them to go digging through their trash to find it, and I told them not to worry about it.
I’m a little confused by the description of that interaction - why wouldn’t you take the SD card? Did they want to charge extra for it? Seems like even a 10 year old map (plus apparently other functionality) is something you’d want.
In any case, glad it took you on the wild goose chase that led to the write up!
I started using an "engineering notebook" for things like that. They are called other things in other lines of work or school (lab notebook, captain's log, ...). In an actual engineering notebook, you would use a sewn binding where you can't add or remove pages, the pages are numbered, you have an index in the front, entries are made in strictly chronological order, you'd have someone else witness and sign pages, draw a diagonal line across empty areas so you can't remove things, only cross things out with a single line, etc. All that because you might need to prove you invented something and other legal CYA reasons. Most of these requirements, you don't need for personal projects, though. But the things that are useful: keeping track of projects, what settings you've tried, what the results were, and so on. That way you don't have to reproduce it from scratch again later. "What settings did I need use to create the gerber files in kicad for manufacturing? How did I set ___ in the oscilloscope? What parts did I use to make that thing? What things did I wish I had checked last time? Where did I put those files?" You can also print things out and tape them in for reference.
My 2014 vehicle stopped updating it's time automatically a few years ago. I think some cellular technology was phased out or perhaps the cellular contract GM had for vehicle connectivity expired.
Either way I just manually set the time twice a year now - I guess I'm thankful it still has that option.
When I was playing around with the radio in my girlfriends vehicle there was no option to set manually on the clock screen. Seems like a pretty shortsighted move to not allow that.
I had a luxury car from 2001 where the time could not be manually changed, only set to specific time zones. Of course, all the time zone rules had long diverged from its rule set, and it had to be changed four times a year to show the correct time.
This car also inexplicably forced you to manually choose a country, and then a time zone, despite having a GPS that already knew exactly where you were and already had chosen a previous time zone.
Carplay is nice but I would have settled for a non-luxury "clock set" button.
As an Arizona resident, by recent Honda CRV's clock is off by an hour for half the year. Since usually the carplay display overrides the clock, it's no big deal, but it cracks me up that, despite being a professional programmer, I have yet to figure out how to set it correctly
The difficulty of setting a VCR's clock was a meme in the 1990s, and I can attest, justifiably so.
But at least it was possible. The clock setting being impossible without a proprietary and easily lost or destroyed SD card is pretty good, but we can do better. It could be just impossible to fix a wrong clock. Truly that would be the apotheosis of user unfriendly design.
My very technical and hands on father used to have us set the VCR clock, the controls were in a tiny compartment under a flap that required either small fingers, or very careful manipulation with the point of a protractor or something.
We went from difficult to manipulate buttons through to multi-function buttons where controls get hidden through some incomprehensible maze of menu options, to now where it sometimes feels lucky if you even get an option to manually set the time at all.
I'm reminded of an old commercial depicting kids taunting another kid by asking "What time is it at Billy's house? 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock!" Might have been a Blockbuster commercial? I can't remember.
In 1974 when I was an medical intern at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Hospital, ALL the round analog wall clocks with hands in all 26 operating rooms were correct six months a year: there was NO provision for automatically advancing/moving them back when DST started/ended, nor did anyone do it manually.
I was just wondering the same thing for a 2013 Honda Civic - has the screen's (the "head unit"?) firmware been fully dumped and reverse engineered?
How realistic would it be to run fully custom firmware there, and even communicate over usb - for example, if I had a pi running in the car, and it used the usb connection to show things on the built-in display?
I'd love to pwn the head unit in my 2014 Honda CR-V just so I can stop it from sending a "Play" command every time a phone associates with the Bluetooth and the audio system was left "on".
It's probably easier to just buy an aftermarket head unit. The only thing you'll need to confirm is that it supports features you care about e.g. steering wheel controls.
Pretty awesome write up to explain their journey in it all.
