Flagtronic in car warning light system

[BeerBudgetRacing]

Flags move (relative to your view). Dash lights don't. As someone who does sim racing where flags are always displayed in the same spot of the screen, that's a very significant factor.

This is why you notice that low oil pressure or high water temp light.

I'm okay with a strip of LEDs added to my dash, but I want information in the places I already look.
- Forward 85%
- Mirrors 10%
- Dash 3%
- Flag Station 2%

(Just guessing on the %) - but the dash is mostly peripheral unless I'm looking for some specific info (lap time in Q, etc)

I don't want another place to look.

[John Nesbitt]

Good advice. Wait for a mature product. Tell that to the SCCA.

A 360-post (so far) thread, summed up in one line.

[problemchild]

it is so amusing that people think that one undeveloped tool will cure all our troubles.

Did anyone watch the Laguna Indycar race?

We have a professional race series. Race control has video, a more developed FT-type system, many professional officials, communication with all teams, and many years of experience with these tools.

The teams have professional staff using all these tools plus real-time data and radio communication with their drivers.

The drivers are professional drivers with all the same technology as above. They also have extensive training, experience, and skills that make them some of the best in the world. Presumably they have some understanding of physics and contact between moving objects. Presumably, they have been trained in such procedures such as following team and official instructions when re-entering the track after incidents (especially considering the limiting lateral visibility caused by safety equipment in their cars.)

So why did 95% of the drivers make repeated errors resulting in damaged cars, ruined races, and continuous yellows? We even had a 3-time Indy winner look like the world's biggest moron by spinning off while battling for last place, and then trying to take out the leader by pulling onto the track without guidance from his team or officials. The reason is because our sport/business requires constant decisions by human beings in the heat of battle. If these guys can get it so wrong, how can we expect volunteer senior citizens in race control and "joe the plumber" amateur racers to get it right? I think that too much technology is much of the problem for many of the officials and drivers. Please note that I am a senior citizen myself and well aware of my limitations in multi-tasking with the current technology while restrained in the car by a device that won't even allow me to assess my environment by moving my head laterally.

Some people are going to make lots and lots of money selling an evolving but immature technology. This whole process needs to be slowed down. Let us start by having officials and racers improve their operation with the current technology and processes.

[TimH]

This is why you notice that low oil pressure or high water temp light.

I'm okay with a strip of LEDs added to my dash, but I want information in the places I already look.
- Forward 85%
- Mirrors 10%
- Dash 3%
- Flag Station 2%

My oil pressure light is so bright that with peripheral vision I could probably see the glow if it were down between my knees. I don't need to look right at ANY of my lights to know when one comes on (or the shift lights flash). Flags, not so much, though a vigorous enough wave may catch my attention.

[vtjballeng]

Thank you for the feedback and the productive dialog. We are excited to be working with you as racers and the SCCA. We do plan to offer niche variants to make install as simple as possible in these tight cockpit scenarios. We'll be busy at runoffs so may not have time to check back here over the next few weeks. Good luck, race safe, and we hope you have a great race event!

Good advice. Wait for a mature product. Tell that to the SCCA.

Clever spin! Thousands of units across millions of miles of race use for several years and rave reviews from race control speak loudly.

shielded twisted pair won't work?

It may, it may not. That internal bus isn't protected and isn't meant for external exposure. Take ESD precautions before touching the components.

Considering all the discussion about the development and evolution of the product (even from the manufacturer), I am having difficulty believing that this will be a "one time purchase".

We've maintained the same platform for years now. Initial design involved glorious overkill levels of resources, expandability, and substantial forethought from years of automotive design. We have tweaked the hardware over the years and SCCA is getting 3rd generation production hardware. This is transparent to the racer as we don't deprecate your FTxxx revision 1 when FTxxx revision 3 comes out as some consumer electronics manufacturers do.

But actually, that brings me to a very relevant point.

Is there a way to train on Flagtronics?

1. You should be able to sit in the cockpit and have a buddy send test flags to you. This would help you train your recognition when sitting in the actual car.
2. Can we get an identical module that wires into a PC over USB for use in iRacing/Asseto Corsa/whatever? I am aware you can get light doohickeys out there, but the value here would be that you can mount the literal exact same thing in the same place in your sim rig.

I would also argue that before Flagtronics is made mandatory for events below the Runoffs tier, it should be enabled at all tracks which have SCCA drivers' schools and new drivers should be drilled on it there.

The FT200 does currently have USB for PC connection but the communication method is via a drive, not a serial communication method. There are ways to implement and we do plan this but it will take some time. Any pressure or contacts towards this goal with Sim makers will definitely help.

