Timing/GPS App

[Water Boy]

Well as im now a modern up to date man what app do people use for timing/gps for track days.

Im not interested in video atm. Ill leave that to Peter Jones for now.

What apps do you use?

[Peter Jones]

Depends which phone you've got.

Harry's lap timer for IPhone is pretty popular.

Trackmaster for Android.

[Water Boy]

Nokia! So android!

[Peter Jones]

In that case take a look at Trackmaster.

Trackmaster - Welcome

Lots of great features, here's a few examples

Lap times can be published to a public website in real time.
If you can convince other drivers in your session to run it it'll give you your place in the race and time between you and the race lead.
It'll do video with speed and accelerometer overlay directly on the phone itself if your phone is fast enough.
The lap replay function is cool, you can watch an animation of your lap on the phone and look at your acceleration and braking points.
Split times, top speed averages etc. All very cool stuff.

[Sirocco20348]

Nokia! So android!

Racechrono (FREE) i found is really well designed. I pair it with a Qstars 10hz gps logger ($80)

Trackmaster interface is a mess and costs $4.99.

[seangti]

I've provided some input to a thread I started quite some time back - G-Tech pro Fanatic RR or others??. I haven't update in quite some time but have learnt quite a bit more about interrogating the data and making use of it beyond simply a lap time.

The short of it is that you really need an external GPS, minimum 5hz, for realiable timing.

I can go on and on about this stuff, though won't . If you can detail what you want out of it than I can elaborate. e.g. if you ever want to use for 0-100, 100-0, quarter mile times or motorkhana than a 10hz GPZ is better suited. But 5 is fine for track work.

To me, the data recording tool is only part of the equation, a phone app with external GPS which you can pull data to excel is sufficient, which almost all of them will do. I have CMS Lap timer on my iphone without external GPS, I haven't really explored it much yet though the idea was for comparison. Anyway, GPS is essential for quality data. Pulling that data to a computer and interrogating it is key to improving lap times. This is where VBOX is worth it's asking price over the competitors, it's software is awesome. Check out VBOX's e-book at eBook download, much of the data can be gathered from a phone app (with ext GPS) with analysis to take place in excel.

Yikes, and this is me not going on and on...

[Sirocco20348]

But 5 is fine for track work.

A car is covering a lot of ground at 200km/h past a start finish line. 55m/s .... so logging at 5hz you could be 10m past the start finish line before it polls again!

10hz at a minimum and its only $80 for the qstars.

[seangti]

A car is covering a lot of ground at 200km/h past a start finish line. 55m/s .... so logging at 5hz you could be 10m past the start finish line before it polls again!

10hz at a minimum and its only $80 for the qstars.

Agreed, from all the research I'd done came back to 5hz being considered sufficient minimum for an open track. Many external GPS's are 10hz anyway. Plus this is data interpolation so is much more accurate and less resource intensive to be "accurate".

IMO, the difference will only be noted at the start/finish line for an ultimate lap time which I wouldn't use the GPS derived time for bragging rights. My GTech is very rarely any more than 1/10s out from official timing, typically within hundredths which could be attributed to my GPS start/finsh line not being perfect aligned with the tracks.

I find the use of the lap timer of much greater use when looking at cornering speed (and average point to point), distance travelled per corner or lap, speed intervals and braking points, etc.

For those that don't know what we're talking about, the hz rating is the number of times per second the data is sampled. 5hz = 5x per second so every 0.2sec, 10hz being 10x per sec. IMO, the higher sampling rate is more/most relevant when in tight corners, not blasting in a straight line.

[giveway]

I use racechrono on my android with a 10hz external bluetooth GPS and a Bluetooth obdII dongle. There is a new version of racechrono pro in beta which records video with the phone as well.

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