I suspect a bunch of car head units will face new problems in the spring when many Canadian provinces will no longer change their clocks. The units won't get updated DST rules.
my skoda simply has an entry in the menu: DST? which puts the clock one hour ahead or behind.
This posts remind me that when i will be in the market for a new van i will have to decide to get the trafic or the vivaro, solely on the head unit they use (renault ones have had incredibly stupid design decisions for years, on ergonomics alone, even more in firmware)
> The system had DRM checks which rejected SD cards without the correct CID (a unique ID burned into the card) and files with signatures based on that specific CID, so I couldn't even copy the files to a blank SD card.
FWIW, there are grey market sites that will sell you an SD burned with a custom CID so you can clone an SD card with this kind of copy protection. It sounds like in this case maybe he could've gotten away with an empty maps card + menu definitions file.
Okay, this was gratifying to read, but ... can't you wedge CarPlay onto this thing? I'd want a victory lap with root doing at least something. Bad apple on car boot, there's lots of options here!
Awesome write up. Love it. And good thing you documented it, since in half a year you'll need it again.
My takeaway: You should have just gotten the SD card and trusted the previous owner. Sometimes "simple users" do know. ^^
Yep. I didn't get into it in the article, but in reality the previous owner had already (accidentally) thrown the SD card in the trash, and was pretty much asking me if they want me for them to go digging through their trash to find it, and I told them not to worry about it.
“No worries, I’ll hit HN’s front page instead” - much more fun!
Nice writeup. But IIUC you can change it so that it automatically updates the time every 6 months?
I’m a little confused by the description of that interaction - why wouldn’t you take the SD card? Did they want to charge extra for it? Seems like even a 10 year old map (plus apparently other functionality) is something you’d want.
In any case, glad it took you on the wild goose chase that led to the write up!
That’s the part I don’t get: just take the damned card, you never know. Worst case: hey, free SD card!
> And good thing you documented it, since in half a year you'll need it again.
Man this is too real for personal projects. I really need to write down my findings and thoughts more for future me.
I started using an "engineering notebook" for things like that. They are called other things in other lines of work or school (lab notebook, captain's log, ...). In an actual engineering notebook, you would use a sewn binding where you can't add or remove pages, the pages are numbered, you have an index in the front, entries are made in strictly chronological order, you'd have someone else witness and sign pages, draw a diagonal line across empty areas so you can't remove things, only cross things out with a single line, etc. All that because you might need to prove you invented something and other legal CYA reasons. Most of these requirements, you don't need for personal projects, though. But the things that are useful: keeping track of projects, what settings you've tried, what the results were, and so on. That way you don't have to reproduce it from scratch again later. "What settings did I need use to create the gerber files in kicad for manufacturing? How did I set ___ in the oscilloscope? What parts did I use to make that thing? What things did I wish I had checked last time? Where did I put those files?" You can also print things out and tape them in for reference.
My 2014 vehicle stopped updating it's time automatically a few years ago. I think some cellular technology was phased out or perhaps the cellular contract GM had for vehicle connectivity expired.
Either way I just manually set the time twice a year now - I guess I'm thankful it still has that option.
When I was playing around with the radio in my girlfriends vehicle there was no option to set manually on the clock screen. Seems like a pretty shortsighted move to not allow that.
> the cellular contract GM had for vehicle connectivity expired
2022, I got a letter saying that my car's crash response SOS system will stop working because FCC is retiring the 3G spectrum it is using.
The car clock however is synced to the GPS instead.
If GM used NTP instead of GPS, then it makes sense that it stopped working arbitrarily around 2022.
I had a luxury car from 2001 where the time could not be manually changed, only set to specific time zones. Of course, all the time zone rules had long diverged from its rule set, and it had to be changed four times a year to show the correct time.
This car also inexplicably forced you to manually choose a country, and then a time zone, despite having a GPS that already knew exactly where you were and already had chosen a previous time zone.
