newbie config???

Hi,

I'm trying to put 2 systems together to go with 2 cameras in 2 race cars. I will probably not be allowed to have the phone up on the dash...they will probably be in a padded pouch and be wire tied under a seat so I would need to run on battery and have a remote antenna.

How do I set start finish?...do I need to press a button on the phone or can I preload the track and use an already established one or do I add it after the session?

Can I just find a used phone on your list that does not have carrier service and use that or do I need a cellular and data active phone?

I will use Qstarz BT-Q818.

can anyone suggest a older but good model phone to use for this logger? I do not need a big screen for analysis since I'm just getting the data for the video

I want this data to over lay on video with rmp, speed, track position, throttle, temps from OBDII.

How is g force recorded????..does the phone have accelerometers?

Will there be a windows app that will offer some basic analysis with maybe different driver overlays?

It appears this works with Danas...will Danas take in the obd2 rpm data, temps etc....gforce?

thanks

Morgan

Comments

  • Hi, I try to answer your many questions!

    1) Please check the manual for details on how to set start/finish. You can basically do it either by pressing a button while driving, adding it after the session (no real time lap times, but you get everything afterwards), or preloading the track before the session!

    2) No SIM card needed, as long as the phone boots up (I think all S60 and WM phones do..)

    3) BT-Q818 is great. If not already purchased, buy the 'X' model.

    4) I recommend Nokia 5800 (as it is very cheap and nice 3.2" screen, but you need to join the beta group though to get all the features working on that one), or some big screen WM phone, like HTC Touch HD.

    5) RaceChrono2AVI is great for videos. It does not YET have temps overlaid, but I believe they are coming.

    6) The G-forces are calculated from GPS data. Planning to use the phone accelerometers though.

    7) There is already beta windows version of RaceChrono, please check the annoucement for previous beta, you can find the install package from there.

    8) I believe the Danas support is currently broken, I need to investigate that.
  • thanks for the response. We are testing at Monticello next tuesday so I needed to get 2 systems ordered. I went with E62 phones because they were the best price $122 with a decent screen size BT-Q818EX, OBDKey

    Will we be able to "get all the features working" on this phone? instead of the 5800?

    I hope the Danas is working because it's a pretty neat package and the cross platform is a plus. I will download your windows version to run on XP...do I need to register a phone id to get this download working?

    After talking to a few other developers with dedicated systems and a few iphone devs...they all seem kind of spooked by ODBII???...is it a black science?...we "hope" that the OBDKey will work on the cars initially testing, 04 chevy zo6, 09 cadillac cts-v, 07 porsche turbo and a Lotus Exige. Is there anything I have missed about the OBDKey for US speced cars?

    thanks...

    mr


    ps...my mother in law is Finnish and we had a big dinner tonight with some of her family visiting from Riihimäki.
  • edited June 2009
    Well you'll get all features working no matter which phone you use, as you can join my beta group easily (just send me the IMEI codes of the phones). Also the official v1.10 version should work well with E62.

    I will take a look at Danas again soon, but I can't promise anything.

    OBD-II is a bit of black science as the protocol is not public. You have to buy thousand page standards or reverse engineer it. As long as those cars have OBD-II ports, I would not expect big problems. Most of the problems with OBD-II arise when the phones have buggy firmwares and because of that have problems with two simultaneous Bluetooth connections.
  • edited June 2009
    well I got it working on a Toyota Sequoia for testing and it's exciting...a few slightly less newbie questions:

    can I switch to mph?

    why does gps speed never match odb2 speed?

    obdkey software installer cd does not say it works on symbian so is there another symbian app that could view the obd2 data stream live to ensure all channels are recording? It seems the only way "I think" the obdkey is working is that it has a blue light. When I launch a new session...it appears to say "no odb2 data" for a quick second then the program runs and the blue light on the odbkey goes on and "I think" it's working?

    when exporting to pbox or danas does the odb2 data go across also...I have not had any success with viewing it in these programs???

    in rc/winxp the cursor in a graph jumps 1.2 seconds per left/right arrow and in pbox it jumps .6...what resolution did I record at? How do I check this?

    After looking at the directions for the bt-q18 extreme it notes I have to install a usb driver on a win/xp (parallels btw) then change the unit to 5hz by changing the baud and com port???...seems like a hassle...has anyone else done this?

    The odbkey and the q818 do have a baud setting in racechrono?

    Any comments appreciated...thanks.

    mr
  • Yes, just switch the units to "English".

    GPS speed does not match OBD2 speed because of two reasons. GPS data lag and OBD-II not measuring the speed perfectly.

    I don't know of any other software.

    The OBD-II data is not exported to either one, although I'm thinking of exporting them to Danas at some point. RaceChrono2AVI and TrackVision are the only one taking OBD-II data (CSV).

    In RC the graph jumps are not tied to the recording resolution, but to the zoom. Use up/down to zoom. You can check the recording resolution for GPS from traveled route. The recording resolution for OBD-II is not clearly visible (you can see it in graph though).

    BT-Q818 extreme is accompanied by a software that changes the Hz.

    I'm not sure if the baud setting affects the Hz. Atleast for OBDKey it does not affect the resolution.
  • completed my final tests tonight and I'm heading to the track tomorrow. I'm pretty comfortable with the configs and software but I'm getting some uneven numbers.

    at WOT I would expect the throttle position to be 100% but it is not???

    throttle position 82.7%
    relative throttle position 62.2%
    absolute load 95.3%

    what should I make of these numbers? Is there a way to compensate for this difference?

    also the max rpm visually hit @5800 but was logged at 5577

    08 toyota sequoia, obdkey

    tia,

    mr
  • edited June 2009
    Not always throttle position goes to 100%, I've seen it on some other cars as well. If you're doing a video you can probably fix it with Excel. Otherwise it probably does not matter much.

    Your RPM is just what the ECU reports. Usually it is more accurate than what you get on your instrument cluster. So it might be your analog display is inaccurate. But please make sure not too many channels are logged in "high priority", because low resolution might cause you to lose "peaks" of the data as well.
  • I do not see gears in the OBDII channels that I can select from the OBDKey. How can I get a gear number?

    tia,

    mr
  • Hi, there is no gear number in OBD-II. But you can probably calculate it just fine from comparing RPM and GPS speed.
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