‘PitToCar Rx’ sits in the car over a race weekend/trackday/test allowing a team member to use ‘PitToCar’ whilst stood on the pit wall or in a garage to send short meaningful messages to it.

The app was recently tested, and used extensively during a 12 hour endurance race with great success.

Requirements
– PitToCar Parent App
– One or more ‘connected’ Android (Lollipop (v5/API 21) or newer) devices

How?
– Download, install and login to ‘PitToCar’
– Scan QR code displayed in ‘PitToCar’
– Send message from ‘PitToCar’ to newly paired ‘PitToCar Rx’

By default ‘PitToCar Rx’ displays the current time, delivered messages replace the time for around 60 seconds before they disappear. An undelivered message has a configurable timeout which by default is set to 120 seconds. This means that any message that hasn’t been delivered within the configured timeout will never be seen by the driver. I find that a message is usually valid for a single lap of the circuit and adjust timeout based on the drivers average lap time of the circuit we’re at.

A fixed message is also configurable inside ‘PitToCar Rx’, this can be useful for displaying information that is unlikely to change during a race. Things like new brake pads, a reminder of the pit speed limit, or even just something to focus the drivers mind.

What it doesn’t do (yet)
As previously mentioned, whilst it is possible to pair multiple instances of ‘PitToCar Rx’ to a single instance of ‘PitToCar’ there isn’t a mechanism to send messages to defined devices.

The driver using ‘PitToCar Rx’ doesn’t have the ability to manually respond to a delivered message. It would be easy to implement a touchscreen response, but it’s likely that they’ll be wearing gloves, or the device will be too far away to reach. Perhaps if there is significant call to implement touchscreen responses that’s something I can look to include. Ideally I’d allow the use of physical buttons, either wired to the phone or connected via Bluetooth.

Support
If you’re struggling with any aspect of either app or have suggestions on how you believe they can be improved please contact me directly so we can discuss.

Disclaimer
Before using this during sanctioned motorsport events, please check local regulations to make sure the use of this app doesn’t land you in bother with organisers.

More Info
https://motorsportmaker.com/pittocar-android-application/