The Racing Geek

I was recently at the WOM World get-together in SF when we started discussing the some of the ways that Nokia should market the N-series devices, specifically the N95 vs iPhone issue. One of the things we all agreed on was that the camera on the N95 is a huge differentiator that Nokia really hasn’t been pushing as much as it should. People are so used to seeing crappy photos from devices like the Razr and the iPhone that they dont expect phones to have good cameras. I, on the other hand, have been using various variants of the N95 for well over a year and the camera is so good that I can honestly say that I will never buy a point-and-shoot camera again. People who see the shots are blown away by the quality of the images and often wont believe that they are from a cameraphone. Additionally the fact that I can use ZoneTag to upload, tag and geotag photos directly from the phone means that I upload way more photos from my phone than I ever did with my point-and-shoot camera.

So anyway, I had a quick look at some of the photos I’ve taken over the last year and have pulled out a few of the really outstanding shots to demonstrate the quality of the N95 camera - hope you like them.

One of the first really great shots I took with the phone was this shot of the wreck of the Peter Iredale of the coast of Oregon. I took a bunch of photos of the wreck but I particularly like the contrasting colours in this picture. You can also see that the photo has been automatically geotagged using ZoneTag which allowed me to do 2-click upload the photo while on vacation while also suggesting the tags “shipwreck” and “beach”.

In case you have any doubts about the print quality of the images you should check out this photo of mine that was used in a full page advertisement in SportsCar magazine. The photo was taken with an N95 classic after I spun out at the track.

One of the things that people forget is that not only does the N95 take great photos but it also shoots 640×480 video at a full 30 fps. The above video was taken at a BMW club autocross using an N95 8GB (N95-2) on my homebrew track video setup. As you can see the picture is clear and skip free. The loud rustling sound is the wind noise from the air entering the cabin once you go above a certain speed. Also check out this trackday video that I made at Reno-Fernley Raceway using the same camera setup.

The two photos above are part of a set that I took from the front row of an Iron Maiden concert in San Antonio using my N95 classic. The concert environment with its combination low light, moving subjects, backlighting and audience jostling is pretty hostile to cameras and makes it super challenging to take clear photographs.

The biggest issue for me was the time it takes for the N95 camera to both switch on and also focus on its subject. I would often click the button to capture an interesting moment but the moment would be well past by the time the camera actually took its shot. I took about 150 photos on that day and roughly 40 were worth putting on Flickr with another 40-50 worth saving. Not a very good ratio but since people were having worse ratios with high-ish end cameras I certainly cant complain. Also being a cameraphone means that there are zero questions asked when you take it into the venue

The last thing I want to share is some video that I shot from another Iron Maiden Concert (this time in Concord). This was from an N95 8GB NAM and as you can see the video is pretty damn good despite the tough camera conditions. The sound is once again the biggest issue - it just cant handle the loud noise and ends up clipping most of the audio.

All in all I can say that the N95 has a truly spectacular camera (for a phone) and it can easily be a replacement for a point-and-shoot camera. Plus if Nokia can fix the sound/clipping problems on the phone they should seriously market the N95 as a full-on camcorder replacement as well. The addition of easy uploads to Flickr and YouTube (the current Flickr share SUCKS!!!) would make this the perfect point-and-shoot photo and video capture device.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of using a N95 8GM NAM (N95-4) that was provided to me by Nokia as part of the WOM World program. I actually have both the original N95 and an N95 8GB (N95-2) but both of them are euro 3G which meant that I was stuck at EDGE speeds on US AT&T network. I’ve had a couple of weeks to play with the device and the big differentiator was of course the blazing fast internet speeds (see the speed test results below). Uploading ZoneTag photos and seeing Zurfer images was so fast that I would just continue using the 3G network even when I had an available WiFi access point.

