Topic: Mobileye C2-270 Failure

[X-Traction]

As I've mentioned a few times in this forum that about 18 months ago (search for mobileye), and at considerable expense, I had a Mobileye C2-270 installed in the Escape Hybrid.  Well, the thing has failed and is out of warranty.  It was causing all sorts of strange instrument problems.  Like no power to the radio, no turn signal clicks, TPMS warnings, door ajar warnings.  Even with the installer giving me a break on the labor, a replacement will come to almost $1500. 

So I have to withdraw my recommendation of this device. While it's great to have, I can't regard it as worth the expense.

There's something called iOnRoad, which is an app that uses a smartphone to track clearance to vehicles ahead.  However the Mobileye did much more than that, such as lane departure warning.  Hopefully soon there will be apps that tie into the CAN bus (perhaps using a bluetooth ELM-27) that provide these other features without adding to dashboard clutter -- and without costing a fortune.

[rrocket]

As I've mentioned a few times in this forum that about 18 months ago (search for mobileye), and at considerable expense, I had a Mobileye C2-270 installed in the Escape Hybrid.  Well, the thing has failed and is out of warranty.  It was causing all sorts of strange instrument problems.  Like no power to the radio, no turn signal clicks, TPMS warnings, door ajar warnings.  Even with the installer giving me a break on the labor, a replacement will come to almost $1500. 

So I have to withdraw my recommendation of this device. While it's great to have, I can't regard it as worth the expense.

There's something called iOnRoad, which is an app that uses a smartphone to track clearance to vehicles ahead.  However the Mobileye did much more than that, such as lane departure warning.  Hopefully soon there will be apps that tie into the CAN bus (perhaps using a bluetooth ELM-27) that provide these other features without adding to dashboard clutter -- and without costing a fortune.

Bummer..that sucks.  Perhaps write a letter to the manufacturer?

At any rate...I don't see much value in such a system...FOR ME.

[X-Traction]

The manufacturer is being .cc'd with my correspondence with the installer.

While looking for information on similar products, I came across three enhanced dashcams:

Soundstream DriveAlert

Vacron VVA-CBE05A

Boyo VTR17LD

While Mobileye has forward collision alert, lane departure warning, cyclist and pedestrian warning, speed limit sign recognition and headlight dimming functions, the Boyo product has only lane departure warning, and the Vacron and Soundstream have only lane departure warning and forward collision alert.

But these have the dashcam function, which Mobileye does not.  On the other hand, the Mobileye can be fed to a smartphone, which none of these can do.

A huge advantage is that while the Mobileye currently costs almost $1000, the Soundstream is about $80, with the other two running about $200.

It remains to be seen whether the fca and ldw functions on these units work as well as on the Mobileye, on which they were impressive.  I can do without the speed limit warning, since I'm not an excessive speeder and it was always reading exit ramp speed signs and freaking out.  I didn't have the headlight function wired up.

Reliability is also a question, but obviously I'm not impressed by the expensive Mobileye.

The Mobileye requires professional installation, at significant cost, while these do not.  It would require a little car wiring expertise to hook the Soundstream up to the turn signal wires.

The Soundstream will also start recording when the car is shut off and it senses an impact.  To enable that requires more wiring to get 12V power with ignition off, and risks draining the battery.

As to "needing" something like this, I'd venture that assumes one has total control over everything that might happen while driving.  It's like my friend with half worn all-season tires on his AWD suv, who, when I suggested he get winter tires, responded that he drives slowly so he won't be in an accident.

Edit: adding the Optian Advanced Driver Assistance System and Audiovox LDWS100. Both around $600.  It's interesting that these plus the Soundstream use GPS to determine vehicle speed, while the Mobileye gets it off the CAN bus. Probably that is superior since the Mobileye can tell if you are changing speed or using the brakes, and modifies the calculations accordingly. That should make the Mobileye more accurate.

Such systems have been proven to reduce accidents.  Maybe there should be an insurance discount for having one.

[rrocket]

As to "needing" something like this, I'd venture that assumes one has total control over everything that might happen while driving.  It's like my friend with half worn all-season tires on his AWD suv, who, when I suggested he get winter tires, responded that he drives slowly so he won't be in an accident.

But the driver still has to intervene and react to the alarms (unless it's a fully autonomous braking, swerving system)...and there's also the physics limitation.  If it takes your vehicle 100 feet to stop from 100km/h, if someone/something pops out at any distance less than that, there's nothing you can do to avoid the object (unless you can swerve and be sure you won't hit anything during your swerve).  On the flip side, if you can't react to something beyond 100 feet in sufficient time...maybe you should be paying better attention while you drive.  Or stick to public transit.

