My wife is hounding me for Christmas gift ideas and one of the things that came to mind is the iCard for the Gameboy (http://www.icardus.com/). I saw some guys using them at an SCCA (MARRS) race. Does anybody know if this would work at the NASA (Honda Challenge) races as well? I wasn't sure if it working was dependent on the track or the organization (NASA vs SCCA).

TIA
-Pete

 

Don't know but I am interested as well. From the SCCA Runoffs shows, it seems a lot of people are using these. I have a never used Palm that I'd like to find a use for.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Lee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I have a never used Palm that I'd like to find a use for.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm afraid you will have to look for a different use for your Palm. The iCard needs a GameBoy to plug into...

 

Damn. There was some pit program that was supposed to make the Palm useful.

 

So who has the transmitter? The sanctioning body? Does it work with all types of transponders? Also, how much does it cost? I already have a gameboy color...

 

To answer all questions, the ICard is per region/race. Basically if your region has it set up, then you can use the ICard. Now, the guys from ICard are working very hard to and making easy for every region to have one.

In my opinion, the only bad part about an ICard is that there is no way to save your results or print them. A gameboy has no memory, hence it can only display results. If someone would come up with a Palm OS version where it provided the means to store the information (time, speed, laps, etc) then it will be a worth thing to have.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Lee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Damn. There was some pit program that was supposed to make the Palm useful.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Maybe something like this might be useful to you Lee?

http://www.extremegeez.com/Products.html

 

Perhaps this is what you meant, Lee:

http://www.amb-it.com/asp/xml....ws#49

As far as I know it still hasn't been released. Additionally, for some regions that don't use the AMB timing software (like WDCR), I don't believe it would work.

 

anyone have any more input on this device? do you own one and like it?

their website says SCCA Cal Club uses it, anyone know how consistently? what about NASA?

 

We used it at the 12hr @ summit point last year - it was raining and the signal was spotty but otherwise a very neat system.

 

Tyson - Scott and Renee have one. I've of course seen them use it and have used it myself to a limited degree. So far I'm not real impressed.

When it works at all, the signal strength seems low. It also seems, to me, to be slow to update car positions...which may be the signal strength thing again. At Road Atlanta a few weekends ago, whatever system had to be turned on by the track was never turned on at all - never worked.

 

As Karl mentioned, its GREAT when its working. Its really helpful in enduros because after the pit stops start cycling its hard to figure out your position on the track (which is why we bought it).

The problem is that you are at the mercy of the transmitter assuming the region you're running with even has one. Ours worked great at the ARRC last year, but a couple of weeks ago T/S couldn't get the system working so the icard was completely useless.
Hopefully this weekend at VIR it will be working. Its a long race on a long track and without it it'll be hard to figure out where we are.

 

OG Racing administers the iCard setup used at WDCR events. I'm not sure if OG owns the equipment and would make it available to other orgs. BTW--the average number of minutes per MARRS race it worked last season: 0.6.

For those in the DC Region interested in picking up either the Gameboy-based or USB iCard I'd suggest calling over to Matt Yip at OG to see if the situation has changed any.

 

The OG guys were kind enough to let us use one of theirs at the VIR 13 hours and when it worked, it was helpful. The signal was wobbly for whatever reason but it's a great idea.

K

 

I have just spoken to the kind soles over at OG and they have informed me that they own the iCard transmitter equipment, not WDCR. In addition, all it takes is your own AMB-based timing system and a call to them in order to have it set up for your event.

So, if anybody wants to see iCard at NASA (or other timed) events @ Summit, now you know what needs to happen.