Traqmate Data Acquisition Package, I give it a thumbs up! Options

[nine14cats]

I thought I would provide some feedback for anyone looking at data acquistion units.

Greg Braun (race914) and I recently purchased Traqmate GPS systems. Greg can chime in here as well to give his impressions of the product. I've used it one day and I'm going to say this thing really is going to be a valuable learning tool. I like intuitive interfaces and the Traqmate is easy to use.

The sensor unit is smaller than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the display unit is the size of an eyeglass case. You can hardwire power to it, use a AA battery pack, or do as I did and plug into your cigarette lighter.

The canned graphs and analysis tools are very helpful and you can compare drivers, cars, lines etc., on any given track by downloading from the unit to your PC or e-mailing the files to other users and comparing that way as well.

As an example, I compared 2 laps of myself during different run sessions at Infineon Raceway this weekend in the Spec Boxster.

Here is what a lap comparison screenshot looks like. The blue dot and red dots represent me chasing myself and the relative car position at the same lap time:

[nine14cats]

So if I look at the data from segment 4 (Infineon's Carousel), the data shows that I was 2.7 seconds faster through this section in my fastest versus my average time. My entry speed to the carousel was almost identical at 84MPH, but I carried almost 11MPH more through it and my exit speed was almost 6MPH faster during my fastest segment. When you explode the view I can see that I took a slightly different line and that I was carrying 1.4 g's in the turn versus 1.0g's in my slower segment.

I carried momentum and kept my foot in it more.