Elon Musk se je ponovno znašel na prvih straneh osrednjih medijev. Tokrat ne zaradi njegove pojavnosti v bližini Donalda Trumpa, temveč zaradi medijske kampanje za izpustitev britanskega skrajnega desničarja Tommya Robinsona. Zakaj je Muskov medijski angažma spravil na noge predvsem liberalce in naletel na obsodbo pri političnih voditeljih, ki so se v tednih pred tem ob rokovanju z njim še nasmihali v kamere?

Musk je že dobro poznan po radodarnih finančnih vložkih na politični desnici. Liberalni politični establišment z mediji na čelu pa se z obsojanjem Muskovega financiranja nazadnjaških strank obnašajo hinavsko in ignorantsko, saj načelno nimajo nič proti takšnim oblikam financiranja političnih strank. Ravno nasprotno.  Tudi sami rade volje sprejemajo ogromne donacije iz strani lastnikov kapitala, nepremičninskih lordov, fosilnih magnatov. S tem, ko poudarjajo, da Musk podpira »skrajno« desnico, utrjujejo predstavo, da sicer obstaja »normalna« desnica, ki pa bi jo lahko finančno podprl brez dviganja prahu in kontroverznosti. 

Muskovo financiranje ni samo podpora določenim političnim strankam, kot sta na primer AfD v Nemčiji in Reform UK, stranka Nigela Faraga v Veliki Britaniji, ki sta obe prejeli izdatne zneske iz njegovega žepa. Gre za podporo politični opciji, ki najbolj koristi pripadnikom njegovega razreda: lastnikom kapitala ali najbogatejšim vladajočim slojem. Muskovo financiranje ni samo spogledovanje s skrajno desnimi politikami, ampak je premišljen vložek v politiko, od katere bo za vladajoči razred »izboril« davčne odpustke in dodatne subvencije kapitalu na račun delovnih ljudi.

Zakaj torej ne smemo verjeti Olafu Sholtzu, ki je v svojem novoletnem nagovoru izrazil zaskrbljenost zaradi Muskovega vmešavanja v nemško politiko? Zato ker tudi evropski politični vrh že tako ali tako vodi politiko, ki je naklonjena takšnim, kot je Elon Musk. Vodi politiko davčnih odpustkov na račun siromašenja javnih storitev, socialnih transferjev in družbenih potreb na sploh. Tudi zato, ker je celoten vladajoči razred v medijih utrjeval predstavo o »genialnem podjetniku«, ki bi naj bil vzgled mladim generacijam. 

Elon Musk je nedvomno velika nevarnost za delavski razred. Z največjo donacijo v zgodovini ameriških volitev v znesku 277 milijonov dolarjev se je zavezal, da bo v vlogi svetovalca na ameriškem “Ministrstvu za vladno učinkovitost” še dodatno »pospešil« proces razgradnje javnih sistemov, s tem ko je že napovedal korenite spremembe v davčni politiki ZDA. 

Njegove tovarne avtomobilov Tesla so znane po tem, da delavci in delavke psihično in fizično izgorevajo, omedlevajo od izčrpanosti, delajo dolge nadure in vikende. Tesla je po številu varnostnih kršitev na delu daleč presegla povprečje drugih ameriških avtomobilskih tovarn. Kršitev je zagotovo mnogo več, saj so zaposlene in zaposleni  podvrženi njegovim grožnjam glede ustanovitve sindikata. Tesla je edina avtomobilska tovarna brez sindikata.  

Kljub svojemu bogastvu na račun ameriških delavk in delavcev Elon Musk leta 2018 ni plačal niti centa zveznih davkov na dohodek. Ko je leta 2021 vendarle poravnal davčne obveznosti, je znesek predstavljal zgolj 10 odstotkov povečanja njegovega premoženja v tistem letu. Rast vrednosti naložb – glavni vir dohodka najbogatejših – je namreč obdavčena bistveno nižje od običajnih plač in dohodkov. Za primerjavo, povprečna ameriška družina je istega leta plačala 14,9-odstotno davčno stopnjo na svoj zaslužek.

