PNW Pilot — openpilot for the Pacific Northwest

PNW Pilot is a personal production distribution of openpilot, built on the xnor-tech fork for its legacy Tesla (Raven) support and tuned for one job: driving the PNW, especially the I-5 corridor between Seattle, WA and central-western Oregon. It is tuned and tested for two cars — a 2021 Tesla Model S (Raven, HW3) and a 2025 Ford F-150 Lightning — with one comma 3X that is physically moved between them.

Standing on the shoulders of the openpilot community

Nearly every mechanism in this fork was invented by someone else first — comma.ai, xnor-tech, sunnypilot, BluePilot, FrogPilot, pfeiferj/mapd, and more. See CREDITS.md for the people behind each feature. If you like something here, they built the idea; we ported and tuned it.

📋 Full feature list: PNW-PILOT-FEATURES.md — every feature, what it does, why it exists, its param, and when it landed.

commaai/openpilot          upstream
  └─ xnor-tech/openpilot   adds full legacy Tesla HW1/HW2/HW3 (Raven) support
       └─ dirkpetersen/pnw-pilot   ← this distribution (Pacific Northwest)

Focus

• Region: map data downloads automatically for whatever state (or, outside the US, country) you're currently in, the moment you're somewhere uncovered — no fixed default region, no settings page required, works anywhere you actually drive.
• Drives: predominantly Seattle ↔ central-western Oregon on I-5; curve and longitudinal behavior is calibrated against real drive logs from that corridor (plus I-90 Snoqualmie Pass and US-12).
• Vehicles: shaped entirely around two cars — a 2021 Tesla Model S Long Range Plus (Raven class, HW3; the primary I-5 car) and a 2025 Ford F-150 Lightning. Car-specific code is fingerprint-gated, so it stays inert on the other car.
• Development: all code is written by Claude Code and validated by the Gemini MCP server running inside Claude Code.
• Hardware: only the comma 3X is tested. The comma four is completely untested and will likely not work.

What PNW Pilot adds on top of xnor / upstream

Speed control

• CES — Conditional Experimental Switching. openpilot's relaxed "chill" longitudinal mode stays the default, and the car automatically switches into end-to-end Experimental mode only when the situation calls for it: upcoming curves (map + vision), low speeds, stop lights, and slow leads. A three-state selector (Off / Light / Standard) and an on-screen status button control it. Works on both cars whenever openpilot is doing the longitudinal control. Concept from FrogPilot's Conditional Experimental Mode.
• VTSC + map curves. Vision Turn Speed Control caps cruise speed through curves from the model's predicted path curvature, folded together with OSM map-curve data — so it also slows for sharp curves the camera can't see yet (500 m lookahead, apex-timed so the curve entrance is the slowest point). Reduce-only, with a gentle regen-style decel envelope; tuned against I-5 Terwilliger and I-90 Snoqualmie Pass drive logs.
• ICBM — stock-ACC curve slow-downs (Lightning). When the truck is on its stock adaptive cruise (openpilot longitudinal off), the same VTSC curve math taps the cruise SET− button to step the set speed down ahead of curves — decrease-only, no panda change needed. The Alpha Longitudinal toggle acts as the A/B switch between openpilot longitudinal and ICBM. Idea invented by sunnypilot, Ford port by BluePilot.
• Red-light guard. The acceleration-zone logic that keeps CES calm during on-ramp merges is hard-gated so it can never suppress the stop-for-red-light behavior on an intersection approach (root-caused from a live incident, pinned by regression tests).

Ford F-150 Lightning — lateral (steering)

• Angle steering (path-angle-primary) — a faithful port of BluePilot bp-7.0's newest lateral scheme (alan-polk). Instead of asking Ford's steering rack for a curvature and waiting for its internal filter to integrate toward it, this commands the path angle directly (path_angle = κ · v_ego · gain, with curvature and curvature-rate zeroed). It sidesteps the PSCM's "sticky c2" low-pass filter — the mechanism behind the ping-pong that Ford forks have fought for years — so the wheel unwinds cleanly and much tighter curves become drivable. Driver-selectable (FordAngleLateral, default off) and tunable on-road via a JSON overlay.
• 4-signal lateral control — the BlueCruise-grade curvature command set (also ported from BluePilot), the default path and the fallback when angle steering is off. Noticeably stronger and smoother than the stock 2-signal path, with a matching panda safety ruleset (latch-hardened, written in C, capability-gated to the Lightning so the Tesla is untouched).
• Turn-exit predicted-curvature blend — blends the model's predicted curvature on turn exit so the truck unwinds the wheel like a human instead of overshooting.
• Human-turn reset — when the driver turns the wheel themselves, the controller's state resets cleanly instead of fighting the correction; lane changes get their own command scaling.

