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Has anyone here tried a Garmin Catalyst? If so, what are your thoughts compared to traditional DAQ and coaching?
Seems like it would be an easy integration into a sports racer, but has anyone tried to use one in a formula car? Fixture it in the nose somewhere? I could see tucking alongside and below my arms in some vacant space there, but will the sensors work in a configuration that is not roughly perpendicular to the track?
And then there's vibration....
Bought one a while back to use on the Citation, but life got in the way and delayed me picking the car up for ages. Ended up selling the Catalyst, but thinking about buying one again.
There's a pretty active FB group (Garmin Catalyst Users) and Peter Krause chimes in there a lot. His feeling was it's not ready for the abuse of direct frame mounting, but I suspect that's more a function of a proper vibration damping enclosure that still captures the right field of view.
The camera has all the sensing apparatus in it, the display does not need any specific orientation, just need to find the real estate to mount it. Ross Bentley's podcast had an interview with the Garmin guy that designed it, worth a listen for sure. Most of the processing is done by the camera's image, so placement is critical. Since it was designed to mount on a windshield, the algorithm needs to see something that approximates that, needs to see the nose/fenders/etc of the front of the car to gauge distance to track edges, etc.
This thing showed up a while ago, no feedback on it yet: https://www.exoticspecialtyparts.com...rue&cst=custom
Thinking of just printing something to one and mounting it on the inside of the roll hoop centerline over my head.
Mounted in a radical: https://radicalsportscarregistry.com...rmin-catalyst/
I have used a Catalyst in my production car a limited amount - I also use an AIM evo4S with a G Dash and smarty cam in my formula vee.
My use of the Catalyst has been limited but there are a few differences worth noting.
At this point I do not think the catalyst is worthwhile for formula cars - if they could make an auxiliary small display it might work. The catalyst may or may not interpret the track correctly in a formula car if the camera is mounted on the roll hoop - it may not recognize the wheels as part of the vehicle and thus it would infer that you are missing apexes - could talk a tighter line.
the main advantage of the catalyst is simple and immediate feedback on driving position and easy review of video data. Once you get past video looking into the details of the graphical data is not nearly as easy as on race studio 3. If you are an experienced driver running very consistent lines and lap times the coaching feature of the catalyst will not be of much assistance. The one advantage of the catalyst is that it gives you real time feedback(predictive lap timer) to the theoretical optimum lap based on stitching together the best segments you have driven that day. AIM only provides better or worse than best lap - with optimum only being shown in the data download. When reviewing video on the catalyst tablet in does not show the running delta to best theoretical - you have to save the video and do the post processing and download to watch that data.
I find the video on the catalyst to be very clear and good definition. Exposure control is better than on my smartycam 3 sport which requires some post processing. Field of view is about the same.
Catalyst is very good for what it was intended for which is coaching of production based cars driven in a race track by less experienced drivers who may have high variations in lap times. It think it will be good in enforcing good habits among learning novices. For experience drivers with low variability it is basically a really big predictive lap timer with video capability. If you do not look at is as more than that you will be satisfied
Well 3d printing a mount to go between my dash and the top of the nose wouldn't be all that difficult. I wonder if putting some vertical "flags" on the wing endplates like you see on some hillclimb open-wheelers would help it figure out where the car is.
Good to know you can tuck the display away but it seems you do miss a lot of the predictive features and have to just go off of voice or post-analysis.