Here is the first 6 laps or so, of the first race of the day at Strawberry High School as part of the Electrathon of Tampa Bay series.
The video is from ProEV's Super Coupe #039 running in the advanced battery open class.
Quick explanation of the data display. The data comes from an AIM data acquasition system. Upper left is a track map from GPS postion. Next to it is a ' G force' sensor display. When the dot is at the edge of the first circle, I am under one 'G'. In other words, I am being pulled as hard sideways as normal gravity is pulling me down. This data is from an internal accelerometer. The next display is a speedometer. The speeds are calculated from the GPS. The times and lap number are calculated by GPS and not from the official transponder. The last lap time display holds for ten seconds after the end of the lap to make it easy to read.
The two vertical bar displays at the bottom of the screen display energy (rather than power). The right display shows how much energy in Watt hours is being pulled from the battery pack. The left display shows the Watt hours that are being used to overcome motor inefficiencies, rolling resistance, aero drag. This is calculated by taking previous kinetic energy (calculated from speed and vehicle weight) plus energy in from the battery pack and subtracting the kinetic energy now (calculated from speed and vehicle weight). The difference is the energy used up and not being added to the kinetic energy of the vehicle.
-- Edited by ProEV on Monday 2nd of November 2015 01:39:03 PM
I would love to try to put something like this on my car where it says what power is being put in vs what is out, how difficult would it be to install/calibrate? I've seen inside your car at the starting line/pits and the wiring inside just gives me anxiety just looking at it.
Great video....Looks like a fun course. I don't think we have any courses that flat but then we live in Oregon not Florida. The track looks comparable to our Pasco, WA Race. Still wish you could come to one of our races so we can see how the SE and NW racers compare.
The energy metering is great but I really like the "G" force, track, and speedometer showing up on the video...I am guessing this is fed into the go-pro somehow. I am as non-tech as is humanly possible in this day and time so am happy I finally have a meter for amps, volts, speedometer, amp hour, watt hour etc. for the first time ever. I have always raced by the seat of my pants with a couple of harbor Freight 'free' meters for volts left in pack and amps being used. Now if I learn to pay attention to the meters who knows maybe I can keep up with the Cloud team.
Working on a race car, we always have limits to how much time and money we can put into the car. It is not terrible difficult or expensive to put together some sort of DAQ system on your car but it is very time intensive.
From your team point of view, I would think there is more to be gained by putting the time into the kind of things that will immediately help the car. Things like to lots of testing to see what breaks. Coming up with a good alignment rig so that all wheels point exactly the same direction and are square to the body of the car. Motor and powered wheel aligned and the chain a good tension. Battery capacity tested Etc.
From your personal point of view, any time spent learning electronic and programming is probably going to benifit you down the line. It is not difficult stuff and all the information is on the internet but it takes time to work it through.
Simple gear: There a number of Android and iPhone apps that turn your phone into a basic DAQ system. You mount your phone to record video and the program gives you GPS lap times and speed and G force.
If you are running an Alltrax controller, you can connect to the serial port and read live amps and voltage. I would use a tiny $30 Arduino computer to collect and store the data. It is an easy board to use and comes with open source software that is easy to learn but time intensive.
The video is from a Contour camera. http://contour.com It seems more aero than those square Go-Pros.
All the data is from an AIM motorsports data system. I export it as a comma delimited file and use a program called Race Renderer to add it to the video
Cliff, Thanks for all of the info. This year with 224 students I teach and as many as 46 kids in one class I am just hoping to make it through my last year of teaching without any major injury....and am dead tired when the student contact day is over. Both of my junior--Industry & Engineering I--classes are at 46 and almost 1/2 of them have never had any metals classes. So I am teaching basic safety, welding of all kinds, machining, tubing bending, how to use a drill press and band saws, etc. I love teaching but am glad this is my last full time year I am getting too old to put up with this many kids.
