DIY Race Car Telemetry

Ordered. What happens if the campaign fails?

Jaynen: Thank you for supporting our project!

moparman76_69: Our plan is to fulfill all Indiegogo perks regardless if we hit our goal or not. If we don't hit our goal the higher fees will be painful for us.

We'll have more updates on the telemetry interface very soon (a rather exciting announcement), plus an update on our mobile/tablet app.

donaldson: Hey! long time no see! hope you're doing well!

I am an idiot with devices such as this. However, I have a need for it!

Basically, I would like to be able to compare lap times / braking distances / cornering speeds / etc.. I would like to be able to compare the different drivers on my Lemons team and help the slower drivers become faster.

What package would I buy to do this? What else would I need to buy?

What sort of interface do I need with the car?

THanks,

Rob R.

Hey I got a question, can you tell me more about the digital sensor expansion port? Long story short I could use more inputs - perhaps I could use the built-in digital outputs to control a multiplexer, but 3 pins only gets you 8-to-1. If I want to hook up a wheel-mounted tire pyrometer array, that's at least 12 sensors I need to get into the system somehow. So, what are the options?

wvumtnbkr wrote: I am an idiot with devices such as this. However, I have a need for it! Basically, I would like to be able to compare lap times / braking distances / cornering speeds / etc.. I would like to be able to compare the different drivers on my Lemons team and help the slower drivers become faster. What package would I buy to do this? What else would I need to buy? What sort of interface do I need with the car? THanks, Rob R.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that yes this would help you with what you are talking about. Interface wise I am guessing you will be able to use a laptop to download the data for full analysis and it looks like they will possibly have a mobile app so then you could use a android or ios device. With the GPS+Accelerometer data you should be able to tell when people are braking/accelerating and their corner entry/exit speeds.

What will make a big difference also is how their software for analyzing the data is setup and how easy it is to set up segments

In terms of packages the 279 or 299 package will give you the ability to analyze the data when the car comes in or at practice session track days. If you are running radio with the drivers and want to live let them know what they could do to improve you would want the 429 package for the cellular data module

Random other question in case I missed it. Will this be supporting some sort of external dash or display and be able to do predictive lap timing?

Depending on the car, you might be able to capture TPS or WOT data. At the very least, you could intercept the brake light switch for "brakes on" data to see if some drivers are dragging the brakes in places.

I'd like this for autocrossing since I left foot brake and think I might hover a little to closely on the pedal sometimes.

I really like the Open Source / community driven nature of this product. Once a smart guy figures something out, like say a braking pressure input, I can then shamelessly copy them for my own installation.

GameboyRMH: The expansion port uses the SPI protocol to interface to things like a sensor expansion box, CAN interface, or other interfaces.

Because the expandability is wide open, imagine things like 10 or 20 more analog inputs, 6 pulse inputs (for shaft speed), a quad or 8 way themocouple amplifier, just to name a few examples.

wvumtnbkr: To Bret's point, think about mixing in throttle position, brake pressure and steering angle into the GPS & accelerometer data. Then, you could really understand what the driver was doing on each corner. That's revolutionary!

Expect to see an indiegogo update in the next few days talking about bluetooth tablet/phone integration...

It's kind of funny I actually did not read all the inputs available when I had ponied up the cash.

Wonder how easy it would be to get some of those sensors on my NA miata

We're currently at the #2 spot for technology projects on IndieGoGo! and only one unit left at the early adopter funding level! Thanks to everyone for their support!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects?filter_category=Technology

We're thinking of doing a live Q&A session on Ustream, maybe as early as this weekend, but we're not sure if it's feasible with our schedule and if it's too short notice. Thoughts?

I think it might be a waste of your guys time. You probably would get some good conversations with a couple people who already are interested but you would spend a lot of time waiting for very few people to show up. You might be better off with a reddit style ask me anything where it turns into a wiki/faq/log people can refer too. Goals being something more of us can spread around to get people willing to bite

1) Does the software do predictive lap timing 2) Do you have to set segments up manually? 3) Do you do this on the PC or can you set these up on the device? 4) With point to point recording how do you set the stop/start points? 5) Does it have options for how it starts? IE soon as you hit X mph from this spot

Here's a project update you'll like:

http://www.indiegogo.com/RaceCapture/x/1769076?c=activity

You'll definitely want to pay attention to our next update!

