Fingerprint Your Car#
When you first connect your comma device to your Tesla, openpilot needs to identify which vehicle it’s talking to. It does this by querying the firmware versions of the car’s electronic control units (ECUs) on the CAN bus — this is called fingerprinting.
If your car’s firmware combination hasn’t been seen before, the comma device will show “Car Unrecognized” and fall back to dashcam mode. This is normal for new cars or cars that recently received a Tesla software update.
What you need to do#
- Drive with the comma device connected — even if it says “Car Unrecognized”, let it record a short drive around your neighborhood (a few minutes is enough).
- Upload the route — connect your comma device to WiFi and let it upload the drive to comma connect.
- Make the route public — open your route on connect.comma.ai and set it to public so it can be shared.
- Share it on Discord — join discord.xnor.shop, find the channel for your car, and share the route link with lukasloetkolben. Include your car’s model, year, and hardware version.
That’s it. We’ll extract your car’s fingerprint from the route data and add it to the codebase. Once merged, your car will be recognized on the next software update.
Why does this happen?#
Most of the time, this happens because your car has an ECU firmware version that simply hasn’t been seen before. There are many variants across production batches, regions, and trim levels — even two seemingly identical cars can have different firmware combinations. Less commonly, a manufacturer software update can also change firmware versions and create a new, unrecognized combination.
The fingerprint database grows over time as more users contribute their data. Your fingerprint helps not just you, but everyone with a similar car and firmware version.
What is comma connect?#
Comma connect is comma.ai’s web dashboard where you can view your recorded drives. Each drive is called a route — it covers one session from ignition-on to ignition-off.
- Free users can access drives for 3 days
- Comma Prime subscribers get 1 year of retention
You don’t need a Prime subscription for fingerprinting — just upload and share the route within 3 days.