n4voxgill
Silent Key
From www.forbes.com which is part of forbes magazine the following story:
Wireless
The Indy 500 Goes Wireless
David M. Ewalt, 05.27.05, 6:00 AM ET
Auto racing goes wireless on Sunday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Professional motor sports have never been a solo pursuit. Drivers may be alone in their vehicles, but they're backed up by huge teams of mechanics and experts who watch and analyze their every move. The best racers know they can push their car to the limit because the guys in the pits are keeping it in perfect shape.
That relationship moves to a new level on Sunday, when two cars from the Red Bull Cheever Racing team compete in the Indianapolis 500, armed with a cutting-edge Internet Protocol-based wireless system that gives the entire team access to a wealth of real-time information and communications during the race.
The Toyota Motor (nyse: TM - news - people )-powered Dallara race cars--No. 51, driven by Alex Barron, and No. 83, driven by Patrick Carpentier--may be the most high-tech vehicles yet to hit "The Brickyard."
"Our type of racing is very technologically advanced," says Eddy Cheever, the team's owner, who drove to a win in the 1998 Indy 500. "We use telemetry to extract live data from the cars and send it back." Cheever and his team used to equip their cars with sensors that would monitor the vehicle's vital signs send them back to the pits using RF transmitters.
That intelligence helped mechanics know how the car was performing and allowed them to plan better for the maintenance they'd do when it stopped for refueling. But there were problems with the system, which couldn't handle large amounts of information and didn't have great range. "We were very limited in what we could do," says Cheever. "At Indy, the telemetry would go dark on part of the track."
So the Cheever team replaced their existing system with new Internet Protocol-based hardware from Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ). The speedway has been equipped with Cisco Aironet 1300 series wireless access points at each turn and the start and finish lines, helping maintain constant contact with the cars. More access points in the team suite, garage and engineering trailer allow race data to be disseminated quickly to everyone who needs it. It all allows the team to keep up more reliable, robust connections, as well as send far greater amounts of information.
"If before we could extract three telephone books worth of data, now we're extracting about thirty," says Cheever. "The amount of information we're getting from these cars, it's like we're sending them to the moon." Sensors in the tires send pressure readings every eight seconds, helping the team avoid blowouts. Engineers can monitor the drag on different parts of the car and adjust spoilers when the car stops to improve its aerodynamic profile.
The system also allows for direct audio and video connections, allowing the team to watch video streams of the driver or actually see different parts of the car in motion to monitor their performance. They can use Cisco 7920 wireless voice-over-Internet Protocol phones to talk to the drivers or to mechanics back in the garage. And since it's all based on an IP system, it's easy for the team to network in multiple sites, pits and even offsite labs. "We could take all this information and send it over the Internet to Toyota's engineers in Tokyo," says Cheever.
In the even more sophisticated world of Formula 1 racing, the big racing teams have also been experimenting with similar wireless systems.
All this data doesn't just help out the guys in the pit crew--it makes the job of the driver a lot easier, too. "I think it allows the driver to focus more on just driving and not have to manipulate things inside the car," says Cheever. "It's a lot more efficient. We took all our old radios and threw them in the garbage can."
Now that the system is in place, Cheever's starting to look ahead to future races and plan what kinds of new sensors and capabilities he could add to the vehicles. "We are really at the start of this," he says. "Now that we've developed a platform where we can plug in all these different IP sensors, there's infinite possibilities."
This could be bad news to people using scanners at race tracks. Gill
Wireless
The Indy 500 Goes Wireless
David M. Ewalt, 05.27.05, 6:00 AM ET
Auto racing goes wireless on Sunday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Professional motor sports have never been a solo pursuit. Drivers may be alone in their vehicles, but they're backed up by huge teams of mechanics and experts who watch and analyze their every move. The best racers know they can push their car to the limit because the guys in the pits are keeping it in perfect shape.
That relationship moves to a new level on Sunday, when two cars from the Red Bull Cheever Racing team compete in the Indianapolis 500, armed with a cutting-edge Internet Protocol-based wireless system that gives the entire team access to a wealth of real-time information and communications during the race.
The Toyota Motor (nyse: TM - news - people )-powered Dallara race cars--No. 51, driven by Alex Barron, and No. 83, driven by Patrick Carpentier--may be the most high-tech vehicles yet to hit "The Brickyard."
"Our type of racing is very technologically advanced," says Eddy Cheever, the team's owner, who drove to a win in the 1998 Indy 500. "We use telemetry to extract live data from the cars and send it back." Cheever and his team used to equip their cars with sensors that would monitor the vehicle's vital signs send them back to the pits using RF transmitters.
That intelligence helped mechanics know how the car was performing and allowed them to plan better for the maintenance they'd do when it stopped for refueling. But there were problems with the system, which couldn't handle large amounts of information and didn't have great range. "We were very limited in what we could do," says Cheever. "At Indy, the telemetry would go dark on part of the track."
So the Cheever team replaced their existing system with new Internet Protocol-based hardware from Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ). The speedway has been equipped with Cisco Aironet 1300 series wireless access points at each turn and the start and finish lines, helping maintain constant contact with the cars. More access points in the team suite, garage and engineering trailer allow race data to be disseminated quickly to everyone who needs it. It all allows the team to keep up more reliable, robust connections, as well as send far greater amounts of information.
"If before we could extract three telephone books worth of data, now we're extracting about thirty," says Cheever. "The amount of information we're getting from these cars, it's like we're sending them to the moon." Sensors in the tires send pressure readings every eight seconds, helping the team avoid blowouts. Engineers can monitor the drag on different parts of the car and adjust spoilers when the car stops to improve its aerodynamic profile.
The system also allows for direct audio and video connections, allowing the team to watch video streams of the driver or actually see different parts of the car in motion to monitor their performance. They can use Cisco 7920 wireless voice-over-Internet Protocol phones to talk to the drivers or to mechanics back in the garage. And since it's all based on an IP system, it's easy for the team to network in multiple sites, pits and even offsite labs. "We could take all this information and send it over the Internet to Toyota's engineers in Tokyo," says Cheever.
In the even more sophisticated world of Formula 1 racing, the big racing teams have also been experimenting with similar wireless systems.
All this data doesn't just help out the guys in the pit crew--it makes the job of the driver a lot easier, too. "I think it allows the driver to focus more on just driving and not have to manipulate things inside the car," says Cheever. "It's a lot more efficient. We took all our old radios and threw them in the garbage can."
Now that the system is in place, Cheever's starting to look ahead to future races and plan what kinds of new sensors and capabilities he could add to the vehicles. "We are really at the start of this," he says. "Now that we've developed a platform where we can plug in all these different IP sensors, there's infinite possibilities."
This could be bad news to people using scanners at race tracks. Gill