Ford F-150 Lightning — longitudinal

• LongitudinalExt highway follow control — BluePilot's lead-follow shaping (classifies the lead as gaining / pacing / trailing and shapes gas and brake per state, with highway speed deadband). Ships in the tree but is dormant until the Alpha Longitudinal toggle is on; with it off the truck keeps stock behavior.

Cluster & HUD

• BlueCruise cluster display — the Ford instrument cluster shows the blue BlueCruise engaged state when openpilot is steering, so engagement is readable at a glance in the factory display.
• Rich cluster messaging — openpilot status messages rendered in the Ford cluster (Cancelled, lane departure, and friends). Display-only; no reflash needed.
• Confidence ball — a comma-four-style indicator (ported via sunnypilot) on the comma 3X screen: a small gradient ball on the right edge showing the driving model's own confidence in its current plan (green high, amber mid, red low).

Tesla Model S (Raven)

• Native Raven support — full legacy Tesla HW1/HW2/HW3 support inherited from the xnor-tech base: tesla_legacy panda safety, the legacy CAN stack, radar, and ignition detection. This is the reason PNW forks xnor rather than commaai directly.
• Blind-spot monitoring — the car's own blind-spot state read from the Autopilot status CAN message, used to make lane changes safer (and to gate nudgeless lane changes away from an occupied lane).

Lane changes & engagement (both cars)

• Nudgeless lane change — signal, and after a short hold the lane change starts without a steering nudge. No-disengage-on-brake — a brake tap doesn't kick you out of engagement. Both default off.

Maps & location

• OSM speed limits + curve speeds — pfeiferj/mapd provides posted speed limits (with lower-limit warnings on screen) and the map-curvature feed used by the curve slow-down features. Map data for whichever state (or country, outside the US) you're currently driving in downloads automatically the moment it's needed.
• "Happening Ahead" overlay — on freeways, a lower-left panel shows the nearest police report (Waze), rest area, and EV fast charger ahead along your route (nearest-anything within 3 mi on surface streets). Display-only — it never affects steering or speed.

Networking & uploads

• Networking — perpetual tethering with a NAT fix, priority-WiFi switching, GPS-gated WiFi scanning with a Set Home Location button, captive-portal auto-login for visitor hotspots, and an LTE throttle guard.
• Smarter drive upload — two-pass upload (small log files automatically on any network, HD video only on real non-metered WiFi), an optional Defer HD Video Upload toggle, and a deleter that never removes anything not yet uploaded.

Robustness

• Capability view (pnw_vehicle) — feature code never checks car fingerprints; each car declares its capabilities once, and features consume those. The Tesla can't be impaired by truck work, and vice versa.
• Crash logger + auto-restart — the car-interface process logs fatal crashes before dying and is automatically restarted by the process manager (same policy as the UI).
• Stock-fallback armor — the ported Ford lateral/longitudinal extensions are wrapped so any fault in the extension falls back to stock openpilot behavior instead of crashing the drive.
• Engaged-path smoke tests — the code paths that run while engaged are exercised by tests before anything ships.

Deployment

• Auto-update channels — the device tracks a git branch per channel (dev / test / prod) and installs updates itself at ignition-off; shipping a change is a push.
• Pre-drive sync discipline — the device is verified in sync with its channel before a drive, never mid-drive.

Safety posture

Every feature above defaults to stock openpilot behavior: new toggles default off, panda safety rules are never weakened, and car-specific code is capability-gated so it is inert on the other car. Priority order: safety > stability > quality > features.

Installing PNW Pilot

PNW Pilot installs the same way as any custom openpilot fork — by entering its installer URL on the comma device's setup screen. Only the comma 3X is tested.

