Thinking its time to install a nice dash in the race car. AIM, racepak.. or others. Question, which is more user friendly for an OBD1 e36 race car? Currently running factory ecu. Racepak has one that doesn't data log but the pricing is better. Need something that will do GPS based lap times.
Thanks.. Oh if someone has one for sale, let me know.
BMW e36 M3 #11 ST-3
You can run a tablet as a dash with this:
https://www.autosportlabs.com/
You can also run any CAN based dash like an AIM or AEM. It's opensource so very flexible. Cheaper than most, but less developed. I just installed one and am using an Amazon Fire HD 8" for a dash. Haven't driven much, but it looks sweet in the garage!
I spent the money on the new AiM MXS. I don't have any gauges at all in the car other than the dash, so I got to save $200 on all that other crap and wiring and stuff... which didn't even come close to offsetting the cost of the dash.
But I love it and I wouldn't trade the money back for the dash. Its' one of those things that makes me feel better about the entire build.
2002 BMW M Roaster.
1998 BMW 328is SCCA E Production road racer.
Don't bother with a display only ... spend more and get the logging, it's worth it for the learning and driver development. if you can't afford Motec dash, you go with an Aim dash. After that, it's all really far down the list. The features, software, and expansion on the Aim is hard to beat, but of course it's going to cost more. We had racepac years ago, software is total garbage, and the proprietary vnet stuff sucks. Though maybe it's gotten better lately.
The android stuff looks interesting ...
Last edited by ScotcH; 04-27-2017 at 10:12 PM.
Has anyone used a Race Technology's dash?
BMW e36 M3 #11 ST-3
Yeh, I really wanted a hardwired, permanently installed data logger. No phones, wifi, bluetooth fiddley crap. Here is some info and specs on the RaceCapture Pro: https://www.autosportlabs.com/produc...apturepro-mk3/
First, its a datalogger. 8 analog I/O, 3 digital I/O, 2 RPM ins, 2 CANBUS, and it also has integrated bluetooth and wifi. For sensors it has built in accelerometer/gyro and GPS. A real cool thing is that it supports LUA scripting so you can have lots of fun creating virtual channels based on equations operating on data, etc.
Then you can add a display if you want. You can add any CANBUS dash or a tablet or phone via bluetooth or wifi. I'm using a cheap Android tablet as a dash over bluetooth which slightly fiddly, but really not bad. The advantage of it is that i can take the tablet out after a session and do some basic analysis right on it. The tablet-based analysis software isn't super deep, but you can plot any/all sensors and overlap laps/sessions for comparison. It has a predictive lap timer, too.
If you want to get in the guts of it, you can export to GEMS format and have pro level analysis software for free.
These are getting popular in endurance racing because of the Podium platform. You can live stream your telemetry back to the pits or online via cell data.
I haven't used it outside of the garage yet, but so far it works in theory. I'll report after some time with it.
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