DIY Race Car Telemetry

Check out this open source in car telemetry product that's on Indiegogo. I have raced with these guys for a few years in LeMons and have seen the high quality of their work. They were the folks with the first ever tweeting race car a few years ago.

This product they're selling through Indiegogo is an open source in-car real time telemetry system that gives real folks like us a chance to use highly functional telemetry to monitor car and driver performance. It's wicked awesome. I followed a beta test they ran on a car in the recent New Hampshire LeMons race and had a blast watching a beat to hell E30 trace its route around the track thanks to the on-board GPS, and saw how fast they were running, at what RPM the driver was shifting, and how much fuel they were consuming. Very cool stuff.

Check it out, I think it's super cool and hope they sell the hell out of it. I have no connection with them, other than finding them to be incredibly creative racer buddies who I wish well.

Please check it out and give them some support if you're in the market for such a device. I'm getting one for my Lemons Peugeot.

http://www.indiegogo.com/RaceCapture

Ooo, that's pretty cool.

must see pics of aforementioned pug in order to ascertain if canoe or not? =]

Canoe or not, check it out. It's relevant and interesting.

I've been following the development on Facebook, they've made a lot of strides and make some great products.

Here's a link to blog posts about Pujo! (the exclamation point is part of the name) our 505 turbo.
http://startinggrid.org/tag/perils-of-pujo/

We've been on the cover of GRM, and lowered the credibility of Good Morning America when I was interviewed in a gorilla suit.

Pretty cool. I have been looking at a Solostorm setup and they are working on DL-1 support. Was thinking of getting a DL-1 down the road and this looks similar

WHOA LIKE!

Think I'm gonna order one now.

Hey what's the difference between the Data Junkie and Data Addict package?

Edit: Looks like it's just the date and price. Got myself a Data Junkie package.

Very interesting. I don't think the Cadavalier needs one, but the S13 could use a neat little toy like that.

like!

I'm tempted. Brett can you answer any questions or get someone over here that can? Mainly interested in the software and how you can turn it on and off IE does it use a gps marker for laptimes, can it do predictive? would it work for autocross?

In for 1. If this funds (and works), could be a great value.

I might have a bad memory, but I think they have been working on this for quite a while, now. I was going to be a "beta" user on something (since I do data acq all the time for work, and I really like the one we use there). I could swear it was them.

When I got the e-mail about this, I saw a tag of a high price on the first picture, and didn't look much deeper. Now that I look again, I see that it's a lot closer to what a friend of mine and I were working on- assembling the parts from various electronic places to put a cool system together. This is very cool.

I'll have to look into it more- even though I seem to be working my way out of the motorsports arena for some reason- it would be great if this works out.

Brett - Thanks for sharing our project! Yes, 2+ years in the making! we were hovering at 85% for a long time- the project recently accelerated due to enrolling additional awesome team members, and we collaborate from various places in the world.

We're happy to answer any questions you might have! In the meantime:

Teggsan: Thanks for backing the project and spreading the word! These crowd-funded things only work by sharing!

Jaynen: While we're now focusing on endurance racing our roots came from autox and we have many friend who are deep in that world that will help us test these features. We will have a number of autox specific capabilities, including being able to define GPS markers to measure time intervals. In case we didn't make it obvious enough, it's an open source system with specs that compare very favorably when stacked up to many commercial systems. So yes- we're excited to see what people create with it. I'm personally excited to see what people do with the control aspect using the Lua scripting we've embedded!

alfadriver: That was most likely us! We're super excited to get it to this point. Right now the development is focusing mostly on the software analysis and configuration - we're standing on a revision 'F' hardware board we don't expect to have to make changes to. Rev F should be enough, right? :) Also, we have electronics manufacturing in house, which means we get to control a big part of the production.

Let us know how else we can help answer questions! Another team member, Fred, will hop on and introduce himself.

Neat. Any sort of onboard display planned? Or interface to smartphone for display purpose? I currently use an android based logger, but it has some limitations. Certainly consider using this at some point. Real time telemetry is pretty neat stuff.

Is this actually an order, or funds to develop, or what. I don't think indiegogo is normally used for preorders, is it?

Is this a preorder price? How much will it retail for?

Hi Sachilles:

Although we haven't mentioned it in the Indiegogo project (yet) the current plan is bluetooth integration to phone/tablet. The display will look like an expanded version of this:

and the plan will be to have the essential config / analysis capabilities as the main app (re-cast for a mobile / tablet experience).

We have mobile app development skills on the team so this isn't a particular challenge for us (making the video has been the hardest part ;) )

Cooper280z:

The indiegogo campaign is more like a pre-order and less like a 'help us develop this thing'. We're currently standing on what we believe is a final hardware revision (dance!) and we're focusing on the remaining software features. And being open source offers tremendous advantage to you as well - you're not beholden to a single source for software, hardware fixes, add ons, etc. To be honest - when we (or others) develop projects like this, we stand on the shoulders of so many others. We're happy to share and hope to learn from what other might contribute.

We're also needing this launch as a way to meet MOQ (minimum order quantities) for some of the more expensive components in the system, such as the 10Hz GPS module we've selected. We felt Indiegogo was as great way to get that critical mass around the project.

Hope that helps!

-Brent

While I'm in my post-workout euphoric haze - if anyone wants to talk with me personally about the project, or anything else, you're invited to call me at ( two oh six ) 854 4508. Just please do it after today, because #thanksgiving :)

-Brent

Although I have not used Brents latest piece of hardware I would like to chime in. I have been using the MJLJr (Megajolt Lite Jr) in my Porsche for 4 years. For those that don't know it is a very simple yet very powerful ignition control unit that give the user complete control over any EDIS based ignition system (either stock or one retrofitted by you). I have put over 100,000 miles on my car using this system with out one single problem.

At the time I was braking new ground by going with a home fabricated cam fired EDIS system.

This is the link to my saga http://www.autosportlabs.org/viewtopic.php?t=2026

A little about Brent. I have been communicating with Brent back and forth over the years. Although he is still just a Name at the other end of an email or a voice over the phone I consider him more than just an Internet acquaintance. He is a great guy, a regular guy, trying to make products geared to regular people like us. He is readily accessible and answers phone calls and emails. (Just like the great folks at GRM)

Brent and his company are top shelf people that I really hope "make it"

I definitely give his products a big thumbs up but what really sold me was the continued support and Brent's continued involvement with the product through his web forum and through direct emails and phone calls (yes he even listened to me when I had idea's about a possible product) As I called it at the time I was "stirring the pot" LOL

One of my suggestions to him was going to be to make the great folks here at GRM aware of his latest offering. I was going to suggest he sees about putting an add in GRM. I was even going to start a thread about the Indiegogo. The GRM crowd should look at his entire line up of products as they are all top shelf and equally important they all come with Brents support.

Anyway I have rambled on way to much. In short Brent and his products are top shelf!

Wow - thank you dean for the kind words!

Yes, I have an itch to scratch and in my case, the domain is in motorsports technology. And, I feel it's time to serve the enthusiasts with a professional open source hardware and software.

-Brent

haha... i have an early mjlj board and chip from brent tjat i got nack in our mr2 days lol... krel guy as i recall

Are you planning on filling the orders you have even if you don't "fully fund" the project?

Also, when do you plan on having more info on the app/telemetry interface?

Let's all put our money where our mouths are. If we think this is awesome (plenty of folks seem to), support it by placing an order.

These guys need roughly 120 orders of the basic system to fund. No reason GRM shouldn't contribute most of them.

Strongly considering it but need to sell my GPS first