1. On the comma 3X, do a factory reset / start the Setup flow (Settings → Device → Reset, or a fresh device boot).
2. Connect the device to Wi-Fi.
3. When asked for the software to install, choose Custom Software and enter one of:
   • Production (stable): installer.comma.ai/dirkpetersen/3pnw
   • Test / staging: installer.comma.ai/dirkpetersen/3testpnw
   • Development (not recommended): installer.comma.ai/dirkpetersen/3devpnw
4. Confirm; the device downloads and installs PNW Pilot, then reboots into it.

These URLs resolve through GitHub's dirkpetersen/openpilot → dirkpetersen/pnw-pilot redirect, so the comma installer (which clones <user>/openpilot) finds the PNW fork automatically. Use 3testpnw to validate a build, then 3pnw for the stable install; 3devpnw is the active development channel and can change (or break) daily.

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openpilot

openpilot is an operating system for robotics.
Currently, it upgrades the driver assistance system in 300+ supported cars.

Docs · Roadmap · Contribute · Community · Try it on a comma 3X

Quick start: bash <(curl -fsSL openpilot.comma.ai)

Using openpilot in a car

To use openpilot in a car, you need four things:

1. Supported Device: a comma 3X, available at comma.ai/shop.
2. Software: The setup procedure for the comma 3X allows users to enter a URL for custom software. Use the URL openpilot.comma.ai to install the release version.
3. Supported Car: Ensure that you have one of the 275+ supported cars.
4. Car Harness: You will also need a car harness to connect your comma 3X to your car.

We have detailed instructions for how to install the harness and device in a car. Note that it's possible to run openpilot on other hardware, although it's not plug-and-play.

Branches

Running master and other branches directly is supported, but it's recommended to run one of the following prebuilt branches:

comma four branch	comma 3X branch	URL	description
release-mici	release-tizi	openpilot.comma.ai	This is openpilot's release branch.
release-mici-staging	release-tizi-staging	openpilot-test.comma.ai	This is the staging branch for releases. Use it to get new releases slightly early.
nightly	nightly	openpilot-nightly.comma.ai	This is the bleeding edge development branch. Do not expect this to be stable.
nightly-dev	nightly-dev	installer.comma.ai/commaai/nightly-dev	Same as nightly, but includes experimental development features for some cars.

To start developing openpilot

openpilot is developed by comma and by users like you. We welcome both pull requests and issues on GitHub.

• Join the community Discord
• Check out the contributing docs
• Check out the openpilot tools
• Code documentation lives at https://docs.comma.ai
• Information about running openpilot lives on the community wiki

Want to get paid to work on openpilot? comma is hiring and offers lots of bounties for external contributors.

Safety and Testing

• openpilot observes ISO26262 guidelines, see SAFETY.md for more details.
• openpilot has software-in-the-loop tests that run on every commit.
• The code enforcing the safety model lives in panda and is written in C, see code rigor for more details.
• panda has software-in-the-loop safety tests.
• Internally, we have a hardware-in-the-loop Jenkins test suite that builds and unit tests the various processes.
• panda has additional hardware-in-the-loop tests.
• We run the latest openpilot in a testing closet containing 10 comma devices continuously replaying routes.

MIT Licensed

openpilot is released under the MIT license. Some parts of the software are released under other licenses as specified.

Any user of this software shall indemnify and hold harmless Comma.ai, Inc. and its directors, officers, employees, agents, stockholders, affiliates, subcontractors and customers from and against all allegations, claims, actions, suits, demands, damages, liabilities, obligations, losses, settlements, judgments, costs and expenses (including without limitation attorneys’ fees and costs) which arise out of, relate to or result from any use of this software by user.

THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPLYING WITH LOCAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.

User Data and comma Account

By default, openpilot uploads the driving data to our servers. You can also access your data through comma connect. We use your data to train better models and improve openpilot for everyone.

openpilot is open source software: the user is free to disable data collection if they wish to do so.

openpilot logs the road-facing cameras, CAN, GPS, IMU, magnetometer, thermal sensors, crashes, and operating system logs. The driver-facing camera and microphone are only logged if you explicitly opt-in in settings.

By using openpilot, you agree to our Privacy Policy. You understand that use of this software or its related services will generate certain types of user data, which may be logged and stored at the sole discretion of comma. By accepting this agreement, you grant an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to comma for the use of this data.