The Future of FrogPilot

Why wouldn’t they?

Remember jailbreaking your iPhone? People did it to get things Apple wouldn’t give them. And Apple noticed! Over the years it took the best ideas from the jailbreak scene, like Control Center, copy and paste, multitasking, and Notification Center, and built them straight into iOS until hardly anyone bothered to jailbreak anymore. (Apple even let you recolor your app icons eventually, though still not quite enough to make your phone look like a frog…)

For years I expected comma to do the same thing with openpilot forks. And why wouldn’t they? Forks are basically a free proving ground. Features like “Always On Lateral”, which keeps steering assist on even when cruise control is off, have been tried and tested in forks for years, and drivers clearly want them. Bringing the best of that into openpilot would mean a better experience for everyone and support for more cars.

Instead, comma has gone the other way, and features forks have had for years still aren’t in stock openpilot. To be fair, comma has been talking about adding something like “Always On Lateral” for months now. But talking about a feature and shipping one are two very different things.

So I’ve stopped waiting. If something would make FrogPilot better, I’m not going to keep hoping it shows up in openpilot someday. I’m just going to build it.

Built for everyone’s car

I’ve always been upfront about not wanting to work on features I can’t personally test. FrogPilot is a hobby project, and when you’re just one guy with one car in the driveway, you just don’t have the resources or time to thoroughly test everything. So FrogPilot ends up working great on Lexus/Toyota and, well, a little less great everywhere else.

FrogPilot 1.0 is where that changes. The goal is a fork that works great on everyone’s car, built on everything I’ve learned in five years of developing for openpilot.

The secret weapon is an automated testing bench. It replays real drives shared by FrogPilot users against my changes, so I can add support for features, fix features, and improve tunes on cars I don’t own and have never even sat in. It can’t tell me exactly how a change feels from behind the wheel, which is what Testing and Staging are for, but “can’t personally test it” isn’t the dead end it used to be. A setup like that wasn’t realistic a few years ago, but modern tools and AI have completely changed what a solo developer can pull off.

Every drive shared with “Share FrogPilot Data” turned on gives the bench more to work with. So if you’ve left it on, thank you! You’re helping me make FrogPilot drive better for you!

Simpler by design

FrogPilot has over 200 features, and over the years the settings grew right along with them. Some toggles are either very niche or never really got used, while others are so popular that almost nobody ever turns them off.

So for 1.0, the niche and unused toggles are going away, and the most popular ones are becoming standard features that just work out of the box. This isn’t about taking things away for the sake of it. It’s about making FrogPilot easier to enjoy, easier to set up, and easier to understand, whether it’s your first drive or your thousandth. Just a heads-up, when a toggle becomes a standard feature, it’s on for everyone, even if you had it turned off before.

That said, I’m only one guy with my own set of expectations, and I’ll be the first to admit I can get this wrong. I might assume nobody uses something, decide it isn’t needed anymore, or straight up forget a feature exists. So if a feature or toggle you love goes missing, don’t hesitate to let me know in the Discord!

The new FrogPilot website is the blueprint

The new FrogPilot website is a good preview of what I’m aiming for with 1.0. Every part of it was refined until it was right, down to the view through the windshield on the home page, which is drawn from my own car. Did the website really need my exact car, inside and out? Probably not. Did I still go check the paint code on my door jamb to get the color just right? You bet I did. I may have also spent more time perfecting how a leaf drifts off a tree than any reasonable person ever should.

FrogPilot gets that same treatment. Every feature is thoroughly tested and refined, and FrogPilot 1.0 ships feature-complete.

Built on openpilot 1.0

The current “FrogPilot” branch is built on openpilot 0.9.7, which is over two years old at this point. I’ve cherry-picked a handful of newer openpilot improvements into it along the way, but FrogPilot 1.0 starts fresh on openpilot 1.0, so it gets everything comma has built since, not just the pieces I decided to carry over.

comma’s current roadmap for openpilot 1.0 includes driver monitoring that can detect when you’re falling asleep and a fully end-to-end driving policy, and whatever makes it into openpilot 1.0 makes it into FrogPilot 1.0 too.

What’s not coming along

Not everything is making the trip to 1.0, and two changes are worth calling out.

First, the “Model Manager” is getting a serious cleanup. Having 100+ models sitting there that almost nobody uses just creates confusion, so going forward it only includes the default model, the top 5 favorite models, the stock openpilot model, and any models released during that FrogPilot version.

Second, “Navigate on openpilot” isn’t coming along either. comma just started bringing navigation back with an early alpha, though, so if it makes it into openpilot 1.0, it’ll make it into FrogPilot 1.0 too.

If you’d rather hang on to the old models or features like these, that’s exactly what the “FrogPilot-Old” branch is for.

How FrogPilot 1.0 gets to you

FrogPilot’s releases follow comma’s openpilot release cycle, and every update makes its way to your car through three branches.

• “FrogPilot-Testing” is the alpha, and it gets new features as soon as they’re finished. It’s the least tested branch, so expect bugs!

• “FrogPilot-Staging” is the beta. It runs FrogPilot on comma’s upcoming openpilot release, and it’s updated as soon as comma starts testing it. It usually gets one to three weeks of testing before it becomes the release.

• “FrogPilot” is the release branch. It’s updated the Saturday after comma’s official openpilot release, once it’s been through Staging, and that’s exactly when FrogPilot 1.0 lands.

Already on the “FrogPilot” branch? As long as “Settings → Software → Automatically Update FrogPilot” is still on, which it is by default, you don’t need to do a thing. Your device updates to 1.0 on its own.

Happy with the FrogPilot you’re running today, or not ready to let go of something that’s changing? Switch to the “FrogPilot-Old” branch under “Settings → Software → Target Branch” before 1.0 lands. It’ll stick around for as long as people are still using it.

Your device isn’t going anywhere

FrogPilot 1.0 is fully supported on the comma 3, comma 3X, and comma four.

Still rocking a comma 3? comma moved it to its own long-term support track so it could focus on the comma 3X, but FrogPilot still runs on it, and that’s not changing with 1.0.

Come along for the ride

Want to watch FrogPilot 1.0 come together? Hop on “FrogPilot-Testing”, where the rebuild lands first. Just remember what I said about bugs! And if anything acts up, let me know in the Discord. I can’t fix what I don’t know about!

The road to FrogPilot 1.0 is already underway. See you out there!