I have been to Bondurant School and taken my C6 to Watkins Glen and now want to set up a camera that will display not only the track ahead but project the speedo and tach along with the outline of the track and my position on it on the top of the picture. I have seen this on YouTube and elsewhere but don't have a clue as to how to go about setting something like this up or the equipment necessary to get the job done. Any info would be appreciated.

 

I just got the GoPro Hero 2 for xmas. Haven't used it yet but it looks to be a good peice.

PS...Say hello to Officer Spera up there in Worlfeboro. He used to work with me at my department. Super great guy.

 

Just got one of these:

http://www.smartycam.com/on-board-camera.htm

Also have a Go-Pro HD.

The GoPro video is great, microphone not so much.

The Smartycam video is OK, but not HD, the big advantage of the Smarty cam is the track map can be displayed on the video, lap counter, lap time, as well as (if you get the optional ECU adapter that plugs into the OBDII port) tach, throttle and gear selection.

Downside of SC is it's way more than GoPro, upside it's alot cheaper than a trackmate setup.

 

What exactly do you want to do with the video???

In order to get the "dashboard" info onto your video, you probably will need some type of data logger/data acquisition equipment.

You probably want something like this:




Butt.....that type of video is just sort of a cute way to show friends what you're doing when you take your car to the track.

What I think would really be much more valuable to you to analyze your track sessions is some good software that will put the data from your data logger on your computer screen so you can see where you're starting your braking, where you're turn-in points are, where you're apexing, if you vary the line from lap to lap which one worked best for you, etc., etc., etc.

Something like Traqmate can do that for you. I have Traqmate and their TraqStudio software. You get something like this:




In the screenshot above you can see that the track map is displayed, but you can zoom into any area on the map and compare laps to see what line gave you a better lap time, etc. You can enhance that track map so it will show your accel/decel areas and all sorts of other info to analyze what line worked best for you so you can really improve your track experiences. You can put up laps from another driver to see what he is doing that might help you improve your times.

If you see a weird line and you're wondering why you drove like that, if you have video of your session you can put it on your screen to see that maybe on that lap you had some traffic you had to deal with.

So the video can be very important to your analysis of the session, but I think it's just an adjunct feature - your best analysis is a good software that will display your data so you can really analyze your sessions to improve your performance.

However.....if all you want is the cutesy dashboard thingy on video, you can do that with TrackVision:

http://www.trackvision.net


With TrackVision you'll still need some data, but if you have a smartphone you can use something like Harry's Lap Timer to get the data, and you can use video from just about any source (GoPro, any small video cam, just about any video capturing device) that will let you get the video into your computer.

Like I said, the video/dashboard thing is cute, but the real valuable info you'll gain that will really help you improve your track driving is a good software program that will display the data you gather so you can analyze what you were really doing on the track.

The video is nice and will help you understand why you possibly did some of the weird things that show up in the data, but it's just an accessory to good analysis software.

Bob

 

Subscribing...

 

Guy's, this is all great stuff and quite frankly the reason why I spend so much time on CF. Thanks for all your input. I will now retire to evaluate my options before proceeding. I feel good knowing that at least now I have some choices and directions to head in. This is exciting.

 

So what do you guys think about a VBOX or ChaseCam systems that put the video and data information together live. The systems have both the data recording and video cameras built in, auto start and stop for recording, no editing needed later, still have data to reivew, etc. By the time I buy a data system and camera the costs are not too far apart and then I do not have to spend time at the computer combining video and data to make great videos. Just pull the SD card out of the car, plug it into your laptop and you can watch the combined video and data instantly. I also like the built in viewing screen for the ChaseCam system to assist you in setting up the cameras as the VBOX uses a external plug in screen.

Here are the two that I am looking at:

http://www.chasecam.com/node/201

http://vboxusa.com/

Looking for anyone's thoughts.

Rory

 

Car and Driver did a test of on-board cameras several issues ago. I no longer have it, but it might be on their web site, or at the library.