You would think that the Apple designers, of all people, would understand the ugliness of rounded corners on an application designed for square frames. Tis puzzling.
I think it's a branding thing, like BMW and the giant butt prints they put on the front of everything they make.
I agree. I think it’s because CarPlay was initially intended to take over the entire screen, not be inset in the cars UI. When it was full screen the rounded corners matched every other Apple UI.
I actually like park assist, but I don’t use it too often. I wish it was a bit faster (and quicker to access - you have to screw around on the screen after pushing the button).
Where would you get a “LIN Chip”? Isn’t it custom to ford? Come to think of it - what IS a “LIN Chip”? I know what potato chips, corn chips, apple chips, and banana chips are ?Simple, pull your IPMA out, open up, zap the LIN chip pads with a fiber laser to remove the corrosion protection coating, drop some solder paste and the LIN chip on, hit with heat gun. Done and done.
Here's the lasering of a TCCM with similar coating for reference
And the result -- ready to solder
LIN is a low speed type of bus. There's quite a few of them in the vehicle. Ambient lighting? LIN, ultrasonic sensors? LIN. The APA that's missing is simply a single LIN bus chip in the IPMA. You can buy the little chip and solder it to the board and like magic the 4 corner side firing ultra sonic sensors are alive. I wouldn't suggest to do it if it hasn't already been done.
Thanks! So all this chip is, is either a bus controller, or a bus interface (putting ultrasonic sensor data onto a LIN bus in the vehicle)?
Yes, it's a single chip that's missing from the board. I could find the actual part if someone wanted to do this. The fix is confirmed to work. Everything else is present, ford just left one little bus chip off of the board probably due to constraints with china covid shutdown. The toughest part for the person that did the mod was getting through the corrosion coating. I have a fiber laser and it blasted right through it. Well to be clear, it vaporized the metal below the coating blasting the coating into dust. Light tends to pass through most clear things with ease. This is also a likely cause of ambient lighting vanishing too as every single ambient LED listens on a LIN bus.
Very cool! Thanks. I wonder if there’s some solvent that would remove the film?
Not sure if it's the same as was on that TCCM -- that was some kind of silicone like substance it was dipped into. Jesse said he couldn't scrape it off without damaging it and sent it to louis rossman to have the chip installed. I understand not everyone has a $5k fiber laser to zap it with. I had it at its minimum power level to do that. At full power it will just vaporize copper traces.
Actually, I ask again out of curiosity. Back when my father worked at Ford, they’d purchase competitive products, tear them down, and price them to the component. Many of the electronics modules of his era were “potted” to reduce the chance of long-term damage due to environmental or vibration. He would tell me that they’d occasionally get a module where they couldn’t “dissolve” the potting material with whatever magic solvent they’d use, so they’d have to very carefully attack with a dremel tool.
