Civic Hacking Assistance with Race Car GPS Tracking

Hackerspace Civic Hacking
#1

So @JayJohnson600 and I were talking about how to jazz up the videos for the upcoming Auto Race in Houston. I was wondering if any of you Civic Hacker types know of what possibilities there are to somehow superimpose the race track in the lower corner of the videos showing the position of the car. Kind of like every car racing video game in existence. :wink:

My thoughts were to somehow draw a representation of the track below to use in the video and then sync that with positions of the actual overhead view and GPS coordinates. As far as tracking I am guessing the most simplest way would be for the car to keep an old phone with GPS inside logging data to be extracted after the race.

What do you guys think? Any ideas? Possibilities?

http://bit.ly/1JYeVhr

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#2

So… I stayed a little later here at the DMS and I think I found a solution for @JayJohnson600… I tested this with a few laps of the DMS Loop. :sunglasses:

The next photo shows you where I put on my brakes… Yes even though there was no traffic I actually used the brakes.

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I made a video and everything to show the video with the race track on the video showing my truck going around the turns like any racing game, but I don’t have Admin access to the computer to use the application I need to extract the data.

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#3

That is pretty awesome,

Can you get a video without the map? I can draw the route in a slightly snazzier way. Then we could reach out to @Dawsmart and see if he knows of a way to super impose your video of gas and brake on the drawn map. The next step from there is giving the whole thing a bit of 3D tilt and setting lower or upper right corner.

If your in, I’ll draw the track.

#4

Oh yeah I’m in…

So yes, the two tools I found are made so that you use your gopros or other camera footage with the raw gps data. Then ‘Race Renderer’ will make the map and on-screen gauges and sync it with your video.

#5

I use Harry’s Lap Timer and sometimes Race Render. For the hardware I use an old phone in a ram mount and use use a wireless obdii reader and external Bluetooth GPS.

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#6

HLT is my setup too. It can manage cameras. I’m bringing some 5.8GHz 600mHa transmitters for our team (im not on DMS team) for hopefully some realtime video of our drivers behavior at the Houston race. We are also building a dashboard for realtime telemetry delivered via cellular device (Calamp).

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#7

I finally got o a computer I could install Race Render to… Here is one of the laps I did last night.

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#8

Actually that looks really nice as is. Not a fan of the large speedometer or the giant race render logo. But a 2 gopro setup would make this a cool video. One on the hood of the car shooting forward and one shooting the driver would be cool. If we can’t remove the race render logo, we could cover it with the gopro shot of the driver.Cool setup!

#9

The logo is there because I only downloaded the free trial version. The other two versions are like $40 and $60.

The style of the gauges and other HUD objects are selectable from a bunch of templates and I am sure you can make your own.

All in all… Pretty simple to do. Evidently you don’t want to use an iPhone for the GPS. I have read that its sample rate doesn’t seem to track well for racing.

I haven’t played with that Harry’s Lap Timer, but I did view some videos made with the data.

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#10

I use Harry’s Lap Timer with additional data inputs from a BlueTooth ECU reader (Pulls Gear, RPM, Temp, Etc data) than I have a add on 10 hz GPS that uses a combo of Glonass and GPS to provide accurate data points. FYI Iphone is approx 1hz and I found that this was not fast enough when going into turns and braking.

Harry’s is the glue that brings it all together as well as overlays the data.

#11

So a question on GPS… I tried searching for more information on comparing Phone/Tablet GPS specs and had a hard time wording the terminology to find much info. Got a lot of advice on how to turn on/off your phone GPS.

I also found some GPS devices that are made for adding to an Arduino that are 10Hz and cover like 22 satellites on 66 channels for about $45.

Just wishing I could find the same info for my various mobile devices to compare.

#12

I have three GoPros, of various models, and a couple of suction cup mounts, and other accessories, that I am willing to loan to the cause for producing a video. Just let me know if you need them.

#13

http://racerender.com/TrackAddict/docs/Accuracy.html

This could be helpful.
this is what I use.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00E65TNYE/harslap-20

as well as the
http://www.amazon.com/GoPoint-Technology-9105-Auxiliary-Adapters/dp/B0061XSX0O/

This combo seems to be the most supported for tracking.

#14

I just saw this on kickstarter