[TimH]

Clever spin! Thousands of units across millions of miles of race use for several years and rave reviews from race control speak loudly.

Race control loves it. Great. Door-slammers and tracks have figured out to install it. Ok. You've figured out the software and SOME of the hardware. How many millions of miles were there in open wheel formula cars?

This isn't about you. You admit you still have work to do for tight cockpits. My beef is required adoption before your technology is ready for all of us. When it's mature, I think you'll have a very good thing. Meanwhile, I'll say SCCA is all about autocross and gimmick rallies, as it was back when it thrived in New England. Racing is just a sideline.

BTW, I still run Replay cameras...

[Ed Womer]

Flags moving is a very good point! I missed the black flag at Pitt in June and after looking around throughout the day, I kinda figured the problem was flaggers just hanging the flag out of the stand which are brown. I did tell the steward about the problem and he said that he would let the flaggers know.

At Nelson last weekend there was a black flag in the first test session and I went and told the person hosting the day that the flaggers were vigorously waving the flags and very easy to see. He did agree with me and said thanks and he would pass it on to them for doing a good job.

Ed

[Matt Clark]

As another quick example of how visible the flag boards are in low-visibility rain/fog... this video does a really good job, especially considering how we know cameras are worse than our eyes on track. This session got to be absolutely miserable, but again, the LED boards were visible thru the spray & fogged visors. You were NOT going to see the flags otherwise.

https://youtu.be/-Fn2EWc7iRE?si=luwbA2m15dkrUWpU

Thank you for the feedback and the productive dialog. We are excited to be working with you as racers and the SCCA. We do plan to offer niche variants to make install as simple as possible in these tight cockpit scenarios.

I know this may be a bit of an ask... but would it be possible for FT to kinda maybe show us almost real-time concepts & development of the "niche variants" for formula cars in this thread?
That may help soothe user nerves, and given the list of feature/option suggestions so far, also help FT come up with a more widely accepted product right away.

The FT200 does currently have USB for PC connection but the communication method is via a drive, not a serial communication method. There are ways to implement and we do plan this but it will take some time. Any pressure or contacts towards this goal with Sim makers will definitely help.

ApexSpeed member Mike Hinkle is a New England FV racer, and works at iRacing... just throwing that out there.
https://www.apexspeed.com/forums/mem...666-mikehinkle

[problemchild]

I am surprised this has yet to come up in the 369 posts but, will there be "period correct" versions available for vintage racers?

[Steve Davis]

... This session got to be absolutely miserable, but again, the LED boards were visible thru the spray & fogged visors. You were NOT going to see the flags otherwise.

https://youtu.be/-Fn2EWc7iRE?si=luwbA2m15dkrUWpU

...

2 questions right off.. WHY was there a YELLOW showing at T2 right after the start .. T1, T3, were green.
#2.. It seemed pretty obvious to me that there was a FCY going into the boot on L1.. yet Nathan continued to BLAST AT SPEED .. why?? Makes it pretty much impossible for anyone to 'close the gap' under FCY. He continues 'at speed' through lap2.. still under FCY. Has he NOT read the many times repeated .. Leader should drop to pace lap speed.. ?? FINALLY, he catches a 'back marker' coming out of the boot and blasts right past him .. at speed. He finally slows down 'a little', but continues and blasts by another 'back marker' on the front straight on the 3rd lap. What's going on here ?? Nathan IS showing remarkable car control in bad WET conditions... but.. he isn't supposed to be doing that. Half way through L3, the yellows disappear. It IS also a remarkable 'point' for the LED 'billboard flags', but ... What am I missing here?
Finally on lap 5 (maybe something else since there's a 'clip' in the video that might have dropped 1 or more laps. I can't understand what he's saying, but SEEMS he's finally slowed down in response to something someone told him on the radio? The camera view is pretty much TOTALLY OBSCURED by now. I can only hope that Nathan can see better than the camera. AH.. he wipes his shield (or whatever is in front of the camera) and NOW we can see he's run up on the pace car and HAS to slow down.
I don't understand... I guess I'm confused. Then the vid ends behind the PC.. and I can finally understand him saying "I'm so glad I kept it off the walls".. I think .
Was he NOT passing cars under the yellow?? somehow?
Steve

[Hardingfv32]

This boat has sailed. Why should SCCA wait for a 'hardware solution' for fewer than 10% of competitors? There is no administrative reason that those 10% cannot be exempted until a remote display, etc. is provided.

This platform is very well established and in current use. Nothing to the contrary has been posted on this thread.

Changes to the implementation software is where the development is at. This is somewhat sanction body specific. The only way SCCA gets this perfect is to actually use the system and make software changes. This is how ii is being done in Champcar with no major issues reported.

