Frequently Asked Questions

openpilot is an open source operating system for robotics that upgrades the driver assistance system in 300+ supported cars. It provides advanced features like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, and traffic-aware cruise control.

openpilot is completely free and open source. You only need to purchase the required hardware (comma four device and car harness) to get started.

openpilot supports over 300 different car models. Check the complete list of supported vehicles on our Cars Documentation.

You need four things: 1) A comma four device from comma.ai shop, 2) The openpilot software installed via openpilot.comma.ai, 3) A supported car, and 4) A car harness to connect the device to your car's OBD-II port.

Installation is simple: 1) Purchase a comma four device, 2) Install the car harness following our setup guide, 3) Use the URL openpilot.comma.ai to install the software. Detailed instructions are available in our documentation.

We offer four main branches: 1) release-mici (stable release version), 2) release-mici-staging (pre-release for early testing), 3) nightly (bleeding-edge development), and 4) nightly-dev (experimental features). URLs for each branch are provided in our documentation.

We welcome contributions! Join our Discord community, check our contributing guidelines, and submit pull requests. We also offer bounties for specific tasks.

The primary language is Python for the main openpilot codebase. The safety-critical components (panda) are written in C. All documentation is available at docs.comma.ai.

Our development resources include: Code documentation, Roadmap, Development tools, and our Discord server for community support.

Safety is our top priority. openpilot follows ISO 26262 guidelines with rigorous testing protocols. The safety-critical code is written in C with extensive unit tests. More details are available in our SAFETY.md documentation.

openpilot is released under the MIT License. This means you can use, modify, and distribute the software freely. The full license terms are available in the LICENSE file. Please note: THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY.

By default, openpilot logs road-facing cameras, CAN data, GPS, IMU, magnetometer, thermal sensors, crashes, and operating logs. Driver-facing camera and microphone are only logged with explicit opt-in. All data is used to improve the system. You can disable data collection in settings. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Check our troubleshooting guide for common issues. If you can't find a solution, ask for help in our Discord community or submit an issue on GitHub.

Bugs and issues should be reported on our GitHub repository. Please provide as much detail as possible including your car model, comma device version, and software branch.

Check our supported cars list to verify compatibility. For model-specific issues, search our Discord server or create a new issue on GitHub with your car model details.