dbbarron

Peter - I have one of those (that's the SSD I tested with). Can you get it to appear as a drive on a MBP over WifI? or do you just use the Web interface (which I find awkward).

ShakeNBake

I'd like to see a cloud service that the newer hardware automatically connected to when it had an internet connection, with some processing that brought some intelligence to cross session and driver comparisons. There really has not been a lot of brain power thrown at pushing the software into the 21st century yet, probably because it's a small market. For the money of buying an ssd based nas and ac router, just get a 100gb wireless data plan and use google drive. I know it would be cool to show up and spend an hour unrolling your dev ops plan in the garage....

Matt Romanowski

Bosch is starting down this path with their LTE telemetry systems, though not at a price range most of us can afford.

If you want to talk about an involved IT structure at the track, look into what Mercedes is doing in F1.

Edit: Just looked at Team Nedarland's facebook pictures and what do you see in the front of the shot on the pit wall at Sebring? https://scontent.fbed1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...37&oe=58AF5200

ProCoach

Hah! That's simple and effective.

Where's Jorge?

winders

Like I said earlier.....overkill for an individual!

I am a computer geek (been in the industry since 1981) and I won't even consider something crazy like that. KISS is the mantra I have learned through experience. Heck, with the WiFi feature of the MXL2 I can leave my laptop on the table in my garage or trailer and download the data without ever hooking it up to the car. The bus powered 4TB drive I have is MORE than enough to store anything I need for weekend.

ProCoach

There are a LOT of computer geeks (and geeks, in general) on Rennlist, Scott!

dbbarron

I just did a test at home where I have a NAS (more powerful than I have suggested for a field unit) and a very robust/fast wifi setup. Close to my MBP, my transfer rate over WIFI for large files is about 10-15MB/s (100-150Mbps) which does not sound unreasonable for a practical transfer rate over WIFI. By comparison, the wired rate (gigabit Enet) is 50MB/s (500Mbps).

Unfortunately, 10-15MB/s transfer rates are probably too slow for multiple video stream playback. Moreover, it does take awhile at those rates for an, e.g., 1GB session video.

I will play some more with my home setup as a 'test', but I am not optimistic a field setup with mass storage on Wifi will have the xfer rates needed for other than archival backup.

winders

Get a proper 802.11ac WiFi setup and 10-15MB/s will seem real slow.....

dbbarron

For some reason on my MBP (2015), I can never get high 802.11ac rates - I've tried different networks which I know to be fairly fast and properly setup.

For instance, here is one setup, with the MBP right below the AP.
At home, I get similar result near an 802.11AC AP, but with a xmit rate of 400.
Thoughts? I suspect the MBP side of things.

PHY Mode: 802.11ac
BSSID: 84:b8:03:ab:b2:ae
Channel: 149
Country Code: US
Network Type: Infrastructure
Security: WPA2 Enterprise
Signal / Noise: -65 dBm / -96 dBm
Transmit Rate: 234
MCS Index: 8

dbbarron

After some spare time IT work, I now have gigabit radio speeds from my MBP into the home Wifi network.
Unfortunately, I'm still only getting 15MB/s speeds into the NAS. I know its not a network issue as Mac to Mac file transfers approach 50MB/s over the same Wifi network and wired speeds to the NAS exceed 60MB/s. I have a ticket open with the NAS (Synology) vendor. Will update as I figure things out.

ProCoach

Glad you found it was the NAS.

dbbarron

Turns out I was battling some pretty well known file sharing protocol issues with the Mac.

My NAS was defaulting to SMB1 protocol. There is also SMB2 and SMB3 and AFP protocols as options which I tried below:

Here are my results:
SMB 1, WIFI = 15MB/s; wired = 31MB/s
SMB 2, WiFi = 33MB/s; wired = 33MB/s
SMB2 long MTU; WiFi=30MB/s; wired = 35MB/s
SMB3 (Auto encrypt) ; Wifi=27MB/s; Wired = 31MB/s
AFP; WiFi=46MB/s; wired=101MB/s

So, as you can see AFP essentially fills the wire (50% utilization of radio Wifi speed as good as it gets)
For SMB, I left is in SMB 2 as this seems the fastest for SMB connection.

I will use AFP connections as long as possible.

Based on this information it is certainly conceivable that one could use a WiFi attached storage as a trackside setup.
One not need go with a full NAS. Perhaps a good WiFi router with a drive attached to it.

ProCoach

I think that is what was suggested, early on.

That is a tested and proven solution.

dbbarron

Yup, but I still have a few concerns. A quick look reveals that most of those routers are not time machine compatible which means they do not support Apples AFP transfer protocol which appears to be the fastest protocol for MACs to access remote disks through (from my testing and online comments).

Moreover, if I was to rely on SMB, I need SMB2 to get better speeds. It is unclear which routers support SMB1 v SMB2.

Thus, this either forces me into a more complex setup with separate NAS and Wifi router (the NAS will support AFP and SMB2) or, alternatively, Synology has a pretty decent router that supports an attached disk and also supports AFP and SMB2. It doesn't get the absolute highest marks in reviews but would probably be the best compromise of simplicity and speed. It's also fairly inexpensive.



This leaves one remaining issue which is internet connectivity. I'd like my laptop to connect to a single Wifi network and have both internet and disk access. Thus, I somehow need the router to attach via the WAN port to the internet. As I only have a hotspot with a Wifi interface, that means I have to somehow connect the hotspot wifi to the router WAN interface. I think the easiest way to do this is with an inexpensive router setup as a bridge. I configure the bridge to connect to the hotspot's wifi and then connect via ethernet the bridge to the router WAN port.

The resulting system then comprises the router, a bridge (cheap n router configured as a bridge) and storage. Add a power strip and a few adapters.

Again, not sure I really need any of this but it is fun to explore during the off season.

Matt Romanowski

And a Pelican case. Setups like that would need a nice case and a single plug.