Since I have an unlimited data plan on my phone, I obviously had to see if I could share my 3G connection with my other devices, namely an N800 Internet Tablet and my MacBook Pro (Tiger). This however was not such a simple process - it appears that the 3G versions have made small changes to their connection protocols which have rendered my existing connection sharing steps useless. The even more annoying part was that the steps in setting up the connection would all work just fine but when you actually tried to use the connection it just wouldn’t work I tried a bunch of internet searching and after considerable trial and error I was able to get connection sharing to work. So in order to spare the next poor fool the trouble I’m writing up this tutorial on how to share the 3G connection from an N95 8GB NAM with first an N800 Maemo and then with a MacBook Pro running Tiger. As always there are no warranties or guarantees - use at your own risk.

Connection sharing between a 3G Nokia phone and the N800 OS2008 Internet Tablet

The following steps should tell you how to share the 3G connection from your Nokia to your N800 Maemo tablet. They have been tested to work between my N95 8GB NAM (with US AT&T service) and my N800 OS2008 though they should theoretically work for different Nokia phones and various tablets including the N810

Pair the N800 with your Phone

1. Switch on the N800 and go to Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Phone
2. You should now see a dropdown menu listing the “Selected Phone”. Click the “New” button.
3. The tablet will take a few seconds to do a bluetooth scan before listing all available devices. Select your phone from the list and click “Ok”
4. The pairing screen will display a code. Hit Ok and then enter that code into your phone when prompted to do so. Accept the connection request from the tablet.
5. The Tablet will now display the “Operator Setup” screen. Hit next to continue
6. Select USA as your country and hit next.
7. Select AT&T Internet as your mobile operator and hit next
8. Tap “Finish” to save your settings

Setting up the connection on the Tablet

1. You will now have gone back to the “Phone” window on the tablet with the name of your phone selected in the dropdown. Hit the “Ok” button to save your phone.
2. Open the “Connectivity” icon in the Control Panel and click the “Connections” button
3. Click the New button to open the “Connection Setup wizard” and click “Next” to continue.
4. Enter the connection name and set the connection type to “Packet Data”. Hit next to continue.
5. Change the Access Point Name to be “wap.cingular”. If you do not do this it WILL NOT work. If you are using a carrier other than AT & T you should set it to be the access point name you use on your phone. You can get it on the phone by going to Menue -> Tools -> Settings -> Connection -> Access points. Click on the access point you use on the phone and use the text you find under “Acess point name”. Do not use the connection name since that can be different from the access point name.
6. The dialup number is *99# while the username and password are blank. Hit “Next” to continue.
7. Tap “Finish” to save the settings

Using the Connection from your N800 tablet

1. To open the connection on your tablet click on the connection icon (between the volume and battery icons) in the top right of the screen
2. Click “Select Connection” to see a list of connections and available WiFi access points.
3. Select the connection you just created and click “Connect”
4. The phone will prompt you about accepting a connection from the tablet - hit “yes” and the tablet will connect to the phone and display a message saying “Connect to XXXXX”
5. You are now connected over 3G.
6. You can disconnect the connection at any time by clicking the connection icon and hitting “Disconnect”
7. You can avoid the connection prompt by going to Menu -> Tools -> Bluetooth page on your phone. Click right on the D-pad which will show a list of accepted connections. Find your N800 on the list, click on options and “Set as authorized”. This will allow connections without requiring your permission every time.

Connection sharing between a 3G Nokia phone and Mac OS X

The following steps should tell you how to share the 3G connection from your Nokia to your OS X machine. They have been tested to work between my N95 8GB (with US AT&T service) and my MacBook Pro running Tiger though they should theoretically work for different Nokia phones and various versions of OS X (requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 and higher for iSync) .

Install the iSync Plugin
You MUST go through this process first - I have found that without this the connection may not successfully complete.

1. The first step is to download the Nokia iSync plugin for the N95 which is available here. It is important to download the exact version needed for your phone - I have found that the N95 plugin does NOT work with the N95 8GB.
2. Once you have downloaded the dmg file double click it to open the image and then double click on the installation package.
3. Follow the steps in the wizard to install the package.

