Autosport Labs

Hey All,

We can't get any live telemety at cota???

Anyone else???

Is this an ATT cell problem with cota? Worked at shop

Thanks for any info

Kyle
SPR
COTA garage 4

We ran the debug script as was mentioned in an earlier post.


[cell] auto-baud successful
[cell] manufacturer is u-blox

[cell] Loading driver for UBlox Sara U280
[gsm] Failed to read phone number
[gsm] Failed to read phone number
[gsm] Failed to parse phone number
tracks: found 1427687509
[lapstats] Auto-detected track from db 1427687509
[cell] Network registered
[sara_u280] GPRS Attached: yes
[sara_u280] Connected to GPRS: False
[sara_u280] Enabling CHAP auth b/c APN password is not empty
[cell] IP address: "10.48.87.115"

[cell] Server authenticated
[USB] Starting telem stream on USB
[lua] Gracefully stopping Lua Task
[lua] Destroying Lua State
[lua] Initializing Lua state
[lua] memory usage: 16KB
[lua] Starting Lua Task
[lua] Loading script. Length: 21
[lua] Successfully loaded script.




Any ideas?

Hi Kyle,

It looks like you were broadcasting. Any current telemetry streams are findable here under your Podium account under 'events' - https://podium.live/home

If you didn't join a specific event look for an Ad Hoc event matching the date of the event.

Thanks for the reply Brent,

But guys, we have to get this stuff working or I have to give up on it. I love the concepts, but I can't keep traveling 1500 miles with a team not to have telemetry in the car.

This event at COTA, we ended up spending most of the test day trying to troubleshoot the system to get simple lap times and 2 inputs. We ended up having to put a trackmate back in and going with that after the test day. Very frustrating for me and more importantly very frustrating for the customer drivers, and at that point their frustrations become a deal breaker.

Your troubleshooting and interfacing with even simple instructions to get something done, needs help. I had no idea there was a debug routine, and if one of my new guys hadn't spent a couple hours on figuring that out, I still wouldn't. It can't be a research project all the time.

We need to know immediately, DO WE HAVE CELL CONNECTION?! We all are standing around with ATT strong signals to our cell phone, but we have no idea if the new 3.5G module is talking. Sure there is the cloud symbol, but we had that even with it configured to upload from the tablet used as a dash, even when the tablet has no cell ability. We poured thru the config and system screens line by line for hours. How about a cell strength meter in the corner just like a phone?!

We got an adhoc event for that day on the podium.live event, but ZERO ZERO DATA?? How can that be? I pulled the device off of the ADHOC event and put it on a specific created event, no difference. My podium live account has dozens of adhoc events, apparently from moving the car on and off a trailer or anytime the system is powered up. Thats fine, but even those "events" will have zero data most of the time. You would think an RPM trace at least would be on those.

We need a closed loop confirmation of every step along the way to make this work. We need clear instructions what to do next. It would help to have WORDS not the fuzzy symbols like a green cloud or a yellow cloud. How about saying SIGNAL STRENGTH IS.... Eventually we found that there were 3 ATT channels to "try" but by that time we were out of track sessions to see if that helped. We always got the message that indicated the device at this event is not broadcasting on the podium live "dashboard".

Another significant problem is that unless we are outside of a garage and the GPS is working, we can't confirm that our setup is correct. For this product to be VIABLE, I need to get it working in the garage in Denver, and unload at a destination like COTA and have it just power up and work.

And at the end of setup, WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO ACTUATE SOMETHING ON THE CAR AND SEE IT HAPPEN ON PODIUM LIVE.

It has been a year and I still have yet to be able to see driver to driver comparison live as one gets out, and be able to see car health telemetry live.

The fundamental disconnect I feel is that you guys in the techy world are making assumptions about what "common sense" is to a club racing team that doesn't have a computer programmer on the team. Even stupid things like a simple scroll bars in the APP would help. I didn't know there were more screens below the display I was on because you can't simply scroll the screen like all other apps, you have to drag and drop it even on a laptop! Nothing else on a laptop works this way! Stuff like this needs to get standardized and simple for the layman racer.

It would also help in your instructions to indicate that even though you can handshake with the box via bluetooth with a laptop, you can make no changes - you have to use a cable. That was a 60 minute safari by itself.