Brent Picasso / Autosport Labs

Oooooh can't wait to get mine!

I'm gonna make me a papercraft one to do some test fitting.

Interesting idea I had, cell data is expensive, especially for occasional use, and some tracks might not have good cell coverage, a telemetry module that transmits data over RC radio bands would have plenty of range and none of these drawbacks.

Turns out that something like this is already used in the high-end RC world, looks like the full TX/RX set runs about $100, which could pay itself off pretty quickly in cellular data bills. Feel free to steal my idea and save me the work!

I believe most teams just use prepaid cell cards for that? So you don't have to worry about a massive bill. I am not sure how much bandwidth data would take anyway. If you were streaming video sure.

Oh and Predictive :P?

Cool. I thought this project had gone tits up since this thread a while back.

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/telemetry/9889/page1/

In reply to GameboyRMH:

The cellular plans we recommend (e.g. TMobile) are the prepaid - unlimited data at $2-3 per day, so about $6 per weekend of racing.

We also experimented with an on-track peer-peer mesh network using 900MHz xBee modules with multiple repeater stations around the track; this gets away from cellular, but it was comparitively expensive and hard to set up (you had to go around the track and place the repeater nodes). Still, it worked really well when it was set up. We have those designs in place if anyone wants to pursue it.

Thanks for the tip on the RC transceivers. Do you have an example link? The challenge is dealing with line of sight, especially on road courses. Ovals, autox; not such a big deal since line of sight is always available.

Since the system will be open source I'm sure the community will come up with far more interesting ideas than we can :)

I actually thought about Xbee but the range was too short, I'm surprised you went through with the whole mesh network thing

Here are some RC telemetry systems:

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/openbee-an-opensource-telemetry-module-with-xbee-footprint <-- They claim to get 3 miles range on an Xbee

https://www.rclogger.com/Video-Telemetry/RC-Logger-LC/RC-Logger-LC.html

https://www.extremerc.com.au/estore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=162_231&products_id=963&zenid=a160f215ffb51d2b7f64c4889fd37850

In reply to GameboyRMH: Glad you liked the papercraft! I figured that would be an easy way for people to see how big it was and pre-fit it to their cars if they ordered it. Plus as you've seen (if you're printed it) is that the markings for all the connections are on the bottom (of the papercraft version only). As long as you print it 1:1 (not fit to print) it should go together pretty easily. Cheers!

Thanks -

The OpenBee linked in the first article is especially interesting. Being 400 MHz I wonder what the data rate is. Nice that it's 100mW vs 50mW of the xbee modules. Funny thing, this will drop right in to the boards we developed for our mesh network experiments: (wait, is that a bluetooth module for smartphone integration? :) )

Sadly, the other two are almost immediately disqualified because of the 2.4GHz - higher frequencies are especially vulnerable to obstructions and terrain; works great for aerial vehicles, however!

I just hope its not bluetooth 4.0 only. My past 2 kickstarted products said bluetooth compatible smartphone and I thought great! then byt the time they came out it was bluetooth 4.0 only which meant no iphone4 or earlier compatibility

Great new video up of them building a couple units on the indiegogo site

Just posted our project video update #1. You want to watch it :) http://www.indiegogo.com/RaceCapture/x/1769076?c=activity

Nice! A little bit of a jump between the sections but well done. Exciting stuff with the early product access opportunity

Thank you. Our goal is to show how real the system is! This is a rarity in crowd funded projects, especially technology projects.

So here, the individuals with the best story on how they want to use Race Capture and #DATA to improve their driving/engine/chassis performance will have a chance to work with us as we finish the analysis / config software and dip into the mobile app integration. We're excited!

You guys have great potential in my opinion. No one is coming close on the value for the power. The Aimsports solo doesnt support any additional channels and doesnt have a yaw sensor. And its still 100 bucks more.

The Aimsports DL can do the CANBUS/OBD thing but is 800 bucks and that is used racepak DL-1 money

I've dropped the indiegogo link over to the guys at Petreldata too as they just made their autocross specific software Solostorm support the DL-1 and I think they could easily add Racecapture

Aw man I think I could win your early delivery competition but I probably won't get a chance to pick mine up before summer 2013 regardless of when it's delivered...