Pair Mac with Phone

1. Make sure bluetooth is turned on and set to discoverable (visibility shown to all) on your phone.
2. Go to “System Preferences” and click on “Bluetooth”.
3. Click the “Set Up New Device” button and then hit “continue” on the wizard that pops up.
4. Select the device type to be “Mobile Phone” and click continue.
5. The Mac will then take a minute or so to scan for any mobile phones within Bluetooth range and give you a list. Select your phone from the list and click “continue”
6. The next step is for the computer to gather information about your phone. This will take another minute or so, just wait till the process is complete and click “continue”
7. The mac will now display an eight digit numerical code and prompt you to enter it on your device. Your phone will be displaying a prompt to enter the passkey on the phone - enter it and hit ok (on the phone). The phone will then display a message asking if it should accept an incoming connection from your computer - click “yes”.
8. The next step is to setup the services you want you computer to access on your phone. For sharing your connection you need to check the box saying “Access the internet with your phone’s data connection” and set the radio button below it to be “Use a direct, higher speed connection…”. Now hit continue.
9. The next screen will setup connection strings for your phone. Leave the username and password blank and set the GPRS CID string to “*99#” (without quotes). Select “Nokia Infrared” as the Modem script and hit “Continue”.
10. Your mac and phone are now setup to share their connection - hit the “Quit” button.

Using the connection

1. Go to the “Network” tab in system preferences and set the Show dropdown to “Network Status”
2. Select the “Bluetooth” option and click the “Connect” button.
3. This will have opened “Internet Connect” with all the right configurations. Click the “Connect” button
4. Your phone will prompt you to accept a connection from your laptop - say “Yes”.
5. In a few seconds your connection status will say “Connected” and you will be free to surf the net at 3G speeds. In fact a good portion of this blog post was written on my Mac over 3G

Possible issues

1. It can get quite annoying to have your phone keep prompting you to allow the conection. You can get around this by going to Menu -> Tools -> Bluetooth page on your phone. Click right on the D-pad which will show a list of accepted connections. Find your computer on the list, click on options and “Set as authorized”. This will allow your laptop to make connections without requiring your permission every time.
2. Occasionally I have had issues disconnecting the 3G connection. Sometimes the status keeps saying “disconnecting” while other times it says its ready to connect but throws error messages to verify your connection settings. I’ve found that a reboot of the computer and the phone usually fixes it.

One of the most popular entries on my blog is my video chat tutorial for the N800. Unfortunately Nokia has since ceased its support for their Nokia Internet Call application on the N95 and as a result there was no way for N800 users to video chat with a desktop user. After several months of fiddling around and tying out several different options I am glad to say that I have finally figured out the process and managed to make N800 to PC video calls using the Gizmo project. The video quality is not as good as it used to be with the Internet Call application, but as you can see below, unlike IC, it actually works so that does makes it a winner. The audio quality is exceptional and there is hardly any lag. Scroll down to see my full video chat tutorial.

N800 OS2008 Video call tutorial

So now for the second time, I present a step-by-step tutorial on how to setup video chat between the N800 (OS2008) and a desktop PC. Unfortunately since only the windows versions of the Gizmo5 client currently supports video, Mac and Linux users will have to be content with audio chat (which follows the same steps).

Update the OS
Download the software update utility from Nokia and update the tablet to OS2008. The official instructions for entering the “Install mode” on the update are incorrect. The Internet Tablet Software Update Wizard will tell you to enter the update mode by boot the device while holding the “swap” key down - this will show the USB icon on the top right corner for 2-3 seconds after which the tablet will quit the install mode and continue boting. What you should actually do is hold the “Home” key (the one with a house icon) down during bootup which will put it into the sustained install mode that is needed for the software update wizard to do its magic.

OS2008 is more stable than the one the N800 ships with plus it makes it easier to install the Gizmo client. Dont forget to back up any existing data before the update.

Setup the WiFi
To make an internet video call you first need the internet, if you haven’t set it up during your first boot just follow these steps.

