My little project this weekend was a mount for my Samsung Galaxy S whiz-bang phone/GPS/music player/thingy. After looking at the slick, but expensive, mounting systems out there, I came up with a simple, lightweight solution: mold carbon fiber around the phone just-so, and the case will double as the retention device. Not as much fun for a mechanical engineer to design as a mechanical system, but very effective in this case. The mount with all fasteners has a mass of 17 grams. The fasteners alone weight 8 grams (maybe I should have used aluminum fasteners!) Two plies of wet-layup over the phone (the phone was wrapped in plastic, of course), with a stud plate placed between the two plies, was all that was needed here. As usual, the hardest part was leaving the stuff alone while the resin cured! Here are a few pictures of the final product: *** *** Not the cleanest work I've ever done, but not bad for a little craft table work on a Saturday afternoon.
Mike... You are fast becoming a carbon fiber super hero. You sure have a talent there. I sure like the stuff you come up with. Very nice.
Thats a very interesting mount there. What good android apps are there for the track at this point? Thanks for sharing!
Very nice mount!!! Nathan I've been using the Trackmaster app and with every update it gets better and better. Think its pretty dang good for what it is and how cheap it is... Also use the Bluetooth app for it so it can use the GPS in my Nuvi which is a bit better than the one in the phone.
Yes, Trackmaster is what pushed me to do the mount, actually. The Bluetooth GPS option is awfully nice. I haven't any experience with Trackmaster though. Care to share some of your thoughts/plots/data/impressions?
Have only used it at my last HPDE and that was at VIR so I still have some learning to do with it. But basically you set up the tracks of choice, which gives you satellite images and some other points of each track. You use those images to set split markers (boaters might say way points) anywhere you want along with a full track time and speed. The split times and speeds are recorded and announced as you go around the track. Afterward you can review your sessions with it showing you moving around the satellite image. Your speed and times are shown along with a color coded overlay showing when you were either slowing down, accelerating or staying at a constant speed! These are stored so you can look at them over and over, You can also share them with others... Beware you may not have been doing exactly what you thought you were... lol. It does not show other cars so you have to discern yourself when there was traffic or not. Just a quick overview, but I am finding it very helpful!
If you can do video on your smart phone, you could conceivably video the session while running that app... Then you have video to review with the data...
Ahh but the question is can that phone multi-task with the current Android O/S or will it take an update to Fro-Yo or Gingerbread to get that functionality. Then the question becomes can that device handle those new O/S's.
I'll have to try it. It's a good point that, while taking video, Trackmaster may stop taking data. And anyway, can this phone handle that much work at once? Am I really talking about a phone? I think I'll accept the fact that personal device convergence has, for me, officially arrived.
Ummm hadn't thought about trying to do a video on the phone while trackmaster is running. I can run the trackmaster on a set of road off a Google map I believe, if I have time tommorrow I'll give it a try and see what happens.... won't hurt to try and it would be sweet if it did. Don't think you could view them on the phone at the same time if it does work but maybe with the share feature, both could be put on a computer and merged..
Hmmmmm....... Went searching for an I-phone app. All I got was apps for jogging. Searched the web, all I got was stuff for tracking you horse.
Yeah, I knew that, was just hopeful there was a counterpart being offered for the iPhone operating system.
For the iPhone check out Harry's LapTimer Pro. I'll be looking to use it myself and then write a review for Gearhead Apps.