The first rule I ever learned while racing was "look well ahead". 

[X-Traction]

As to "needing" something like this, I'd venture that assumes one has total control over everything that might happen while driving.  It's like my friend with half worn all-season tires on his AWD suv, who, when I suggested he get winter tires, responded that he drives slowly so he won't be in an accident.

But the driver still has to intervene and react to the alarms (unless it's a fully autonomous braking, swerving system)...and there's also the physics limitation.  If it takes your vehicle 100 feet to stop from 100km/h, if someone/something pops out at any distance less than that, there's nothing you can do to avoid the object (unless you can swerve and be sure you won't hit anything during your swerve).  On the flip side, if you can't react to something beyond 100 feet in sufficient time...maybe you should be paying better attention while you drive.  Or stick to public transit.

The first rule I ever learned while racing was "look well ahead".

Between your lines is the simple message that you're a superior driver who does not need such gizmos.  I can't argue with you about that.

[X-Traction]

Of interest is this discussion by Tesla owners about the Mobileye:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/archive/index.php/t-12351.html

[rrocket]

As to "needing" something like this, I'd venture that assumes one has total control over everything that might happen while driving.  It's like my friend with half worn all-season tires on his AWD suv, who, when I suggested he get winter tires, responded that he drives slowly so he won't be in an accident.

But the driver still has to intervene and react to the alarms (unless it's a fully autonomous braking, swerving system)...and there's also the physics limitation.  If it takes your vehicle 100 feet to stop from 100km/h, if someone/something pops out at any distance less than that, there's nothing you can do to avoid the object (unless you can swerve and be sure you won't hit anything during your swerve).  On the flip side, if you can't react to something beyond 100 feet in sufficient time...maybe you should be paying better attention while you drive.  Or stick to public transit.

The first rule I ever learned while racing was "look well ahead".

Between your lines is the simple message that you're a superior driver who does not need such gizmos.  I can't argue with you about that.

I have no idea if I'm a better driver than you.  My point is unless it's an autonomous system that does the braking/swerving for you...you still have to react.  Whether it's visually to the object in your lane...or to a buzzer/warning light of a system.  If your reaction is late/poor to either...the collision is still likely to occur.

[X-Traction]

As to "needing" something like this, I'd venture that assumes one has total control over everything that might happen while driving.  It's like my friend with half worn all-season tires on his AWD suv, who, when I suggested he get winter tires, responded that he drives slowly so he won't be in an accident.

But the driver still has to intervene and react to the alarms (unless it's a fully autonomous braking, swerving system)...and there's also the physics limitation.  If it takes your vehicle 100 feet to stop from 100km/h, if someone/something pops out at any distance less than that, there's nothing you can do to avoid the object (unless you can swerve and be sure you won't hit anything during your swerve).  On the flip side, if you can't react to something beyond 100 feet in sufficient time...maybe you should be paying better attention while you drive.  Or stick to public transit.

The first rule I ever learned while racing was "look well ahead".

Between your lines is the simple message that you're a superior driver who does not need such gizmos.  I can't argue with you about that.

I have no idea if I'm a better driver than you.  My point is unless it's an autonomous system that does the braking/swerving for you...you still have to react.  Whether it's visually to the object in your lane...or to a buzzer/warning light of a system.  If your reaction is late/poor to either...the collision is still likely to occur.

If I compare a car with or without these systems, to whatever extent they are implemented, it's hard to imagine a car with the system having as many (or more) accidents than the car without.  The statistics I've seen and heard back this up.

It's also consistent with "layer" theory.  The more layers of measures you have to accomplish something, the higher the chances of achieving it.  Like, if you want to prevent terrorist attacks, you don't just put up a bunch of chainlink fences.  These driver aids just add a layer (of varying capability).

After I fell asleep driving, the Mobileye was just one of about 6 things I put in place to prevent it from ever happening again.

[rrocket]

^^Please provide the statistics.  Would be interested to read them.

[X-Traction]

^^Please provide the statistics.  Would be interested to read them.

These articles have statistics:
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=71916
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0317.pdf

The company that installed my system is just finishing a pilot test of about 120 taxis in the Vancouver area.  The taxi companies have reported something like a 25% reduction in accidents for the cars with Mobileye.  For taxi companies, that's a big deal.

High-end production cars are steadily adopting such systems.  I could not find any evidence that the systems have no benefit or result in more accidents.  Since this is so counter-intuitive, I'd be interested in an explanation of why you seem to feel the systems are ineffective.

[rrocket]

Well I'm not sure that I'd take the word of the CEO of MobilEye as conclusive evidence that it works as advertised.  In addition, he somewhat backs up what i say...there's a small window in how one reacts that can prevent the accident (~3 seconds)...especially if the system is more passive than fully autonomous.

