Mark Arteaga

This Sunday, the Red Bull Cheever team will use wireless technology at the Indianapolis 500.  Currently cars use RF technology to send car data back to the pit crews so pit crews can tweak the cars when cars come in for a pit stop.  They get data such as tire pressure, drag, engine status etc.  The main problem was they could only get a limited amount of data sent back to the car and there where dead spots throughout the track.  Now they are moving to an IP based system with Cisco routers placed through out the track and pit lanes.  They have no more dead spots and send 30times the amount of data as they did with RF technology.  They are even using VOIP so the driver and pit crew can talk and even have live video feeds so pit crews can see the driver and different parts of the car.

Pretty cool if you ask me!  Wouldn't be suprised if other teams start using this 802.11 since they can get a much wider range of car data.  Wonder if any F1 teams use this or what technology they do use?  Wouldn't it be nice if the fans could have access to the video feeds or even stats like how fast the car is going in realtime.  Imagine a bunch of race fanatics walking around with a Window Mobile device and checking realtime stats of the car as it's racing.  I have always thought of this type of access when at a hockey game...being able to access the live replay feeds or realtime access to stats or other games.  Would be cool to work on a project like that!