This article was published on April 24, 2016

This neat (but dangerous) Tesla hack lets you play movies on center display


This neat (but dangerous) Tesla hack lets you play movies on center display

A clever hacker has installed a Linux-based system on their Tesla, and is using the center display as a media center.

Going only by ‘Hemera,’ the hacker has detailed just how they sidestepped the stock Tesla OS. Using Gentoo, Hemera made the modifications after gaining root access to the car:

Some details, this is running a Gentoo arm system, cross-compiled using a qemu-user chroot environment. Yes, that’s right, Gentoo, running on a Tesla. All those USE flags, CFLAGS, and optimizations are going to add speed to my car. My 5 second 0-60 will be faster than your 5 second 0-60!

There was probably at least 5 days of continuous compilation going on here. The system is almost completely independent. ‘OMG did you seriously flash the Tegra?’ No, I didn’t go that far. I’m running Gentoo in a chroot environment within the Tesla OS itself. I will definitely be making a post later diving into the technical details of it.

Hemera notes that SMPlayer powers the movies along, and performance is “far better than I thought it would be, even with the wonky EGL and codec situation I’m currently in.”

It’s awesome, but don’t get too excited. Not only is it dangerous to hack your car’s system (or watch movies while driving), but Tesla probably wouldn’t look kindly on you if you ever needed repairs.

If you care to learn more about the hack, check out Hemera’s blog.

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via Elektrec.co

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