Nedavno je obljubil zmanjšanje proračunskih izdatkov ZDA za kar 200 milijard dolarjev, kar bi prizadelo širok spekter javnih storitev – od socialne varnosti in zdravstvenih programov, kot sta Medicare in Medicaid, do izobraževanja ter pomoči pri hrani in stanovanjih. Prihajajoča Trumpova administracija bo še bolj očitno vlada bogatih, ki jo bodo bogati vodili za bogate. 

Bolj očitno zaradi tega, ker bodo v njej sodelovali tudi demokrati, ki so mesece poprej svarili pred  fašizmom. Nedavno smo takšen politični konsenz videli tudi v primeru Francije, kjer je Macron samo potrdil znani rek: ko ima liberalec izbiro med podporo komunizma ali fašizma, se bo zmeraj odločil za fašizem. Zato ne smemo verjeti političnim voditeljem, ko svarijo pred Elonom Muskom medtem ko v isti sapi dajejo koncesije najbogatejšim, pospešujejo podnebni zlom in uničujejo javne storitve. Uslužnost kapitalistične države je namreč tista, ki je omogočila in celo vzpodbudila vzpon Elonov Muskov.

The post ELON MUSK: SOVRAŽNIK DELOVNIH LJUDI first appeared on Rdeča Pesa.

Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica:

Last night, after a wait of roughly an hour after the official start time, Elon Musk spoke to a crowd of Tesla fans and some journalists on a film studio backlot in California to give us an update on the company’s much-talked-about pivot to robotics. […]

[…]

After promising that “unsupervised FSD” is coming to all of Tesla’s five models — “now’s not the time for nuance,” Musk told a fan — he showed off a driverless minibus and then a horde of humanoid robots, which apparently leverage the same technology that Tesla says will be ready for autonomous driving with no supervision. These robots — “your own personal R2-D2,” he said — will apparently cost less than “$30,000” “long-term,” Musk claimed, adding that these would be the biggest product of all time, as all 8 billion people on earth would want one, then two, he predicted.

These announcements are almost certainly bullshit, and correctly contextualized by Gitlin. Mix the axiom “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” with the boy who cried “wolf!”, and the result is this media event — and that is without factoring in the usual Tesla sloppiness. These are three brand new products, all of which are purportedly future-defining, rambled about in the span of about thirty minutes on a random Thursday in October. Nothing is finished. Musk called two of the products “Cybercab” and “Optimus Robots”, but the company’s website refers to them as “Robotaxi” and “Tesla Bot”. Everything is hypothetical until proven otherwise.

The robot is particularly galling. The automotive industry has a long history of building humanoid robots: Honda’s ASIMO, Toyota’s Partner series, and General Motors’ work on NASA’s Robonaut 2. Some of these perform more specialized tasks. All of them have been around for a while. None of them are in widespread use. Tesla’s should be treated as an elaborate fiction until anyone outside the company can confirm even the most fundamental qualities it is claimed to possess.

Oh, and speaking of claims on the website, I want to address this:

To create a sustainable future, we must democratize transportation. We do this by making driving more efficient, affordable and safe. Autonomy makes this future possible, today.

Musk — for the featherweight of his words — said the Robotaxi would cost “less than $30,000” and be available “before 2027” — that is, to be clear, not “today”. If this thing ever ships, it will still require car-like infrastructure and ample space, even though it carries only two people.

Public transit, which is available today, is the very definition of democratized transportation, especially if it has been carefully considered for the needs of people with disabilities. It is inexpensive for end users, requires less space per person than any car, and has a beneficial feedback loop of safety and usage. I am not arguing the two cannot coexist; perhaps some of this stuff makes sense in low-density sprawl. But I have little confidence the future will look like Musk’s vision, or that Tesla will be delivering it. Why would anyone still believe this too-rich carnival barker who lies all the time?

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In my flat they have installed these new digital door phones running on two wires manufactured by Tesla:

I wanted to be notified when someone rings when we are not at home so I decided to reverse engineer it.

