wstar's Journal

wstar

Yeah it was a fun day

I scrapped that data/video from the first run, since it was kinda short and half of it was following the tow vehicle around

I kept the data/vid from aLapRecorder HD on my last run of the day, and I'm processing it in RaceRender 2 now. The only windows machine I have on hand here is tiny little Dell Mini 1018 netbook that I use for UpRev. Says it's going to take ~5 hrs to encode the 13 minute output video in high def Anyways, maybe later this evening or tomorrow I'll finally have something encoded and youtube'd and we'll see how this cheap-*** data logging solution worked out.

Cost breakdown on the data logging setup:

Existing Android Phone (T-Mobile/LG G2X, has 2x 1Ghz CPU + high def camera): free
Existing cheapo windows laptop (Dell Mini 1018): free
Qstarz QT-818XT bluetooth 5hz DGPS: $70
PLX Kiwi bluetooth OBD-II: $90
aLapRecorder HD (Android App): $6.50
RaceRender 2 Deluxe (Windows App): $25

So we're looking at just shy of $200. If it works even half as well as a "real" racing data logger solution and is useful to learn from, it's a steal

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Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

Also, I had two fuel cuts on my last run of the day, around 2/3 of a tank this time. Both were exiting the same fast right corner onto a straight, in the exact same spot on the track as last time. Seems like an ECU limiter kicks in temporarily at 6K RPM. I'm guessing the ECU sees the loss of fuel pressure/volume/something and sets up that temporary limit automatically to protect itself or something.

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7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

New Video. I'll re-paste the summary info from Youtube below, for embedded watchers:

MSR Houston Clockwise again in my 370Z at the Red Meet and Race Fuel event on Sep 8th. This is my second time on the track, so obviously my driving isn't great .

Experimenting with a new cheapo setup for telemetry, etc ahead of my upcoming The Driver's Edge class: "aLapRecorder HD" recorded the video, OBDII data, and GPS data on my dash-mounted Android phone (T-mobile G2X running Cyanogen firmware). OBDII hardware was a PLX Kiwi bluetooth, and GPS hardware was a Qstarz QT-818XT in 5Hz DGPS mode. Post-processing was done with RaceRender 2 Deluxe.

The phone's accelerometers (combined with the unstable window mount) seem to provide fairly useless G-force data, but the rest of the data came out pretty decent. Data to video sync is very slightly off, but not enough that I'm going to go back and re-encode this whole video. Audio is noisy as always from a dash-mounted cellphone with the windows open.

Also the "Throttle" display isn't logging pedal position. It's logging some parameter related to the ECU-controlled throttle butterflies, not my pedal position. I'm hoping it may prove comparatively enlightening down the road if I play with the throttle mappings more in UpRev before the next run.

Got what I think is fuel starvation, this time at 2/3 tank, twice this session at the same spot on the track (Laps 4 + 6) where it happened last time (beginning of the long back straight, coming out of a long fast right corner).

Lap 5 was the fastest one, a pretty decent run for me overall.

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7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

Equinox

I had a power cut out a second time - which is one of the reasons I left early, as well as me suspecting my diff cooler programmer unit was possible going off and on - turns out it was fine. Pretty sure the second power loss was just fuel starvation since it came back up to full power in less than a minute. Was worried I was breaking the car too much for one day.

Travis, at the training sessions, they do wear headsets and give you one.

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