1. Open the “Control Panel” from Start Button (the button on the left that has two window icons on it) -> Tools -> Control Panel
2. Open the Connectivity application and click the “Connections” button
3. Click “New” to open the connection setup wizard and then tap “Next” to continue
4. Name the connection, set the connection type to “WLAN” and tap next
5. You will get dialog asking “Scan for available WLAN networks?”. Tap Yes
6. You will now be presented with a list of available networks. Just select the one you want to connect to and tap next. You will be prompted to enter the network WEP key if the network is protected.
7. Tap “Finish” to save you new internet settings

Installing Gizmo5
If you look at the communications menu of the N800 you will see an entry for the Gizmo project. If you click on this option the tablet should prompt you to download and install the Gizmo client on the tablet. However when I tried to do the install this way it appears that I got an unstable version of the client which seemed to crash if I try to video chat. Instead I suggest you go to the Gizmo5 page and click on the link to download Gizmo for the N800. It will ask you if you want to install the application, just say keep saying yes and the install should be trouble free.

Setting up the application
Once you have installed the application you can start it by going under the “Extras” section of the Application menu (only if you installed from the web - if you installed it from the communication menu then you must start it from there). The application will take a a few seconds to start up and once loaded will ask you to either login or create a new account. Registration is pretty simple and only takes a few minutes. Once that is done you can enter the login information into the client and it will log you into the Gizmo service.

On the remote PC
The remote PC user should go to Gizmo5 page and click on the download now button. The page should automatically prompt the user to save the installation file. Once installed, the remote user should start the application and create an account for him/herself. As always if you want to have video chat the remote PC should have a webcam, mike and speakers

Add a new contact (on the N800)
In order to chat with the remote user you will first have to add him/her as a Gizmo contact. Start by clicking on the menu option on the top left corner of the screen (to the left of the Gizmo5 window title). Select Contacts > Add Contact. Set the contact type as Gizmo5 and enter the remote users Gizmo5 ID. Clicking the “Add” button will send a contact request to the remote user and once approved you will be able to see the remote user on your contact list.

Starting the chat
Open the camera on the N800. This will launch the Internet Call application, just close it and go back to the Gizmo app. If you are not in the “Phonebook” screen that displays your contacts just click on the phonebook tab near the top of the screen. Click on the contacts name and wait (hold the stylus touching the contact name). A drop down menu will open with a set of calling options. Select the “Call with Gizmo” option. This will send the remote user a call request which once accepted will open a video chat between the N800 and the remote PC.

Caveats
Once you have installed the latest Gizmo5 clients on both the N800 and PC things should go reasonably smoothly but there are some things to watch out for.

1. The N800 client is a bit buggy and sometimes will not connect to the service. Restarting the app usually gets it working.
2. Outgoing audio calls from the N800 to a Mac often crash the N800 client and leave the Mac client with an open call. You will have to manually cut the call on the mac client and try again. I recommend calling from the Mac to the N800 since that seems to be more stable.
3. Video is not too great and doesnt handle large movements very well. IMHO the excellent audio quality more that makes up for the crappy video.

Other than these issues the Gizmo5 client works pretty well on the N800. The fact that it is currently the only available video chat solution on the N800 means that it the best one out there as well :). I hope this tutorial helps and if anyone finds any issues or corrections please comment on the post and I will update the entry as needed.

The official instructions for entering the “Install mode” on the Nokia N800 OS2008 Software update are incorrect. The Internet Tablet Software Update Wizard will tell you to enter the update mode by boot the device while holding the “swap” key down - this will show the USB icon on the top right corner for 2-3 seconds after which the tablet will quit the install mode and continue boting. What you should actually do is hold the “Home” key (the one with a house icon) down during bootup which will put it into the sustained install mode that is needed for the software update wizard to do its magic.

Update: If you are having issues with downloading the update using the Software update tool you can grab the update file from this torrent (N800 only) for a manual install. Use the torrent client of your choice to download the .bin file and tell the Software Update tool to install the file. This file will work only for N800 - N810 users will have to fine the image file elsewhere.

Google just announced MyLocation, a cell-id augmented version of Google Maps Mobile.

Welcome to 18 months ago.

