Harry's Laptimer and Racelogic VBox Sport Help
Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:03 am
I've had troubling time with Harry's Laptimer and the RaceLogic VBox Sport for years. When it works, it's absolutely awesome, but the problem is, and I'm now at my wits end, it's just completely unreliable. I cannot guarantee that when I turn everything on it will all get connected, operational, and receive. Further, I've found no combination/ordering of resetting the physical VBox unit, Harry's s/w, or both that reliably gets things working. Again, this is after years of trying. I've read most all of the posts on the topic and experienced essentially every problem posted. My most recent experiences over this past month may potentially shed light for the developers. I hope it does, because I *really* want the combination of Harry's and VBox to work.
In Nov I was at VIR. I could not get Harry's to ever function w/my VBox, not even once. Yet RaceLogic Laptimer did, though incredibly over the two days, RaceLogic failed to receive data from the device once or twice too. This was using my fully updated iPhone 7s that I've used off and on successfully but unreliably for years. Over those years, sometimes my setup would work, sometimes it would not, but never was it reliably trustworthy. I've experimented trying leaving everything powered up and never touching it once everything was working, all the way to powering/restarting everything every time. I cannot find a reliable method for ensuring it works.
After the Nov two day VIR event, I gave up on using my iPhone 7 as a dedicated "leave in the car" (no sim card) device for events and decided to do some trials around my house on my everyday commute/trips using my iPhone XS Max. The first couple days, I received data and Speedo race mode (mildly entertaining on the street and immediately shows me I'm getting GPS data) would function. In fact, it did today as well on my way to work. However, for the return trip and four more trips (a total of 5 of my experiments today), Harry's and VBox are not happy with each other.
My startup algorithm is getting as close to the same in all cases as possible because I've been trying to build a pilot's style checklist for firing up the GoPro and VBox to get to reliable, repeatable success. This is what I did for all of my trips today, including the 4 failed ones: Swipe close all apps on the phone. Power up VBox, Power up GoPro. Open GoPro App, phone to Hero7 network and start a preview to see camera connected to phone. Go to Home (leaving GoPro App in background), launch Harry's. Go to Analysis, Realtime, GPS to see connection/data from Harry's. Goto Race, Speedo. Click video to setup camera, wait for various beeps to all stop, including that last one that happens a few seconds after the burst. On Speedo page, click manual start button (turned manual mode on for recording stuff on the street.) Again, this has worked....
What happened on 4 trials today is @ the Analysis, Realtime, GPS step got stuck looking like:
Analysis-Realtime-GPS screen capture
Although I had 3 solid lights on the VBox (power, GPS, BT connection), Harry's would never see data. The race status page says:
VBox Status
In desperation, realizing that just this month my Nov VIR sessions were not successful, I tried another timer app from the iOS store (won't name it, but it's basically the $18 one). After solid connection and GPS fix lights, when Harry's is stuck in the condition above, I do nothing more than launch the other app, and it gives position and speed data. This worked all 5 out of 5 times today. I have this app configured to never use internal GPS, and have 100% verified that if my VBox is off when clicking start, it says no GPS and gives no data. As I've only tried this app about a total of 7 times, I have no idea how reliable this is over time, but so far it's worked everything I've tried. Note - it turns out that even my first, successful experiment today w/Harry's was only successful AFTER starting the other app. Harry's was stuck like I posted, I opened the other app, saw data, then went back to Harry's (didn't close the other app),
and that is how I got data for experiment #1. But, this DID NOT work on the 4 other trials today.
Please HELP - I have no idea what I could do to make this work and, honestly, I want the Harry's solution to work. I have a 3 day event coming up at Road Atlanta next week!
Thanks
Chris
In Nov I was at VIR. I could not get Harry's to ever function w/my VBox, not even once. Yet RaceLogic Laptimer did, though incredibly over the two days, RaceLogic failed to receive data from the device once or twice too. This was using my fully updated iPhone 7s that I've used off and on successfully but unreliably for years. Over those years, sometimes my setup would work, sometimes it would not, but never was it reliably trustworthy. I've experimented trying leaving everything powered up and never touching it once everything was working, all the way to powering/restarting everything every time. I cannot find a reliable method for ensuring it works.
After the Nov two day VIR event, I gave up on using my iPhone 7 as a dedicated "leave in the car" (no sim card) device for events and decided to do some trials around my house on my everyday commute/trips using my iPhone XS Max. The first couple days, I received data and Speedo race mode (mildly entertaining on the street and immediately shows me I'm getting GPS data) would function. In fact, it did today as well on my way to work. However, for the return trip and four more trips (a total of 5 of my experiments today), Harry's and VBox are not happy with each other.
My startup algorithm is getting as close to the same in all cases as possible because I've been trying to build a pilot's style checklist for firing up the GoPro and VBox to get to reliable, repeatable success. This is what I did for all of my trips today, including the 4 failed ones: Swipe close all apps on the phone. Power up VBox, Power up GoPro. Open GoPro App, phone to Hero7 network and start a preview to see camera connected to phone. Go to Home (leaving GoPro App in background), launch Harry's. Go to Analysis, Realtime, GPS to see connection/data from Harry's. Goto Race, Speedo. Click video to setup camera, wait for various beeps to all stop, including that last one that happens a few seconds after the burst. On Speedo page, click manual start button (turned manual mode on for recording stuff on the street.) Again, this has worked....
What happened on 4 trials today is @ the Analysis, Realtime, GPS step got stuck looking like:
Analysis-Realtime-GPS screen capture
Although I had 3 solid lights on the VBox (power, GPS, BT connection), Harry's would never see data. The race status page says:
VBox Status
In desperation, realizing that just this month my Nov VIR sessions were not successful, I tried another timer app from the iOS store (won't name it, but it's basically the $18 one). After solid connection and GPS fix lights, when Harry's is stuck in the condition above, I do nothing more than launch the other app, and it gives position and speed data. This worked all 5 out of 5 times today. I have this app configured to never use internal GPS, and have 100% verified that if my VBox is off when clicking start, it says no GPS and gives no data. As I've only tried this app about a total of 7 times, I have no idea how reliable this is over time, but so far it's worked everything I've tried. Note - it turns out that even my first, successful experiment today w/Harry's was only successful AFTER starting the other app. Harry's was stuck like I posted, I opened the other app, saw data, then went back to Harry's (didn't close the other app),
and that is how I got data for experiment #1. But, this DID NOT work on the 4 other trials today.
Please HELP - I have no idea what I could do to make this work and, honestly, I want the Harry's solution to work. I have a 3 day event coming up at Road Atlanta next week!
Thanks
Chris