Carplay is nice but I would have settled for a non-luxury "clock set" button.
My 2025 Toyota has two clocks, one from Toyota, one from Android auto.
The Toyota one requires selling your driving data to insurance companies.to update the tzoffset based on location.
And so two clocks on the dashboard are off this week until I can remember where the dst adjustment is in the settings.
Could be planned obsolescence.
Add to falsehoods programmers believe about time:
It can be changed without the SD card in the car radio.
As an Arizona resident, by recent Honda CRV's clock is off by an hour for half the year. Since usually the carplay display overrides the clock, it's no big deal, but it cracks me up that, despite being a professional programmer, I have yet to figure out how to set it correctly
The difficulty of setting a VCR's clock was a meme in the 1990s, and I can attest, justifiably so.
But at least it was possible. The clock setting being impossible without a proprietary and easily lost or destroyed SD card is pretty good, but we can do better. It could be just impossible to fix a wrong clock. Truly that would be the apotheosis of user unfriendly design.
My very technical and hands on father used to have us set the VCR clock, the controls were in a tiny compartment under a flap that required either small fingers, or very careful manipulation with the point of a protractor or something.
We went from difficult to manipulate buttons through to multi-function buttons where controls get hidden through some incomprehensible maze of menu options, to now where it sometimes feels lucky if you even get an option to manually set the time at all.
I'm reminded of an old commercial depicting kids taunting another kid by asking "What time is it at Billy's house? 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock!" Might have been a Blockbuster commercial? I can't remember.
In 1974 when I was an medical intern at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Hospital, ALL the round analog wall clocks with hands in all 26 operating rooms were correct six months a year: there was NO provision for automatically advancing/moving them back when DST started/ended, nor did anyone do it manually.
It's crazy they didn't have a centralized clock system in a facility like that. What a thing to scrimp on.
Love it! Slightly more elegant than my solution: a piece of electrical tape over the clock.
not quite as difficult, but reminds me of a fix I found on reddit for Subaru Outback parasitic drain: https://www.reddit.com/r/subaru/comments/1evozzf/dead_batter...
I was just wondering the same thing for a 2013 Honda Civic - has the screen's (the "head unit"?) firmware been fully dumped and reverse engineered?
How realistic would it be to run fully custom firmware there, and even communicate over usb - for example, if I had a pi running in the car, and it used the usb connection to show things on the built-in display?
I'd love to pwn the head unit in my 2014 Honda CR-V just so I can stop it from sending a "Play" command every time a phone associates with the Bluetooth and the audio system was left "on".
It's probably easier to just buy an aftermarket head unit. The only thing you'll need to confirm is that it supports features you care about e.g. steering wheel controls.
Probably more difficult than hijacking the display with the pi. But that's just a vibe.
Pretty awesome write up to explain their journey in it all.
I suspect a bunch of car head units will face new problems in the spring when many Canadian provinces will no longer change their clocks. The units won't get updated DST rules.
which is mind boggling.
my skoda simply has an entry in the menu: DST? which puts the clock one hour ahead or behind.
This posts remind me that when i will be in the market for a new van i will have to decide to get the trafic or the vivaro, solely on the head unit they use (renault ones have had incredibly stupid design decisions for years, on ergonomics alone, even more in firmware)
That's this fall - happened a couple of days ago.
The Renault Latitude is actually Samsung car right?
The French auto industry... has always been "Special"
> The system had DRM checks which rejected SD cards without the correct CID (a unique ID burned into the card) and files with signatures based on that specific CID, so I couldn't even copy the files to a blank SD card.
FWIW, there are grey market sites that will sell you an SD burned with a custom CID so you can clone an SD card with this kind of copy protection. It sounds like in this case maybe he could've gotten away with an empty maps card + menu definitions file.
There is code execution exploit in Samsung SD/eMMC firmware which, among other things, will allow changing the CID