F1 Season 2012!

[sperry]

Originally Posted by skimonkey30

Massa back at Ferrari for one more year:

http://en.espnf1.com/ferrari/motorsp...ory/92066.html

Place holder for a Sebastian Vettel move in 2014?

Awesome news for Massa. And I wouldn't be surprised to see Vettel eventually in red. Though I'm not sure about Ferrari wanting Alonso and Vettel on staff at the same time. Ferrari values team over driver, and having dualing ace drivers is a recipe for problems... Hamilton/Alonso and Senna/Prost for example.

[Nick Koan]

And now the New Jersey race is postponed until 2014

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/1...89I0G520121019

[MikeK]

The archbishop of new jersey is not happy about this news!

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Nick Koan

And now the New Jersey race is postponed until 2014

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/1...89I0G520121019

After Bernie mentioned earlier this year that they weren't "compliant" with the contract... I'm not surprised at all.

[Bob Danger]

Hamilton's five wheel pit stop was kind of awesome.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Bob Danger

Hamilton's five wheel pit stop was kind of awesome.

The most impressive part of that is how all the computer systems synced up in a millisecond without a hiccup. Hamilton was driving out of his pits like 1/10th of a second after the wheel was installed!

If that had been a slot machine running the software I wrote... he would have had to sit there for like 2 minutes while the communications established.

[MattR]

David Hobbs was so impressed with his "Changed all 5 wheels.." comment....that he recycled it on Wind Tunnel later Sunday night.

I have to agree Scott, I did not expect that it could sync instantly without any type of system issue or pairing required...

[Kevin M]

If there's no logic contained in the physical wheel, it's really no different than plugging in a PS/2 keyboard, right?

[Kevin M]

Oh, and something controlling with the steering wheel something something.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Kevin M

If there's no logic contained in the physical wheel, it's really no different than plugging in a PS/2 keyboard, right?

Except that the steering wheel contains the ECU logic, gearbox logic, diff logic, instrumentation, radio, and pretty much every other control computer that runs the car. Which is the point... if there's a computer problem, they can replace the whole thing by swapping the steering wheel.

There's a reason those wheels cost like $50,000.

[Kevin M]

Then it's still no different, it's just that now the car is the keyboard instead of the wheel. From my extremely limited knowledge of hardware/software interface, it's basically a question of making sure the wheel knows the electronic addresses of all the things it is controlling, right?

Edit- nevermind, I get it. The impressive part is a computer, even a primitive one, that goes from unpowered to ready to operate in milliseconds.

[MattR]

Legendary Kimi radio transmissions during the Abu Dhabi GP...awesome stuff.

Austin in 2 weeks!

[skimonkey30]

Originally Posted by MattR

Legendary Kimi radio transmissions during the Abu Dhabi GP...awesome stuff.

Austin in 2 weeks!

Best team radio communication all year

[sperry]

http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/2...in-interviews/

[skimonkey30]

What a finale!

End of a long run for speed. We'll see how NBC does next year with Hobbs and Machett joining!

[sperry]

Originally Posted by skimonkey30

What a finale!

End of a long run for speed. We'll see how NBC does next year with Hobbs and Machett joining!

I'm glad at least Hobbs and Matchett are moving over. I'm guessing that Varsha has a contract with Fox, considering all the Barrett Jackson stuff he also does for the network. Breaking up the 3 of them just feels wrong. They're not just the best sportscasters in racing, I'd say they're probably the best broadcast team in sports, period.

And, it was a hell of a race. Couldn't really ask for anything more out of a season-ender. Except for maybe no BS penalty on Hulkenberg.

[Double Phister]

Originally Posted by Kevin M

...The impressive part is a computer, even a primitive one, that goes from unpowered to ready to operate in milliseconds.

on a related note the newer fuel injected dirtbikes don't have batteries. Operating the kick starter generates enough juice to boot the ECU that then wakes up to see the crank moving just in time to start doling out spark and fuel.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by Double Phister

on a related note the newer fuel injected dirtbikes don't have batteries. Operating the kick starter generates enough juice to boot the ECU that then wakes up to see the crank moving just in time to start doling out spark and fuel.

There is a difference between electronics and and an ECU. It doesn't take a processor/code to trigger a spark. IC engines have been running without batteries since, well, they were invented. Even electronic fuel injection and variable ignition timing don't require anything that needs to "boot".

That said, F1 steering wheels probably don't boot in the car unless you force them to. They are powered up and ready to go before they plug them in. And even then, there probably isn't anything resembling what we would call an OS. Stupid fast optimized machine code reading sensors, doing table lookups and sending control signals out. But what do I know??? maybe they run Windows Mobile.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

There is a difference between electronics and and an ECU. It doesn't take a processor/code to trigger a spark. IC engines have been running without batteries since, well, they were invented. Even electronic fuel injection and variable ignition timing don't require anything that needs to "boot".

That said, F1 steering wheels probably don't boot in the car unless you force them to. They are powered up and ready to go before they plug them in. And even then, there probably isn't anything resembling what we would call an OS. Stupid fast optimized machine code reading sensors, doing table lookups and sending control signals out. But what do I know??? maybe they run Windows Mobile.

http://www.mclarenelectronics.com/Ne...-Sky-Sports-F1

Based on the above, I'm pretty sure the ECU runs its own OS and firmware/software that's not off-the-shelf. But since McLaren Electronics isn't in the business of manufacturing the microprocessors themselves, I would assume the microcode is something commercially available, and I would almost guarantee there's a C compiler for it, since C offers enough abstraction to make complex software possible, while offering inline assembly for anything that really needs to be optimized. Though, for most architectures, C compilers are so friggen good at optimization that dropping to assembly these days is pretty unnecessary.

But keep this in mind: while an F1 car does deal with quite a bit of data, and has to run in real-time on the order of 20,000 rpms, in computer time 20,000 rpms is only 333 Hz... plain Hz, not MHz or GHz. so even if there were 1000 calculations to do per engine revolution, a Pentium chip from the late 90's is about 400 times faster than necessary to run the motor (assuming I didn't botch my conversions). So if the processor in the ECU is at all decent, they could be running Java on *nix in there and still have cycles left over, if they have a realtime kernel like QNX or something.

What's really funny though, according to this, the data off the ECU is actually run through a bunch of microsoft DB products on the back end.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by sperry

Except that the steering wheel contains the ECU logic, gearbox logic, diff logic, instrumentation, radio, and pretty much every other control computer that runs the car. Which is the point... if there's a computer problem, they can replace the whole thing by swapping the steering wheel.

There's a reason those wheels cost like $50,000.

Oh, and this statement is looking to be less true.

If the ECU is in the belly of the car, I'm not sure how replacing the wheel fixes a computer problem, unless there's a way to upload maps from the wheel to the ECU. All I know is, when there's an electronics problem, they swap the wheel to fix it... and by regulation, it's illegal to send any changes to the car by radio... all changes have to be done by the driver in the cockpit. And the ECUs are spec ECUs used by all the teams, where the teams are only allowed to modify the maps in the computer, and not the software itself.

So the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The ECU runs the engine and the wheel is a dumb i/o device (buttons and displays), but it also has the ability to act like a memory device the ECU can read from for maps? Who knows. It's probably just a USB 1.1 device.