Here’s a quick post to whet your appetite for RaceCapture/Pro. Actually, let’s be honest- it’s a filler post as we work on a bigger piece talking about real-time Race Car Telemetry. Yet, still cool! Here’s what we have cooking:
So what do we have here?
From top left, clockwise:
- JTAG Adapter: A JTag debugging / programming adapter board to make firmware hacking easier to do on RaceCapture. Not necessary for programming, as you can program via USB using the factory bootloader using the TEST button. This board exists because there’s just not enough room to squeeze a 20 pin header on the main RaceCapture board. This will be a common form factor for future projects of ours that support JTag.
- SensorX: Ever had to wire up resistive sensor (e.g. temperature / pressure sensor) to an analog input, and needed to wire in that external pullup resistor? Then you know what a pain it can be to splice that pullup resistor into your wiring harness and connect it to the nearest 5v voltage reference and make it all work – Then do it multiple times for each sensor! That’s what we recently had to deal with on the Merkur for the RaceCapture/Pro Telemetry project. This board lets you connect ground, +5V, VRef and 7 analog inputs on one side, and provides spots on the other side for 7 sensors or other devices. Pullup resistors are on-board, and can be disabled by cutting a trace. SensorX is thin enough to be shrink-wrapped and neatly installed in-line with your wiring harness!
- CoilX: This is a small adapter board which provides an opto-isolated interface to an ignition coil primary, with a logic level output that lets you safely integrate into a system’s low-level digital inputs, like on RaceCapture. Simple, and also sized to be shrink wrapped and installed in-line with your wiring harness.
What kind of wiring-harness problems have you run into that you think a simple adapter / breakout board would help solve? Let us know!
Finally: Watch out for some big news on RaceCapture- that is all 🙂 And now, off to finishing our post on Real Time Race Car Telemetry…