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You have some great modifications to make the HD2 stealthy once installed, and using the car’s GPS antenna seems like a logical upgrade. I wonder if the increased satellite fix makes a real world difference over the supplied antenna in the correct location? It seems like it should help accuracy but your setup re that is pretty unique. I am interested in pics of your HD2 center rearview mirror setup; sounds pretty slick. Also, you mention that the brain unit for HD2 gets hot but you keep it in the glove box. Is heat an issue in the enclosed space?
I know many have installed themselves but I wonder who could do this install the most efficiently if I was to have a shop do an HD2 install like yours: a good custom stereo/alarm shop that deals daily with wiring harnesses, fuse boxes, etc or a good race shop that deals with Porsches daily...
You have some great modifications to make the HD2 stealthy once installed, and using the car’s GPS antenna seems like a logical upgrade. I wonder if the increased satellite fix makes a real world difference over the supplied antenna in the correct location? It seems like it should help accuracy but your setup re that is pretty unique. I am interested in pics of your HD2 center rearview mirror setup; sounds pretty slick. Also, you mention that the brain unit for HD2 gets hot but you keep it in the glove box. Is heat an issue in the enclosed space?
I know many have installed themselves but I wonder who could do this install the most efficiently if I was to have a shop do an HD2 install like yours: a good custom stereo/alarm shop that deals daily with wiring harnesses, fuse boxes, etc or a good race shop that deals with Porsches daily...
Thanks!
I cannot speak to whether or not using the integral GPS antenna in the car provides greater accuracy or not; however, I will tell you from my observations the Vbox attains a faster satellite lock using the integral antenna over their supplied external sensor. When I power up the Vbox with the integral antenna connected it locks all satellites in within about 10 seconds from boot. Using the supplied GPS antenna it was more like 20-30 seconds IIRC. I definitely noticed a difference on lock.
The reason I did this was purely aesthetic as I didn't want an external GPS antenna on my car anywhere visible. The faster lock is an unintended benefit.
As for heat - It does get hot in the glovebox but has not gotten hot to the point where it was too hot to touch. I would be more fearful of placing it under the carpet under the driver or passenger seat.
Others have used the rollbar mount that Racelogic offers as an option. The problem is getting camera cable length to get the forward camera up to the rearview mirror. If you mount the camera on the rollbar you would not have an issue.
For me - the glovebox made sense for the following reasons:
- I can stuff the 2nd camera (which points at me) in the glovebox when I not using it
- The FAKRA antenna for GPS from the radio is within short distance to glovebox so easy to pick up GPS signal
- There is a +12v power port in your glovebox which makes it easy to power up the unit
- I store the display in the glovebox when I am not using it
Maybe not the perfect place, but it works well for me.
Sort of but not really off topic, but where do people like to mount their Solo 2 DL head units? I plan to use a Ram mount suction cup which would theoretically allow a lot of freedom, but since you have to run the cables to the CAN bus in reality you have to plan in advance and pick a spot and stick to it. I see most people mount the unit in the lower left corner of the windshield, but having put other lap timers in that spot in the past I'm worried it will make it tough to pick up apexes in left hand turns. One thought I have is I could mount it up high on the windshield either to the left or right of the rear view mirror, which has the added benefit of being able to run the cables up the A-pillar and under the header for the headliner where it meets the windshield, which I think would allow you to tuck the cables under the headliner when not in use making the install really stealth. Any input?
Also, Chris/Hams955-- Thanks for your very thorough and thoughtful comparison between the Aim and RL options. But I'm confused by one thing-- I thought the Solo 2 DL/Smartycam was a two box solution (plus cable), meaning the only hardware is the head unit with the LCD display and the self contained camera. But you refer to a "brain" unit. What is this?
Smarty Cam HD Rev 2.2 uses a bullet camera with a separate processor/screen.
Thanks Chris. Did I miss where and how you place your timer display in the car?
Do you leave the central camera in the car at all times?
There is an obvious USB port in the glovebox in my 991.2 GT3 but the only 12V I see is in the footwell. Does your 991.2 RS have one in the glovebox? My 981 Cayman had a 12V in the glovebox.
Thanks Chris. Did I miss where and how you place your timer display in the car?
Do you leave the central camera in the car at all times?
There is an obvious USB port in the glovebox in my 991.2 GT3 but the only 12V I see is in the footwell. Does your 991.2 RS have one in the glovebox? My 981 Cayman had a 12V in the glovebox.
I leave the camera up at all times. There is a supplied dust cap (you can see it in pictures) and I keep that on when not in use. - Just have to remember to remove it on track!!!! (ask me how I know!!!! )
Interesting - I just noticed the .2 RS does not have a 12v port in the glove box. My .1 RS does. Bummer! I have been using the vbox on the .1 and the aim in the .2.
Tucking wires up under the headliner is relatively easy. I did this on the front facing camera of the Vbox.
Works well!
- Chris.
Can anyone confirm if image quality in the 2.2 camera is any better than 2.1. My 2.1 is disappointing - much of the time it's a blurry mess, as if 360p image was upscaled to 720p rather than true 720p. An improvement would be welcome.
Can anyone confirm if image quality in the 2.2 camera is any better than 2.1. My 2.1 is disappointing - much of the time it's a blurry mess, as if 360p image was upscaled to 720p rather than true 720p. An improvement would be welcome.
Our AIM Evo4 is about 10 years old......in fact...it's so old that the smartycam has internal gps even though we use the external antenna plugged into the Evo4. This makes it cool to bring it anywhere and still see mph and G information on the video overlay regardless of the vehicle.
Oh yeah, the battery is a miracle as it has spent a year sitting in a case more than a few times and it's still working well even when not powered by the Evo4.
When in the car, we use linear sensors for the suspension travel sensing.
We make a run and then print the data and fire it up in the shop on scales while watching the live data of the suspension sensors. Then we use weight and jacking to duplicate the readings and view the stance at various speeds on the printouts so we can tell what our lift and rake are.
It's important at the speeds we see.
For the Evo4 data, it must be retrieved through USB. I use generic FTDI drivers but they don't like you using the live view video much and we sometimes get freezes in that mode. I only view the video through the USB to point the camera anyway.
For video saving, I take the memory card out of both smarty cam and Vbox and use a card reader which is must faster than downloading through the USB.
On the vbox, I really like how it displays in "ready mode" so we don't ever push the "start button" or enable "auto start" because that lovely display would disappear.
Instead, we have one of the GoPro cameras point at it.
I talked to racelogic about 2 years ago about that display remaining on when it's recording a run and expect that they have made it an option by now or have a new revision that includes it.
It's possible that relating our usage means zero to what you guys use it for because our usage experience is so specialized but I thought I would share it anyway.
I'm actually posting this on the phone in the picture below.
Fast!!
Last edited by HowlerMonkey; 06-16-2019 at 08:09 PM.
05-05-2019, 02:05 AM
thanks
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