Brian

[Matt Clark]

2 questions right off.. WHY was there a YELLOW showing at T2 right after the start .. T1, T3, were green.

I was in that race in a F2000... those were actually yellow/red "oil" flags because it was slippery, we were never under FCY until lap 5 or whatever.... the color isn't coming thru too good in the video. my main point was the brightness of it.

at the 7:13 mark he has a near-miss with the wall, and unfortunately was not the only one... the rain picked up quick there & all of us had issues. I got demolished from behind, you can barely make us out sitting there at 9:53, when they finally threw the FCY.

[BeerBudgetRacing]

I was in that race in a F2000... those were actually yellow/red "oil" flags because it was slippery, we were never under FCY until lap 5 or whatever.... the color isn't coming thru too good in the video. my main point was the brightness of it.

Bright but the yellow/red does not come through. Just blurs together.

Maybe instead if mimicking the stripped yellow/red flag exactly they could split the screen half yellow half red.
Same with yellow/blue.

They would be much easier to distinguish at a distance.

[Matt Clark]

Bright but the yellow/red does not come through. Just blurs together.

Maybe instead if mimicking the stripped yellow/red flag exactly they could split the screen half yellow half red.
Same with yellow/blue.

They would be much easier to distinguish at a distance.

maybe. I would have to see it more in person. the video definitely makes it harder to distinguish, but it worked decent on track.
I was thinking if they just made the stripes a little wider, that would be ok. doing a 50/50 split may be confusing to some.

[Rick Kirchner]

Yellow with a red X and border, blue with a red X and border, but it depends on how many "pixels" they have to work with.

This is all kind of interesting to me from another standpoint. This is all about cognitive human factors. Many of the projects I worked on for the Navy had cognitive human factors at the center of them. To quote an old friend who was an F-14 RIO "how do you get someone's attention when their IQ shrinks to their shoe size?"

Now the Navy and Air Force did thousands of man-years of research in this area in the 50's through the 80's (not nearly as much since, despite the appearance of huge flat panel color displays). So what's been done with some real scientific rigor for race cars? Likely nothing. Yet there are a lot of good simulators out there to make collecting data easy. Before today's military simulators, we'd take the cockpit from a crashed aircraft, put it on a stand, spend several man-years in duplicating all the power and buttonology requirements for use in a lab, project scenery in front of the pilot, and then tape the exercise before spending 10x the time doing analysis of the tapes. It's not nearly that hard anymore.

Heck, you could drag a simulator to the track in a trailer and you'd get a hundred data points every weekend.

After last year's University of Vara we were going over Lessons Learned and discussing the number of out-of-zone passes that people got called for (we limit passing to specific straightaways and gradually open up more as the students progress). In an earlier attempt to address this we built a sign board with 2'x2' panels that had the number of the zone in red on a white background. If it's just the number, the zone is open. If its the number in a circle and slash, it's closed for passing. This monster board of hanging signs is located right at pit out, we point to it as they roll, we discuss it in the pre-session meeting, and 90% of the students or more have an instructor in the car. And still we get violations.....

And its much different for open car vs closed. In an open car, you just look up. In a closed car, you're ducking and trying to see around the mirrors, and the nets, and the pillars, and the guy in the other seat.

So I call up some guys at the DOT's research lab, asking them what standards and research are available that would be applicable for this situation and guess what - nothing. They're focused on the green, yellow, and white signage you see every day that's been stable for nearly a hundred years.

Well someone has a good idea of what works, otherwise the billboard companies wouldn't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to put a huge Las Vegas LED panel right next to the freeway to distract you.

If you want to see how badly this is done in cars, just look at some of the flat screen MMIs that you encounter - and those guys have serious money. They just don't think it matters all that much.

And OBTW, this needs to be done for effing rain lights as well.....

[TimH]

This boat has sailed. Why should SCCA wait for a 'hardware solution' for fewer than 10% of competitors? There is no administrative reason that those 10% cannot be exempted until a remote display, etc. is provided.

Are you listening SCCA? Or do we now need to mobilize another letter campaign?

[Steve Demeter]

Brian, re post 371 , as a member of the CRB (I think) when are you going to campaign for that exemption for those with no place to put the unit?

[grapefarmeral]

I've read all 377 posts with great interest and have come to the conclusion that this is SCCA and SCCA will do what they want, when they want and membership be damned...

[Fred Michael]

Brian, re post 371 , as a member of the CRB (I think) when are you going to campaign for that exemption for those with no place to put the unit?

Brian is not on the CRB

[Mike B]

Brian, re post 371 , as a member of the CRB (I think)

This information is readily available when you log in to scca.com.

[Steve Demeter]

Thanks for setting me straight Fred!!!