Introduction:

It all started when my dear friend Ivar Lyngve got his motorbike.
It was a smashing Ducati Monster, yellow like a wasp out of hell and with a roar of a dragon on heat. As one should expect we where racing among ourselves using a simple stopwatch and the Turin – Ivrea highway[GP:IvreaTorino]
That was all fine and dandy, still when you ride at 240km/h (149 mph) it’s not that easy to hold a stopwatch and press the “get time” button, (it is possible but not easy…) It was then we started developing the “Speed Factory”.

The idea:

The rider carries a “device” mounted on (or inside) his motorbike, the device uses a GPS module that will start or stop the “stopwatch” as soon as the rider will pass the start or ending point. The “track” time as well as other information such as average speed will be logged and saved on the device. As soon as the rider returns home he can synchronize the data with his home computer, and even post it online to compare his “best track time” with others. Further more, the rider can plot his own tracks and publish them for others to try or download a ready-made track (GPS points) and try to race against other players.

Prototype:

At the same time I was playing along with my ipaq 3835 and a simple CF GPS card
We decided to use this handheld device as a platform for our prototype; it will be easy and comfortable to program the application (Flash & C), easy to sync with the home computer (or internet) and fairly easy to carry while riding.

How does it work?

Software wise, the GPS unit will send the data string also known as “NMEA” (National Maritime Electronic Association – A US standards committee that defines data message structure, contents, and protocols to allow the GPS receiver to communicate with other pieces of electronic equipment aboard ships). A little C application captures this string and will write in to a text file on the PDA at a refresh rate of 3 times per sec.

Front-end flash will read this data, compare it with the track start/ending point and will react as needed (start/stop timer, log the information, provide audio feedback).
A little algorithm will expand or contract the start/ending points from 1m to 100m according to the speed (after all, when you ride at 260km/h you are moving 72 meters every sec) The prototype and the algorithm were tested in various speeds with great success and accuracy.

Morals and the way of life:

In the process many people gave us a sour face, after all the use of this application can harm or even kill people, needless to say that racing on a highway is most definitely illegal.
Fear not! – Life has its own way and funny as it sounds; a year later Valentina Novello used the same application in her thesis “AudioLandScape”.
AudioLandscape is an audio description service that describes the passing landscape to increase the awareness of time and space for visually impaired passengers while traveling in a car.

For me Speed factory will always be a racing tool, at the moment I have a little “Piaggio Ciao” so there is no fear of me riding above the speed limit, still I always find it nice and inspiring to see how life can take something “evil” and convert it to something useful and helpful, I salute Valentina for that.

Project By:

Ivar Lyngve and Yaniv Steiner

Speed Factory prototype was presented in action to Ducati R&D team in Bologna, Italy[GP:Ducati]