The Shitbox Rally is finally underway – Dave and Matt picked up “Mignon” in Perth yesterday and drove down south to literally get some new wheels, while us back-room boys hurried to reassemble the ridiculous plethora of technology covering the car.
While we know mobile coverage is going to be a problem on the long road north, I was pleased to see the Fleetcutter system (provided by GoGet) kick in automatically when the car was unboxed from it’s transport container. While I had wound down the ping-times to preserve battery life during transportation from Sydney to Perth, now was the time to crank up the logging and see what kind of precision we’d get from the various telematics.
I was pleased to see a good set of GPS data after the first impressive run to Meekatharra.
The Rasperry Pi’s and the web cam feeds are working! Although quite what’s going on is not clear…
But all is not going smoothly! We’re having trouble with the prototype satellite messaging system (our backup Internet path for when the car is out of range) which we blagged from the company trialling it (worth many thousands), and some of the other data feeds and the “donate to turn of the air-con” system isn’t currently working properly.
Hopefully we can get enough online time at the next pitstop to dial into the car and debug these teething troubles, but it’s very difficult in such patch coverage and time delays.
Last we heard was a tweet that they’re heading off road…
Good luck guys!
http://rallythefuture.com.au
