In-car Video for Driver's Schools and Trackdays
 

I've been instructing at the track for a couple of years and was trying to find a (relatively) inexpensive way to integrate video and telemetry data. I wanted it to not be permanently wired to my car so I could take it along when I hop in a student's car too. Here's what I have so far:

1. CruiseCam In-Car Headrest Camera Mount
2. OptrixHD iPhone 4 case with wide-angle lens
3. Dual XGPS150 Bluetooth external GPS
4. PLX Devices KIWI Wifi OBD-II wireless interface
5. Harry's Laptimer Pro software for iPhone

The CruiseCam arm mounts to the passenger side headrest. The Optrix HD mounts to the arm via quick release. The GPS mounts to the windshield via Velcro (everyone here has an EZpass toll device so velcro is in most cars). The PLX device plugs into the OBD-II port and the cable is stuffed away or strapped up using Velcro straps. Download the track you want to drive and Laptimer Pro starts recording automatically once you cross the designated starting point.

If you can't find a place to use the CruiseCam headrest mount, you can use an external camera (in this case a ReplayXD) with a clip-mount and integrate the video to your data later. This took a little experimentation to figure out but here's a relatively painless way to do it. You just need to know the visual reference for your start/end point in Laptimer. If it's a track, it's the start/finish line. I'm using an iMac, I imagine there's a similar path for Windows.)

1. Figure out what the format of your video file is first. If it is a format that the iPhone can understand natively, skip ahead to step #3.
2. Convert your video to a format the iPhone will understand. In this case, convert the file from AVI to M4V using Quicktime export.
3. Export your video to the iPhone. You can do this in several ways: load the file into your iTunes movie library then sync to the iPhone; attach and send to yourself via email and save from email on your iPhone; or iMessage it to your iPhone and save to the camera roll.
4. Review the data your recorded in Laptimer and decide which lap you want to overlay with data. Laptimer overlays data one lap at a time.
5. On your computer, find the runtime of the video when that lap ends.
6. View the lap data in Laptimer.
7. Select Edit.
8. Select Add Video.
9. Select the video you just uploaded to your iPhone.
10. Set the end point of your lap based on the runtime noted above.
11. Select the frame in the video matching the end of the timed lap. (Start/Finish line)
12. Then select Overlay.

Laptimer Pro will do the post processing and your video will show up in your camera roll. In the video below I didn't yet have the PLX cable.

Thanks for the post. I have been looking for how to link the data to a video using Harry's.

Harry lap timer is great. I have beening using for my last 2 track day. And I use it for the back roads.