Autosport Labs

Ok, so I've been using RaceCapture/Track in 24 hours of Lemons racing and have trouble reconnecting the RaceCapture to both the App on a Kindle Fire 7 and with Podium to view telemetry.

Hardware:
RaceCapture Track connected AND powered via ODBII port (1995 Lexus ECU, their first year supporting OBDII)
Kindle Fire 7 (latest generation)
Verizon JetPack hot spot as the *master* wifi access point, both the race capture and tablet connected to its wifi

Order of operation:
1) Car powered on, everything up and running, racecapture broadcasting to Podium to the specific lemons event I'm at and tablet connected with racecapture app and showing data from OBD - all good
2) Need to refuel/change drivers
3) Pull into pits (pit mode setup so pit timer starts when speed drops below 5 mph)
4) To refuel in Lemons you MUST kill all power, so we flip the master kill switch off and therefore the OBDII power is killed to the RaceCapture
5) finish refuel and power back on - RaceCapture powers up again but jetpack and tablet have remained on due to battery power, pit timer still starting
6) pull out of pits, go back on track

Best Case at this point, going to view on Podium, there is no telemetry. For some reason it reconnects to the adhoc event rather than the lemons event. I can update the event again but then I've lost the previous laps. Not sure why it doesn't stay connected to the event.

Worst case at this point we've seen the app stay stuck in pit mode and/or the RaceCapture Track dongle never reconnect to the hot spot after the power cycle without restarting the app and the dongle to get everything happy again. And in that case I often have to move the podium feed from the adhoc event back to the lemons event again.

I'm wondering if either pit mode is causing some of this trouble and I should just disable it or if killing power to the dongle is causing it. If I put the dongle on its own battery power I'm wondering what the best way to do that is. Use the USB port or break the 12V out from the OBD connector and use a battery for that? If I use USB, is there any harm in still getting power from the cars 12V while simultaneously connected to USB?

Anyway, interested to hear thoughts on why these things might be happening.

Hi,

Thanks for the report.

So in a nutshell, what you're seeing is that is does start sending telemetry again, but snaps back to the ad-hoc event?

What this might be is the issue where, for that event, it first created the ad-hoc event, then you tried moving it to the event you created, but on a re-connect, it went back to the ad-hoc event.

If this is the issue, the way to currently resolve it is to first add the device to the desired event before the day of the event - or at least before you broadcast for the first time at the event. This way it will stick to that particular event.

You can test this out at home - make a test event, add your device to it, and then broadcast, disconnect / re-connect and observe if it sticks to the same event.

Hope this helps. Let us know what you find out!

Hi, thanks for the tip. I'll try that out.

Could you also help answer the questions about powering the unit or have any suggestions there? I feel like part of the problem is the cycling of power and things don't reconnect gracefully every time even if the Podium aspect works the RaceCapture/Track doesn't always reconnect to the wifi and therefore the app. Do you believe that you should be able to kill power to the OBD and re-power it and have it gracefully connect to the app every time? Even taking into account power being potentially inconsistent during cranking of the starter and the alternator coming up to speed?

Hi,

Yes, it should always re-connect automatically. How long it takes depends largely on the WiFi hardware involved, including the android device and so on.

How long was it taking if the OBDII device was power-cycled?