For the 2007-2008 TORO race series we are creating multi-media pre-race recons for our members. This will feature images served from flickr, helmet cam footage from youtube, and geo located images on a google map at various points on the race track. Here is the 1st TORO pre-race recon for race #701 Bells, TX (11/18/07).
I have been working on a real-time monitoring application in Flex. It connects to a server through a socket connection and receives 1 second readings of various types and plots them on graphs. The application is under 500k and the 1 second readings are very small. Flex is a perfect platform for this type of application.
The mt bike flex trail map is finally live! There are currently 7 trails listed. We should be able to add more soon. Most of the trails have dried up now. The trails around Grapevine are still under water though. I have the process to add new trails down now. It is not a quick or easy process but at least it is a process that works!
The trails are starting to dry out! What a crazy spring we have had. Finally we are able to get out and ride some trails. Rode Sister Grove, Oak Cliff Nature Preserve, and Beavers Bend recently. Should have the GPS map, pics and helmet cam video up on the site soon. Once I get a few more tracks added I will make the Mt Bike Trail app live.
We have had a ton of rain here in North Texas. It is good that our lakes are filled back up after a few years of drought. However, this is not good for Mt Biking! The Mt Bike Google maps/Flickr/YouTube/Flex application is ready to go. We just need the trails to dry out so we can map the trails!
We have done a few test runs with the helmet cam & GPS system on cement and gravel trails. The quality of the video & pictures need to be improved but the app seems to be working well.
Finally got all the equipment in for my helmet cam system. Had it out 2x’s to record the Denton Branch Rail Trail & Campion Trail in Irving. Neither are true MT Bike trails, but they are good rides to test the equipment on. Everything works pretty slick. Wish the quality was better, but it is acceptable for now. YouTube compresses the video a lot so the quality is not very good. The original footage is much clearer. Here is an example video:
After much research I finally ordered a helmet cam setup. I bought a KT@C Sony 520 line helmet cam and a RCA Lyra X2400 digital recorder. The Sony cam isn’t the best camera out there but it should produce decent results and handle the challenging conditions I am going to put it through.
The RCA Lyra X2400 digital recorder records direct to SD cards. I think this should work out best for ease of use and all the vibration & shock it is going to receive. No hard drive to crash and no tapes to mess with.
If you are looking to get a helmet cam setup, check out this helmetcamreview.com . They have side by side comparisons of the most popular brands. Very informative site.
Hopefully the weather will clear up so I can hit the trails soon! It has been raining almost every day for 2 weeks! It is going to take a while before the trails dry out.
I found some really cool motorcycle videos on YouTube and integrated them into TxTracks.com. Everything from crash videos, amazing trials riding and vintage Evel Knievel footage. Some of those crashes Evel had on that big heavy Harley were really nasty! There is even a video of his snake river rocket bike jump. Now that is pretty darn funny. Amazing he didn’t get killed in that one.
I finally updated the UI on TxTracks.com. It is a clean simple design. Hopefully people will find it easy to navigate and little more pleasing to the eye. It should be all XHTML compliant.
It is amazing the things you can do with all of the cool new web API’s. Lots of fun to play with. Here is a screen shot of the latest version of the Mt Bike Trails UI of TxTracks.com. It is a combination of Flex & Google maps. All photos are served from Flickr and videos are served from YouTube. Can’t wait for the weather to clear up so I can get some more data in the app and launch this!