How autonomous is MobileEye in your application?  I didn't think it was fully autonomous, but Litman says "It can even stop the car if the driver doesn't react quickly enough -- and all this at high speeds."  Was he referring to MobilEye..or just the technology in general?  If you're driving 100km/h and something is in your way, will it brake the car to a dead stop safely while keeping it in your lane?

[X-Traction]

The aftermarket systems such as the Mobileye C2-270 provide only visual and/or audible warnings.  They don't exert any control over the car.

As you know, ADAS systems that intervene to brake and even steer are being installed in some high end cars.  Other systems such as drowsy driver detection have been installed in some cars, such as some Mercedes, for a few years now.

Perhaps the key value to the warning-only systems is that the warning is determined by the situation.  The Mobileye, as the fanciest of the aftermarket systems, keeps track of your speed and whether you are speeding up or slowing down, whether you've applied the brakes, the distance to the vehicle ahead, and whether it is changing speed, and modifies both the timing and the urgency of the warning.  It even determines if the vehicle ahead is displaying brake lights.  It calculates all this stuff a bazillion times per second, and it's never distracted.

Of course, collisions are pretty rare given the complexities of the driving environment and the poor driving habits of many. I think these systems will prove to be extremely effective at eliminating most of the residue of accidents that do happen.  Even to the best drivers.  It's interesting to speculate what that could do to car racing.

I believe that Volvo and a few others are already installing systems that will brake to a complete halt, presumably within any lane detected. 

[rrocket]

The aftermarket systems such as the Mobileye C2-270 provide only visual and/or audible warnings.  They don't exert any control over the car.

As you know, ADAS systems that intervene to brake and even steer are being installed in some high end cars.  Other systems such as drowsy driver detection have been installed in some cars, such as some Mercedes, for a few years now.

Perhaps the key value to the warning-only systems is that the warning is determined by the situation.  The Mobileye, as the fanciest of the aftermarket systems, keeps track of your speed and whether you are speeding up or slowing down, whether you've applied the brakes, the distance to the vehicle ahead, and whether it is changing speed, and modifies both the timing and the urgency of the warning.  It even determines if the vehicle ahead is displaying brake lights.  It calculates all this stuff a bazillion times per second, and it's never distracted.

Of course, collisions are pretty rare given the complexities of the driving environment and the poor driving habits of many. I think these systems will prove to be extremely effective at eliminating most of the residue of accidents that do happen.  Even to the best drivers.  It's interesting to speculate what that could do to car racing.

I believe that Volvo and a few others are already installing systems that will brake to a complete halt, presumably within any lane detected.

I wonder how it takes into account the braking performance of a given car to determine what a safe distance is to sound the alarms?  For example, my 911 could brake far quicker than a full size SUV.  I would have to imagine there must be some way for it to sound the alarm for the heavier, lesser performance vehicle.

Are those parameters that you input manually?

[X-Traction]

The aftermarket systems such as the Mobileye C2-270 provide only visual and/or audible warnings.  They don't exert any control over the car.

As you know, ADAS systems that intervene to brake and even steer are being installed in some high end cars.  Other systems such as drowsy driver detection have been installed in some cars, such as some Mercedes, for a few years now.

Perhaps the key value to the warning-only systems is that the warning is determined by the situation.  The Mobileye, as the fanciest of the aftermarket systems, keeps track of your speed and whether you are speeding up or slowing down, whether you've applied the brakes, the distance to the vehicle ahead, and whether it is changing speed, and modifies both the timing and the urgency of the warning.  It even determines if the vehicle ahead is displaying brake lights.  It calculates all this stuff a bazillion times per second, and it's never distracted.

Of course, collisions are pretty rare given the complexities of the driving environment and the poor driving habits of many. I think these systems will prove to be extremely effective at eliminating most of the residue of accidents that do happen.  Even to the best drivers.  It's interesting to speculate what that could do to car racing.

I believe that Volvo and a few others are already installing systems that will brake to a complete halt, presumably within any lane detected.

I wonder how it takes into account the braking performance of a given car to determine what a safe distance is to sound the alarms?  For example, my 911 could brake far quicker than a full size SUV.  I would have to imagine there must be some way for it to sound the alarm for the heavier, lesser performance vehicle.

Are those parameters that you input manually?

I'm not party to the Mobileye's code, so this is speculation.  The Mobileye calibration process uses software on a laptop that is disconnected after setup.  This process starts with identifying the vehicle.  Since the Mobileye is also used for all sorts of vehicles including motorhomes and heavy transport trucks, it seems very logical that different stopping distances could be used for different cars.  This would be set up by the installer, not the owner.

