I’ve been playing with the Nokia N95 for the last few days and have posted a review on the YRB blog. The basic gist is that its a fantastic device with crappy battery life - click through to read more.
For the Nokia fanboys I have pictures from my unboxing below
[tags]Nokia, N95, review, unboxing[/tags]
SFF1 just used a version of my F1 circuit guide on their site. It was inspired by Shane SF neighbourhood guide and is a mashup of several technologies including:
I’ll go into more details in a later post but it basically uses the TagMaps callback function to pull in content from Flickr, Wikipedia and Youtube to give a quick overview of each track.
You can also play with a version of the guide on my website.
[tags]F1, Formula 1, circuit guide, TagMaps, mashup, Pipes, Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube[/tags]
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
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
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
I have been spending a lot of time looking for various bits of software that will allow me to visually inspect the huge GPS dataset we have collected as part of the MMM project. Here is a quick listing of software that will hopefully save someone else some time
1)USAPhotomaps: a freeware tool written by Doug Cox that will display GPS route and waypoint information over maps and aerial photos that it downloads from the USGS and the MS Terraserver. It also can display USGS points of interest along with TIGER streets information. A triumph of freeware with available source code though no licensing information is mentioned.
2)TopFusion: This is a shareware program that also plots GPS routes and waypoit info over different types of maps. Is a little bit more user friendly that USAPhotoMaps and also allows you to easily add and remove multiple datapoints sets for quick comparisons across datasets. It can also convert between different data formats. The demo version is almost fully functional while the full version is $40.
3)Google Maps: As you can see from my earlier posts I am a big fan of the Google Maps interface and its relative hacker friendlyness. Engadget had a wonderful article on how to add you own waypoints to google maps. Geoblogging.com also has some easily modified code to display GPS coordinates and image thumbnails on Google Maps
4)GPSVisualizer: This is very cool site that lets you upload GPS coordinates in a variety of formats and displays them as SVG, PNG and JPEG files.
5)Mapserver is the result of a NASA funded OSS project at the University of Minnesota to develop web apps that can display spatial information. While not a full fledged GIS tool it does support have a good amount of functionality including the display of GPS points. The fact that it is an internet app just makes it an attractive deployement option.
6)Mappr is a geobloggers like site that displays georeferenced Flickr images on a map.
7)The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a USGS initiative to mark the locations of almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and its territories.
GPS Coordinate converter is a site that can covert between different coordinate formats and display a map of the area
9)GPX format: GPX or the GPS Exchange Format is an XML based format used to exchange GPS information. A full specification of the format can be found at TopoGrafix.com
UPDATE: I’d like to add some more tools to this page
10) TagMaps widget: This is a YRB project that allows you to make a flash map that displays tags using just a simple GeoRSS feed (or file). You can see a samples of what is possible here and here.
11) GeoRSS maker: This is a mashup that I wrote to allow you to quickly make a GeoRSS feed using the GeoNames database as well as the geocoded articles on Wikipedia. When you enter a search term and press the “Search” button, GeoRSS maker returns the top 5 results that match the users query. Once you have verified the location from the description and/or links, just hit the “Add (Item)” button to add the item to the GeoRSS displayed on the bottom of the page. Just keep on doing more searches and adding items till you have the required GeoRSS which you can copy and paste into a separate file. More details are available in this blog post.
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