Iphone lap timer? do they work well? | GTAMotorcycle.com

Iphone lap timer? do they work well?

A

arsenalrocks

Well-known member
Thinking about getting a lap timer app for my iphone, I can put the phone under the rear seat. Anyone have any experience with the apps current sold in the app store? Which app to get and is it worth it? Thanx
 
My fiance just uses a stop watch.....I'm sure a gps unit would be way cheaper and alot less maintenance.
 
I wouldn't. A crash can be pretty violent, it would suck to destroy your phone at the same time. (Picture putting your phone in a box and shaking it as hard as you can, it just doesn't seem like a good idea).
 
I used my iphone at my last track day. I used "Harry's Lap Timer", which seems to be the product of some German dude named Harry. I was very impressed with it. You can download a huge variety of tracks for free from the database, and Calabogie, Shannonville, and Mosport are all in the database. The database gives you the location points of places on the track, like the start-finish, and every corner. That way you can check your time between certain points. You can set up any point on the track as an interim for a split time. You set up one point as the start/stop point, and the lap starts and stops each time you cross that point.

It worked well for me over the course of a couple of days at Calabogie. I believe it missed only one lap, but captured my times for all the other laps. Hard to know how accurate it is without checking it against another timer, but the times it gave me were consistent with my usual lap times. As long as it's consistent, then I'll know if my times are getting better or worse.

I have a little rubber bungie thing underneath my seat, so I secured it with that, and duct-taped it in for good measure. I suppose in a crash it would not be secured, and could be destroyed. But that's true for all the other expensive stuff I'm wearing too, so it's just one more thing that I might have to replace in a crash. I suppose you could get a good case for it, like a Go-Pro camera type of thing.
 
cool, thanks for the feedback, I think i will buy that app for my next track day. btw do they have TMP map in the database?
Duster929 said:
I used my iphone at my last track day. I used "Harry's Lap Timer", which seems to be the product of some German dude named Harry. I was very impressed with it. You can download a huge variety of tracks for free from the database, and Calabogie, Shannonville, and Mosport are all in the database. The database gives you the location points of places on the track, like the start-finish, and every corner. That way you can check your time between certain points. You can set up any point on the track as an interim for a split time. You set up one point as the start/stop point, and the lap starts and stops each time you cross that point. It worked well for me over the course of a couple of days at Calabogie. I believe it missed only one lap, but captured my times for all the other laps. Hard to know how accurate it is without checking it against another timer, but the times it gave me were consistent with my usual lap times. As long as it's consistent, then I'll know if my times are getting better or worse. I have a little rubber bungie thing underneath my seat, so I secured it with that, and duct-taped it in for good measure. I suppose in a crash it would not be secured, and could be destroyed. But that's true for all the other expensive stuff I'm wearing too, so it's just one more thing that I might have to replace in a crash. I suppose you could get a good case for it, like a Go-Pro camera type of thing.
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Yup, it's got TMP.

I'd also advise that you buy the app a few days before your track day. It is a little hard to understand how it works, and takes a bit of playing around with to get it set up right. You don't want to be spending your time at the track futzing around with your phone.
 
I just bought it now, I got the 16.99 version. Hopefully it works. Thanks again!
Duster929 said:
Yup, it's got TMP. I'd also advise that you buy the app a few days before your track day. It is a little hard to understand how it works, and takes a bit of playing around with to get it set up right. You don't want to be spending your time at the track futzing around with your phone.
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Harry's Lap Timer is pretty full featured, the problem is the hardware. The Iphones GPS radio chiponly works at ~1Hz which means it only calculates the gps cordinates once every second which leaves some room for vague or inaccurate lap times. Fortunately Harry's lap timer does some calculations to try to make a best guess on the actual lap time, but there is a better solution. You can buy an external Bluetooth GPS receiver which operates at 10Hz (10 updates a second) for better accuracy. It takes jailbreaking your iphone/itouch to get it to work and a bit of playing around, but I think it's a decent solution.
 
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Do you really want to place your i-phone in a track bike? probably cheaper to buy a proper lap-timer than to risk your i-phone.

I don't think motorcycle racing crashes are covered under its warranty :p
 
Mr.Azim said:
Do you really want to place your i-phone in a track bike? probably cheaper to buy a proper lap-timer than to risk your i-phone.

I don't think motorcycle racing crashes are covered under its warranty :p
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I'm probably more likely to have a crash when I'm riding on the street, and I carry my iphone in my pocket when I do that.
 
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