Among the things the Mobileye monitors are whether the windshield wipers are in use and the ambient light level.  The wiper signal could be used to indicate reduced visibility.  Whether or not it does, it would be easy to change the calculations for stopping distances taking the light and weather conditions into account.  And if that can be done, the vehicle type/performance factor would be handled the same way.

A secondary reason I bought the Mobileye was that the Escape Hybrid is reputed to have unimpressive stopping distances.  (The collision detection/avoidance has a second "urban" mode for slow speed traffic. This mode is very useful in stop-and-go traffic, which seems to be the prevailing driving environment in the Vancouver area nowadays.)

The Mobileye and the enhanced dash cams I mentioned above, can be tuned by the user to alter the timing/sensitivity of warnings.  While the dash cam's don't have "deeper" settings to modify to begin with, those settings on the Mobileye are not available to the user.  There's lots of literature on the Internet about the Mobileye if you want to check it out.

[X-Traction]

Approaching it as an interesting puzzle, I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with the Mobileye.  So far I can't find anything wrong with the 6 hookups to the vehicle's wiring (power, ignition, ground, CAN high and CAN low, wipers), and I can't find any shorts.

Besides the Mobileye itself not working, the vehicle systems affected were: false TPMS warning, false door ajar warning, false parking brake warning, radio would not turn on, turn signals worked but there was no dash indicator or audible clicks.  Reviewing wiring diagrams revealed no "hard" commonality between these, such as you would expect if a short or something was interfering with just that set of systems.

However, all of them connect, sooner or later, to the CAN bus.  As does the Mobileye.  So I've come to suspect the Mobileye is either spraying static onto the CAN bus, or sending bogus packets that are being interpreted as commands altering the behavior of those instruments.

The Escape has two CAN buses, one is medium speed and the other is high speed.  The high speed network connects to critical vehicle systems such as the airbags and engine management.  The medium speed network connects to accessories such as all the ones having problems.   (Both of these networks are represented at the OBD-II connector.)  Since the Mobileye connects to the medium speed network, I'm not worried about the Mobileye affecting important vehicle systems.

The main Mobileye sensor is the video camera.  The other way the Mobileye gets data is from the CAN bus (speed, turn signals, brakes etc.).  The only signal used by the Mobileye not on the Escape's CAN bus is the wiper signal.  Since the C2-270 can be hooked up in analog mode for cars that lack a CAN bus, the analog wiper wire seems to be connected to the wiper switch to get that signal.  Between the Mobileye and the CAN bus is an interpreter to allow the Mobileye and the CAN bus to talk to each other.

The Mobileye can be set up to control the headlights, which would give it a reason to be able to send data to the CAN bus.  But I don't have that set up on mine.  The Mobileye also is not capable of applying the brakes or steering.  So the Mobileye should have no reason to send packets into the CAN bus.  However, if the interpreter went awry, this could be happening or it could just be putting static on the bus.

You would think that if the problem was static, the systems affected would not always be exactly the same set.  So that points a finger more toward a consistent set of bogus packets.

Even though it won't work anyway, the Mobileye can be connected to the vehicle and powered up without causing a problem, IF I unplug the cable that goes from the Mobileye control module to the camera module.  I understand the CAN interpreter is in the camera module.

[X-Traction]

I contacted Mobileye to see if troubleshooting could isolate the problem to one part, and if Mobileye would sell such a part.  Mobileye maintains the entire system must be replaced, entirely at my cost.  They are on good grounds as it was out of warranty.  But on the other hand given the cost, their product reliability should be better and their customer support is lacking.  If these things fail every 18 months, keeping them working would cost almost as much as insurance.

So, I've ordered a Soundstream Drive Assist system.  Not as capable as a Mobileye, but it has the functions I want, it's also a dash cam, it's only $70US, and I can install it myself.

[rrocket]

I contacted Mobileye to see if troubleshooting could isolate the problem to one part, and if Mobileye would sell such a part.  Mobileye maintains the entire system must be replaced, entirely at my cost.  They are on good grounds as it was out of warranty.  But on the other hand given the cost, their product reliability should be better and their customer support is lacking.  If these things fail every 18 months, keeping them working would cost almost as much as insurance.

So, I've ordered a Soundstream Drive Assist system.  Not as capable as a Mobileye, but it has the functions I want, it's also a dash cam, it's only $70US, and I can install it myself.

Yea, that's unacceptable.  Not that it broke (things wear out)...but that the whole system needs to be replaced...especially at a cost that I consider to be premium.

I'll be interested to hear about your new system once you get it up and running....a comparison of sorts.