I love the concepts and really appreciate how hard this must be to make a product, and I appreciate the time and effort you must spend, but it isn't working on a basic level yet for me, and I wanted this to be a power use product with can bus telemetry from a robust megasquirt, and driver aid tool.

Our local track is now closed for awhile to give this another final shot, but I am open for any solutions built into the next software revisions.

Thanks,
Kyle Watkins
Sector Purple Racing.

Hi Kyle,

Very sorry you weren't able to get useful telemetry out of your car at COTA. After some research, you were really close. Here's what I think happened.

First; this seems to be the event you were broadcasting under:
https://podium.live/events/09aa2965-b65 ... e-racing-1

This should be listed under "your events" at http://podium.live/home

It looks like it was broadcasting for a few hours due to the amount of data we can see. Unfortunately, no laps were registered, and this is due to a number of possible issues, in rough order of likelihood:

* The track was not included in RCP's configuration for auto-detection - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAgFQ9k6VIw
* No GPS lock
* Automatic track detection turned off in RCP configuration
* Race Timing feature turned off in RCP configuration
* Our track map data was wrong (we incorrectly set the start/finish point)

With laps your data should have looked something like one of your previous successful events:
https://podium.live/events/nasa-3-hour- ... &laps[]=77


* Regarding ease of use:

We've been working some key features of the system to help avoid exactly these problems, and they were released in the 1.8.0 app, with more coming. Because lap timing is so important, the RaceCapture app tries really hard to ensure you'll get lap times by providing prompts to either select a track configuration or help you set up a track map on the fly.

It's really worth a read so you know that what's important for you is important to us as well.
https://www.autosportlabs.com/racecaptu ... ack-magic/

Some of your comments lead me to believe that you might've missed some helpful parts of the app, specifically the status pages. Here's some info:

Starting with the app tool bar, there's some information at a glance. Here, it's showing that it's searching for the track and that there's no GPS lock yet (red icon)


With your raceCapture app running as a dashboard, did you see COTA detected as a track? Did you see any lap times while on track?

You can access the system status off of the main menu:


Cellular module status:


...GPS status:


...and track detection status:



* Bluetooth - we've only designed it to work with Android, and we've updated our instructions here, thank you.
https://wiki.autosportlabs.com/RaceCapt ... tooth_note

* Sensors: you mentioned CAN bus from megasquirt, but I don't see that your podium data shows any ECU data. Let us know if we can help with the CAN connection to the Megasquirt.

Thanks again for the feedback. I cannot stress enough that the drum we're beating is to make the system so easy to use that you won't need a manual. I understand you may not be feeling that from your last experience, but the recent work we've done, especially in the 1.8.0 app we recently released, points to this commitment, with more to come.

These videos also speak to the things we're building to make the experience better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3cO3CyOD5E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekTP0x-aCHs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc1Bi__0IDk

Hi Brent,

Thanks very much for the reply.

It will take a few posts to sort out answers here, but maybe the discussion can help me figure out what I am missing. Also I may have the guys that were troubleshooting chime in.

Before leaving for the event, we upgraded firmware to latest (2.10.2), upgraded the 2.5G to 3.5G, and moved from 1.4.2 to 1.8.0 on the apps, both on the laptop and the amazon fire tablet.

A few questions come to mind.

We did not do anything to the SIM card account, should we have??

You mention data with no laps. Is this lost? Why can't we see a timeline with it idling or oil pressure or something indicating the system is ready to go on track, on the team laptop? We did attempt to log data to the SD card and got a file.

We can't "risk" sending the car out in one of the very few sessions to learn the track, and not have lap times and other data to analyze, so if the system appears to have some disconnect sitting in the garage, then the driver wants the traqmate back in.

In previous events, the RCP has NOT had a dash and was providing telemetry. Is this still available?

In trying to ascertain if the telemetry was working, we DID SEE the ad hoc event, but had no activity. This event came from starting and moving the car, I have the system powering up with the master switch on. After one of the sessions it did appear we got 1 lap time, not more, in a session - and the troubleshooting began. The "summary" of that session showed a few seconds of data if memory serves (hearing from one of the guys trying to sort it out).