During idle, there is a voltage of about 23V which is there to power the phones as they don’t have any other power supply; during a call, the voltage drops to about 12,6V and current goes to 47mA. So I took my scope and started to measure the signal. In short, I have found, that there is some sort of digital signal and analog voice modulated on top of the DC component (timeframe of one call):

On first sight, it didn’t remind me of any common line encoding and my scope has a short buffer so I decided to convert it to logic levels and use a logic analyzer.

It also didn’t make more sense but then I played with zoom and suddenly saw it there:

The data is encoded using symbols consisting of 4 PWM pulses. There are 3 symbols – logical 0, logical 1 and stuffing (‘-‘). Each frame starts with several dozens of stuffing symbols. Then bit symbols are sent each one followed by one stuffing symbol. On the picture above, “A” marks the start of 1 then follows: -, 1, -, 0, -, 0, … Each frame consists of 48 bits where the last 8 bits are checksum. They are being sent in MSB first order. The checksum is computed using this formula.

Once I got the frames decoded, it was just a matter of watching the communication. I managed to decode following structure:

| dst address (16b) | src address (16b) | command (8b) | checksum (8b) |

Addressing

Some facts from installation manual:
– each phone has assigned “system number” (SN) in range 000-999
– only numbers 000-323 can be called from another phone (due to addressing scheme)
– there can be one “main phone” (MP) and up to 3 “secondary phones” (SP) for each SN
– there can be up to 8 “electronic gatekeepers” (GK)
– each phone has it’s own “intercom number” (IN) which can be computed like this:

IN1 = ((SN x 4 + X) / 216) + 1
IN2 = (((SN x 4 + X)mod 216) / 36) + 1
IN3 = (((SN x 4 + X)mod 36) / 6) + 1
IN4 = ((SN x 4 + X)mod 6) + 1
where X = 0 for MP and 1-3 for SP

Considering these facts, I was able to decode the address format:

000GSSSSSSSSSSXX – 16bits
– G – is_gk – if address belongs to GK it equals 0
– S – system number for MP/SP, zeroes for GK
– X – number of MP/SP or number of GK

Commands

There is 1 byte space for commands so theoretically there can be 256 commands. I was able to decode these ones.

The call from GK always starts with “ping” to check if the called MP exists, MP needs to respond with OK. Then GK sends “call_from_eg” and the MP starts ringing. When an user picks up, MP sends “accepted_call_from_eg”, GK responds with OK and voice communication is established. The you can also see open_lock and hangup commands with pretty clear meaning. Here is the whole communication between MP with SN 7 and GK 1:

src:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} dst:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} cmd:ping(64) cs:147
src:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} dst:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} cmd:OK(0) cs:211
src:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} dst:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} cmd:call_from_eg(10) cs:201
src:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} dst:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} cmd:OK(0) cs:211
…
src:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} dst:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} cmd:accepted_call_from_eg(12) cs:199
src:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} dst:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} cmd:OK(0) cs:211
…
src:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} dst:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} cmd:open_lock(14) cs:197
src:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} dst:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} cmd:OK(0) cs:211
…
src:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} dst:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} cmd:hangup_from_eg(16) cs:195
src:{sn:0 mn:1 is_gk:1} dst:{sn:7 mn:0 is_gk:0} cmd:OK(0) cs:211

Hardware

I have used a transformer to isolate my device from the bus. The middle section is simple and is used for transmit. For receive, I was first using the bottom part but then I replaced it with the transistor behind the transformer. Audio is sent/received from pins 3,4 on the transformer.

Audio signal goes to integrated soundcard on OrangePI, digital signal from transistor is received by STM32F1, the pulse widths are measured and sent via virtual serial port over USB. The software then checks the pulse widths and counts and decodes into bits and frames. The transmit path also goes via the virtual COM, but it is sent as full frames and line encoded on the MCU. When the software detects incoming call to specified MP, it will start a SIP call to defined number in PSTN and the call can be normally answered, you can talk or open lock using DTMF.

You can find the complete software on https://github.com/danielkucera/tesla-2bus – there is both the control software and firmware for the STM32.

This project is still a work in progress, I am thinking about implementing it completely in an MCU and make the calls using SIM800 GSM module and power everything from the bus.

Feel free to ask in the comments if you have any questions.