Helping organize the Mobile Spatial Interaction (MSI) workshop at CHI 2007 has made me very sensitive to the usage of the term MSI. Most people see Mobile and Spatial attached to Interaction and immediately start talking about location aware applications and services. However as someone who has spent the last few years working on location-aware applications, I have always felt that MSI and location-aware apps are two slightly different classes of research. As a result I’ve been spending some time thinking about how to define MSI as well as understanding how it differs (if it differs at all) from the current of location aware applications. My definition of location aware will of course be highly biased by projects like FireEagle, ZoneTag and Zurfer)

Location
I define location aware systems as systems that know the users absolute position. The accuracy of the location will of course change as will the source input (IP, Cell tower, GPS, user sumitted), used but by definition all location-aware systems can locate the user down to some arbitrary level of accuracy. The available accuracy may vary widely from country to city to zipcode to lat/long, and typically the best possible accuracy comes from GPS receiver which has an average error rate of about 30 feet.

MSI on the other hand requires not only the users physical location but also their spatial orientation (heading at a minimum but possibly including information like tilt, height, etc…). Typically MSI also requires a greater level of location accuracy – most spatially aware systems cannot do much with city level location and generally require at least GPS level location accuracy. In many ways you can consider the MSI grade location (and orientation) to be the logical conclusion of ever improving location aware technologies.

Interaction
To me the greatest difference between location aware and MSI applications is in terms of the interactions that they can enable. A location aware application has more of a “smart” interaction where the app tailors the content based on your location. ZoneTag is an excellent example of a location aware app that suggests tags based on your current location. To the user it appears to be a smart application that just knows what the user probably wants.

MSI interaction on the other hand can go much deeper than just smart apps. Sure it would be awesome to have a version of ZoneTag that showed the tags for the object you just took a picture of but that’s the obvious and (relatively) easy part. To me the real killer app for MSI is in enabling the creation of tangible* intuitive user interfaces. Interfaces that actually interact with their physical surroundings will not only have greater adoption (due to easy learnability) but peoples innate curiosity and playfulness will make the interaction more pleasurable (if you’ve ever seen a group of tenured professors act like children at a SmartSkin table you know what I mean :)).

Magic
Ubicomp researchers have been trying to make these intuitive interfaces for years but have been hampered by the artificial nature of the sensing technology. With mobile phones becoming more powerful and increasingly including things like GPS, digital compasses, accelerometers, tilt sensors, etc… it isn’t going to be too long before every person is walking around with an MSI/Ubicomp enabling device in their pocket. If MSI researchers have their way people will no longer have to squint at tiny screens, explicit interfaces will disappear and users will directly query and interact with their real world environment. We still have a long way to go before we get there but projects like Air Messages, Point and Find, relateGateways, etc… are beginning to show how users can interact with the real world. They are opening a while new set of research questions about how people will react to such technology – I don’t know what the killer app will be but I’m pretty sure the interaction will be indistinguishable from magic.

* I am using the word tangible since even gestural MSI is situated in the physical environment.

[tags]MSI, Mobile spatial interaction, location-aware, lbs, research[/tags]

I just downloaded the latest version of Yahoo Go on my Nokia N95 and was blown away to find that it has GPS support for maps and navigation. I am on an roadtrip right now and will be use it for direction the rest of my trip. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that I have been using Nokia Maps (aka Smart2Go) for the past 10 days which should make for an interesting comparison - I’ll post a detailed comparison/review once I get home in about a week.

I am a great fan of in-car video during HPDEs. It is a great tool to analyze your performance and see how different lines have affected you laptimes - works even better when you have a DL1 or some other data logger. In-car video is also a great way to give people an idea of what its like to track a car and maybe even understand you keep grinning from ear to ear after each event.

However when I see the average setup (for an Elise) at an HPDE it looks to go one of two ways

1) The full on treatment: This is a full on video system that gives you the best quality video and audio and will usually record several hours without any issues. Some of the equipment that this requires is

• Harness bar: $229 for the Sector 111 4Tress Harness Bar
• Camera Mount: $35 for the Sector 111 CRD mount
• Solid state recorder: $565 for a ChaseCam PDR100
• Solid state memory: ~$100 for a 4 GB CF card
• Shock proof camera(s): $175-275 for a bulletcam

