I had never heard of LoRa before. In fact most of the terms in a description of LoRa are new to me. I think I get it though. Very interesting, but sounds like this objective would require something with more bandwidth.
I had never heard of LoRa before. In fact most of the terms in a description of LoRa are new to me. I think I get it though. Very interesting, but sounds like this objective would require something with more bandwidth.
Yes, LoRa is very low bandwidth. You couldn't even get voice over it.
It's fine for updating a remote dashboard a few times a second.
I don't have anything super helpful, but should note that I haven't had great luck using a pi 4 to transcode video (too slow). I think you'll need to get the data and the video off the car separately, then use a bigger more powerful machine (with more than USB power supplied to it) to combine them. Can you leave the MacBook in the wander lodge?
I think you're right. I think I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll be using the MacBook. If using it, I had pictured strapping it down somewhere in the car and basically having all production and transmission happen in the car. Do you think there's an an advantage to gathering the raw elements in the car and transmitting them to the paddock to splice together and upload?
The way I see it you're going to be using cell data either way so you might as well strap down a laptop in the car and do everything there - only 1 cell link to fail instead of 2 this way.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Agree. Fewer points of failure. I guess only cons of being in car would be heat/vibration and the chance of part of the track having bad service.
The positive to trackside is if someone else wants to manage it since the driver will have their hands full.
I think I've decided attempt 1 will be as follows:
Theoretically this should get me there. It's certainly a redneck solution when there are actual systems for sale to do exactly this, but my cost will be way less than one of those specialized systems.
Also I stumbled upon AutosportLab's discord server while trying to figure this stuff out. It sounds like they are about to release video integration soon, but it's not live integration and to start it's only using the camera from an android device. They'll be expanding their abilities in the future into other cameras and eventually live streaming, but it sounds like that's a ways off. So maybe I'll stick with my redneck setup until they come up with a better, more streamlined live video/data solution.
But for those of you following along who don't happen to have most of this stuff sitting around already, it sounds like ASL will have a plug and play solution someday. Hopefully it's not too expensive.
What will happen when you lose Tmobile cell service ?
Will it just show a blank screen and restart by itself when you get back in range ?
or do you have to do something to restart it /
I guess you can set it up in your street car to work the bugs out ,
Please keep us in the loop ,
The stream shouldn't stop and have to be relaunched if a signal is lost. Streamlabs has a Disconnect Protection feature (actually I see this feature on their mobile app and am hoping it's also available in the desktop app since I'll be running the iOS version). It may glitch out for a bit, but I hope it wouldn't end the stream.
And yes, I'll definitely want to test it all before it hits the track.
ProDarwin said:The positive to trackside is if someone else wants to manage it since the driver will have their hands full.
By the way this was a good point since we don't know exactly what will happen if there's cell signal drop. I have no idea how to transmit the data/video effectively and cheaply from car to paddock though.
Ed Higginbotham said:ProDarwin said:The positive to trackside is if someone else wants to manage it since the driver will have their hands full.
By the way this was a good point since we don't know exactly what will happen if there's cell signal drop. I have no idea how to transmit the data/video effectively and cheaply from car to paddock though.
Wifi won't have the range unless the track has a trackside multi-AP network already in place, the only real option you can bring with you would be to broadcast the video with data outputs already mixed in through VHF and then have your trackside equipment stream out the VHF signal. This is how FPV RC aircraft work. The analog signal would degrade gracefully, the downside would be significant video quality loss.
Hm. That sounds expensive and worse. I'll save that as last resort.
are there any rear view mirror dash cams that have a cable output ?
they would also have an SD card back-up too !
Ok so during our E36's first race weekend we accomplished phase 1 of what I hope will lead to a very redneck setup to accomplish a live stream with data overlay. A first generation Autosport Labs RaceCapture Pro was mounted in the car. (Thanks Tom!) For this first weekend we hardwired it to a Raspberry Pi 400 running the racecapture app. We also added a 6.8 inch touch screen display from John Freund Racing (a UTCC veteran). We also added an inverter in the car to power the Pi.
Results were good. Getting the app to recognize VIR took a few tries, but by the Sunday race we had live timing and data displayed on a small dashboard to the left of the steering wheel.
That was great but now we want to accomplish streaming that along with video at the same time. The current plan to do that is to substitute the Pi out for a an old MacBook Pro running two applications. The first is the same racecapture dashboard app that was giving us the real-time data in the car. The second will be an OBS app, probably Streamlabs. Hoping to set up a GoPro as a webcam and use that as the main input. then do a window share of the live data dashboard and overlay it somewhere on the screen. Then stream it live. via hot spot. If a cell phone hot spot isn't enough muscle we may upgrade to a 4G modem. We'll see.
Sounds good! The cell phone hotspot should do the job once the cell phone's modem is up to the task, some Android phones can even share network connections via USB to eliminate the wireless link as a potential failure point.
In reply to PunchyWrench - Ed Higginbotham :
It fascinates me to see a keyboard velcro'd to the passenger floor. It's very Apollo 10. I like it.
You'll need to log in to post.
