Now this is a bit silly but also quite cool!

Introducing: Dynolicious

Dynolicious is the first automotive performance meter available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Dynolicious uses the hardware built-in to your iPhone to measure the performance characteristics of your vehicle. No external wires or equipment is necessary, simply slip the iPhone into a cradle or cupholder and go!

Some of the performance metrics Dynolicious can measure:

• 0-60 Acceleration
• 1/4 Mile Elapsed Time
• Lateral G's
• Horsepower
• Friction Circle
• Downloadable Timed Run Graphs
• Downloadable Skidpad Graphs

Unlike other accelerometer-based performance meters, Dynolicious uses the advanced data-handling and display capabilities of the iPhone to make the most of your performance testing. Dynolicious maintains a history of test runs, showing you averages and trends in your results. Dynolicious also allows you to enter modifications performed to your vehicle, and will instantly show before-and-after results to easily identify gains or losses.

http://www.dynolicious.com/

Wow! 12.99 US if you already have the ipod touch or iphone. That's cheap data and if it's reasonably accurate, worth the money just to see what it tells you. I might be getting an ipod touch - if so, I'll get this and check it out.

Even better (well, for us RIM guys...), I just found this in their forums:

"Thank you all for your interest and support in Dynolicious.

I just wanted to pass along the information that we have greenlighted the BlackBerry Storm version of Dynolicious, and have contracted with a software engineer to work full-time on the project. This is an involved task which will take some time, however we are targeting release around the same time the BlackBerry Application Storefront is unveiled, supposedly March of '09.

Best Regards,
Justin Morgenthau
President
BunsenTech, LLC"

Sweet! Hopefully they will be smart enough to use the onboard GPS as well as the accelerometers for data collection.

Can I assume it would work on the Bold too? Since nobody is buying the Storm?

Maybe he can work on the MAME emulator too. That's a product that would sell.

No, the Bold doesn't have accelerometers in it like the Storm does. From checking out the Dynolicious web site, it appears that they have a more applicable product for road course drivers, called "Log Box", as it incorporates GPS along with the accelerometers.

http://www.bunsentech.com/projects/dynolicious-log-box/

Check out G-Tac Pro too... It will record the GPS and accelerometer data, then you can e-mail the raw data to yourself (it's two sections of CSV formatted data). The iPhone's GPS reception and precision can be an issue, but the accelerometer data is good and this app records it at 30Hz. With a little manual data manipulation, I was able to use RaceRender to do a video overlay of the track map/position and G-Force data. The iPhone will never be as good as a Traqmate or other pricey dataloggers, but this app has some potential. I think it's really just begging for some desktop analysis software to clean up the GPS data, do segment and lap times, and automate the data export for doing video overlays. I might have to take a shot at doing that myself...

Cool, I just downloaded it. It's only a few bucks right now (introductory price), so I'll see what it can do. Looks like it only records for 5 minutes at the default 100Hz sample rate... I can get it up to 25 minutes by going down to 20Hz, but that wont quite cut it for a typical race, and the next setting down is 1Hz which is too low.

also check out upshift drag for the iphone from the trackpedia crew.

http://www.myupshift.com/index.htm

"DynoStorm" has just shown up on BlackBerry App World!

http://www.bunsentech.com/projects/dynostorm/

I'm going to buy a copy of it to "evaluate" and I'll let you know how good it is.

imp.

Not sure if it is iphone or G-Tac Pro problem. I just can't get a signal at Mosport, gotta try it again next week.

I tried out G-Tac Pro and LogBox last month... Both had trouble getting a GPS signal, so it's an iPhone hardware issue, but I think it's just a matter of trial & error to find a good reception location inside your car. LogBox, on the other hand, didn't give me usable data... despite setting the sample rate to 20Hz, it did not record 20 accelerometer samples per second or any consistent rate, and it also didn't give me individual timestamps on the data records, so that really leaves a lot to be desired.

As for G-Tac Pro, aside from iPhone hardware limitations (ie GPS reception, and a little accelerometer accuracy issue), it's actually quite good. It will patiently sit there and wait for you to accelerate before it starts recording, so delays in grid are no problem. LogBox kept letting the phone lock while I was waiting to start recording, which was a real PITA when strapped into a race car. G-Tac Pro can also replay the session on the phone (LogBox doesn't), has drag racing features as well, and it provides data in a simple and easy to use format (two CSV sections that you e-mail to yourself).

I did a comparison (with video) of accelerometer data for G-Tac Pro vs Traqmate here: http://www.rm944.com/weston/iPhone/G-Tac%20Pro%20vs%20Traqmate%20-%20090419.html

I've now tested Harry's GPS LapTimer as well... It's a very nice app, but you'll want to figure out how to use it (and test it in your street car) before you go to the track. The data it exports is only for individual laps, not entire sessions, so overlaying it onto video would take some work.

Some updates...

Log Box released version 1.2, which fixes the problems I ran into earlier and works pretty good. It's a minimal app for a low cost, but you can now easily use it as the basis for video overlays with RaceRender 1.4.1 or newer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjtoJiQ4-xg   Log Box is now the best and lowest cost iPhone app that I know of for exporting GPS and accelerometer data, and that's all it really does.

Harry's GPS Lap Timer had some updates as well, and can now export entire sessions, sort of... The problem is that the sample rate and timestamps leave something to be desired, so it's still not great to use for exporting data. But aside from that limitation, it's a really nice app that does quite a lot within the iPhone app itself. If you don't care about exporting data to your computer for making video overlays or doing further analysis, then it may be the only app you need.

With any app, you'll need to work to find a good GPS reception spot inside a car. The best I've seen is 9 meters, but it typically fluxuates between 9 and 17 meters. If you don't try at all, you'll probably end up with something like 47-76 meter accuracy, which is what I had in the video I linked. The accuracy problem is more apparent when doing laps around the same course.