This kind of a setup will give you close to pro level AV and is the next best thing to actually sitting in the car. However the total price tag of around $1200 bucks (not including harness installation) is usually out of the price range of all but the most avid track junkies.
2) Track video lite: This setup tries to replicate the quality of the track video but uses consumer grade electronics and usually does not leave any permanent alterations to the car. The parts list includes

• Suction cup mount: $40-100 at Chasecam
• Solid state Camera: $300-$500 for either commercial point and shoot camera or a consumer camcorder
• Solid state memory: ~$100 for a 4 GB CF card
• Portable storage: Since these cameras fill up memory very quickly you will have to download the video between sessions to either a laptop or a storage solution like the Wolverine ($150)

This system is considerably cheaper (~$550 excluding storage) and is probably the most popular HPDE setup. The quality is pretty decent (800 x 600 or 640 x 480) though people say that the vibration affects the image stabilization systems on these cameras and track life is only about 2 years. Additionally you have to use some sort of storage system to suck the video out between lap sessions and that can get tiresome. While you can mix and match components to get a setup for < $500, it's still quite pricey for someone who is still deciding how much to invest in track equipment.

A looking for a cheaper alternative
This got me thinking about possible ways to record video for free to see how useful it is before actually investing in a full on setup. One of the most ubiquitous technologies to emerge in recent years has been the cameraphone which invariably has a video mode as well. Now off course the video quality of the cameraphone is dependant on the device, but newer devices usually have at least 2 megapixels and can use large memory cards to store virtually limitless video. Phones are built to withstand rougher use than a camera (they go through several types of drop tests) and being solid state they are less affected by vibration. I then decided to build my own in-car video setup using a cellphone.

My Setup
The latest device that I have been playing with is the Nokia N73 which has a 3.2 megapixel camera and can hold 2GB miniSD card. It records video at a resolution of 320 x 240 and saves it as mp4 files which can be read on any PC. Since an hour of video only takes ~300 MB, I knew that a 2GB would be more than enough to record video for an entire track weekend. I didnt mind spending the money (~$40) on the card because I knew that even if I didn’t use it for video I would definitely use it to store music on my phone.

The mounting device was little trickier, the cameraphone has no mount points on it which meant that I couldn’t use any of the traditional mounting systems (would have been out of my budget anyway). However while looking at the interior of the car I realized that the back window of the Elise is perfectly vertical and if I could attach the phone to the window I would probably be able to get a good view out the front.

When it came to the actual attachment I decided to use painters tape instead since it has relatively high shear strength and leaves no residue which is important since I didn’t want to mess up my phone. Additionally the N73 only weighs a 116 grams which will barely put any shear forces on the tape. This mounting system will of course only work for candybar style phones and not clamshells because you cannot tape an open clamshell to the inside of the window. You begin by taking a 2-3 foot strip of painters tape and cut a small hole in the center for the lens.

You then open the lens cap of the phone if any and place it on the tape such that the lens is right over the hole. If your phone does not have a side accessible button to turn on the camera you will have to turn on the camera and start recording at this point.

Now you just take the strip (with the phone attached) and tape it to the bottom edge of the rear window. You can add some padding material between the glass and the phone though I found that this really wasn’t necessary.

Thats it - just remember to turn on the phone camera at the start of every session.

The video shot this way is obviously not as good as the video from the earlier systems but for its price ($40 for the card and $1 for the tape) it gives more than enough detail to understand what is happening at the track. Additionally if you are going to post the video online on YouTube, Google Video or Yahoo video, these system usually transcode your video down to 320 x 240 anyway so you arent really loosing that much quality. I am looking forward to getting my hands on the new Nokia N95 which shoots video at 640 x 480 - that should really give the other systems a run for their money

You can download a full resolution video from here (9 MB transcoded WMV). I have also made a JumpCut video of my best lap (and a small ‘incident’) with captions and other fun stuff - RSS readers point your browsers here.

UPDATE: I have posted some sample track video from the N95 in a separate post - the video quality is dramatically better and good enough to postpone my PDR100 plans
[tags]trackday, video, HPDE, in-car, onboard, nokia, cellphone, N73, Thunderhill, Thunderhill Raceway Park[/tags]