Topic: racechrono for android

[turboguzzi]

Yes, i know that i am dealing here with a bunch of pre-smartphone vintage minded folks, but its hard not to like GPS lap time loggers that show you speeds, splits and what not, in all of your laps of a track. just a few years ago it was stuff reserved for motogp guys only...

I've been using the previous Racechrono for symbian on an old Nokia phone + gps BT dongle and its been really really good. But now, the finish guy that developed the program has made at last a free Android version, which means that any Android phone with a built in GPS (most of them) can be turned into a very sophisticated data logger. 

Useless to go into all the details and functions, just visit www.racechrono.com if you are into this kind of thing

Gonna try this new version in this weekend's race, if it works as well as the one before, this guy is getting a donation from me!

[bwaller]

Soooo you mean my wife & her stop watch is a bit outdated? 

[Tintop]

TG thanks for posting.

I've been putting off getting a new cell phone, looks like a Samsung with Android just went to the top of the list.  Even the tracks we race at are there.

[fang]

Good stuff.  I'll be down loading it.  Some of us are phone nerds: I just got a new phone, Rooted and ROMed it (hacked it and changed the operating system) almost before putting it on the charger for the first time...  Yey technology.

[Nezhac]

Soooo you mean my wife & her stop watch is a bit outdated? 

Depends, does she make food too?
In that case she's probably one of the newer versions, and good for a few more years

[turboguzzi]

ok, tried and tested, works way better than the symbian version in terms of accuracy and not missing laps.

just dont expect it to be much good with the very basic internal Gps antenna of the phone.  it really needs an external Gps BT dongle, preferbly 5hz and up refresh rate to deliver good timing. A 80$ expense

but even with my lowly 1 hz nokia gps bt dongle, the lap times were +/-0.3 compared to the track transpoder times, speed graph still a bit jagged at that refresh rate.

A Qstarz 818 dongle is on the list for next year

[bwaller]

That's all good info TG.....but what about your race weekend?

[turboguzzi]

First, if you want to see the atmosphere at our meetings, organizers have put together a nice video + pics. it's all from the previous race there in March and you can see me on the 3rd grade of the podium for a second at 2:04

http://youtu.be/bfrIsO4ygqk

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64214180@N03/sets/72157629679505007/

It was my first race in six months after breaking my ankle, so was more of a test for myself to see that my head wasn't too messed up from the trauma (more the bone infection thing that followed than the healed fracture...)

All things considered, I was overall a second slower than my last time in Varano. Would have been happier to repeat my times from six months ago, but cant complain either. The main thing is that I was trying to go fast rather than playing it safe.

If there's an important takeaway (that makes me feel better too) is that I finally weighted the bike at the tracks scales and... man, it's heavy! 400 lbs/182 kg.... Have been kidding myself that my bathroom scale was giving false high numbers, hoping bike was more in the low 170s kg, but no, it was spot on! And against lighter Bimota / PEM / BMC framed 110hp/1100c.c. Kawis, my 90hp/182 kg Gpz810 is not as competitive as i hoped.

More important, after seeing the 182 kg figure, i realize that when i crash, i rather have something with 40 kg less land on me

Hence I almost have taken the decision to build a smaller bike for next year, regardless if the TT2 class will have a 750 or 600 limit.