ALSO, there are 3 links on podium live that brings up data for the given event. AGAIN some intuitive labeling would help here! Which one is live? "Summary" doesn't sound live. "Event Dashboard" totally sounds live, but it isn't. These guys went around and around trying to get the "dash" working. Clicking on the team name ended up being the link that should have been a "Live Dashboard". This is an example in differences in "common sense".

So, when I got involved, I created the event you see for Friday at COTA. I added the device. I believe I tried to take the device off of the adhoc event. I got blinking green lights on the device, but I don't remember if they should be fast blinking or slow blinking etc. Fast blinking was were they ended up, but the middle one wouldn't blink without pushing the button. Logging was happening, but now I think logging defeated the cell uplink (one of my guys found the statement in the settings that implies that). I do believe there was some number in the cell strength field, but what is good enough? What is great? We did not find any reference as to what to expect there.

Is having the device on 2 events in the same time period a problem??

We saw other adhoc events of teams there by data and attempted to see if any of them had data. We didn't find any that did. If you remember, we tried to use this system at COTA in february and had poor to no data, which prompted the cell upgrade. At that time, ATT cell phones were sketchy, now they were strong.

In the created event on podium.live, we did set the location to COTA.

If the system has to see GPS to begin to function, I see that as a major problem. You have to realize that we are in a garage where GPS is not available, strapping in a driver, and under time pressure finishing a big to do list at times. As the car warms up a little, the laptop needs to see the car activity before it is sent out. When it is not there, there is no confidence that we are going to get session data. This has led to using the traqmate as primary system, because the drivers absolutely cannot waste the session by driving around with no feedback. Now that traqmate has gone out of business, I am trying to get this system to become trusted.

I appreciate that you are trying to make this an easy to use system, but troubleshooting and documentation, quick reference even, seems pretty mandatory to me. Racing is a pay attention to detail endeavor, so those details need to be out there with easy reference. I disagree with the conclusion that people will not need or read the manual.

Anyway, thanks again for addressing all this. As I get the car back into the shop, I can get more details for this thread.

Thanks,
Kyle
SPR

* We did not do anything to the SIM card account, should we have??

Do you mean in relation to upgrading from 2.5 to 3.5G? if so, no - it doesn't matter; so long as it supports a data plan, which it appears it does.

* You mention data with no laps. Is this lost?

The data is present on the system, but it's not useful to view as the data on Podium needs laps to view, and that's why it doesn't show data. We have it on our list to re-calculate laps after the fact to handle issues like this. I'll see if I can extract it for you.

* Why can't we see a timeline with it idling or oil pressure or something indicating the system is ready to go on track, on the team laptop? We did attempt to log data to the SD card and got a file.

It's quite possible you were looking at a different ad-hoc event and RCP was broadcasting on a different one. Right now, the best way to tell is to test the different events that show up under http://podium.live/home

* In previous events, the RCP has NOT had a dash and was providing telemetry. Is this still available?

RCP can absolutely run autonomously, but: RCP needs to be pre-configured to detect the correct track so lap timing works (e.g. including the track in the list of tracks for auto-detection).

However, having the RaceCapture app in the car adds a huge amount of benefit, namely being able to see immediately the status of the system, such as - "do I have a GPS lock?" "Is the track detected?" (screenshots above).

Plus (starting in the 1.8.0 app) it will go above and beyond to try and compensate on the fly if RCP can't detect a track from it's on-board track database (that you add tracks to). Think of the app as enhancing RCPs native capabilities.

Finally, when you run the app you get things like in-car predictive timing, gauges, and so on.


* Regarding logging to SD:

Logging can happen independently of cellular transmission.

* GPS:

To get lap timing, the system needs GPS to function, yes. As soon as RCP gets a GPS lock it immediately looks for a track in it's local track database and, if found, it will configure itself automatically and you'll get lap times. If the car starts up in a garage with no GPS reception, this is not a problem, as it will obtain as soon as possible, and then auto-configure for lap timing if it finds a nearby track.

Note the above is typical with any system that relies on GPS for lap timing.

Overall, in your case I would recommend getting the app in the car as a tool to enhance the system for the above reasons.

Requests:

* Can you email us the RCP config you used at COTA to sales@autosportlabs.com we can review it for anything misconfigured and come up with recommendations for the future.

* Can you upload the log files you got off of the SD card so we can review as well? http://dropcanvas.com is a good option.

Thanks