Everyone always says that the number 1 mod for any driver is “seat time” – but you do reach a point where seat time alone isn’t enough, coaches can only get you so far, so what is an aspiring driver supposed to do?
That’s where software, machine learning and data driven intelligence in the form of “digital driving coaches” come into play. Apex Pro was born out of the desire to simplify and improve the way data is displayed and communicated to the driver, helping folks improve and achieve better lap times. Special Guest Host Phil Ingalls from MaxSpeed Track Days along with Andrew Rains business lead for Apex Pro along to explain how it all works.
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- Spotlight
- Notes
- Transcript
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Spotlight
Notes
- What is the APEX PRO origin story?
- What are some of the key differentiators between APEX as other solutions on the market (Harry’s Lap Timer, AIM Solo, Garmin, etc)
- How does the system work? Is it AI or ML?
- Geeking out about: How many GPS points does APEX use? Does Apex talk to your phone? How? (Bluetooth? Closed-circuit WIFI, Is there any latency?) Does the unit store data that can be downloaded afterwards? Is the phone doing the post-processing? (and video recording?) Is there software for your laptop? What are the mobile device requirements?
- How does this work for motorsports like AutoCross, or Point-to-Point Rally type events? Doesn’t it need a start/finish? Does it work for Karts or Motorcycles?
- Learn about the Apex Pro Gen-2 and promo/trade-in program.
and much, much more!
Transcript
Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
Phil Ingalls: Everyone always says that the number one mod for any driver is seat time. Do you reach a point where seat time alone isn’t enough? Coaches can only get you so far. So what is an aspiring driver supposed to do?
Crew Chief Eric: That’s where software, machine learning, and data driven intelligence in the form of digital driving coaches come into play.
Apex Pro was born out of the desire to simplify and improve the way data is displayed and communicated to the driver, helping folks improve and achieve better lap times. And with me tonight on Break Fix is special guest host Phil Ingalls [00:01:00] from MaxSpeed Track Days, along with Andrew Rains, business lead for Apex Pro, to explain how this all works.
So welcome to the show, Andrew.
Andrew Rains: Hey, thanks for having me. It’s a flattering intro. I appreciate it.
Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk about the origin of Apex. Where did this idea come from? How did it all come about? What inspired you to develop this digital driving coach?
Andrew Rains: You hit the nail on the head with your intro, really.
And it’s born out of the whole obsession with trying to simplify and solve a problem in a simpler way. So when, when I got involved in motor sports, Data was kind of like an intimidating subject, and I’m sure it is for some as well, you know, if you’re listening to this. You might be that person. And until I really was exposed to somebody that could really walk me through how to properly use a professional grade data system, I didn’t really appreciate how powerful it was.
On a really simple level. I want to share that experience with people and. Provide them with a simpler way to gain insight into their performance and to provide them with a tool that they can really [00:02:00] take and grow with and mature with as they go through the sport. And then also obviously incorporate elements of technology that helps solve the problem in a simplified way, which doesn’t mean less powerful.
It just means more user friendly. That’s kind of the inspiration. This is my personal driving and racing experience with data systems and trying to become a better driver. And then meeting my business partner, who’s our, our technical lead, Austin Gurley. He developed the, the concept of Apex Pro, the machine learning that operates the lights on the display that calculate all sorts of interesting things.
And he kind of approached me with this concept. It’s like broad idea. I think we can do something that’s simpler and different. Ever since then, it’s just been the constant pursuit of trying to do that better every day.
Crew Chief Eric: So how long have you guys been working on the product and evolving it?
Andrew Rains: The, uh, the first time I touched a prototype of the product would have been in 2010, but we didn’t bring it to market until 2016.
So there was kind of a, like a gestation period of figuring out what this thing is and where it fits into the market. [00:03:00] And, and really just figuring out the technical backend, you know, me sticking some sensors in the race car. Sending it back to Austin after the weekend, about three years of that. And then we finally kind of put the pieces together and ended up developing an app to control the hardware that we designed.
And then we kind of happened into a really fortuitous place where we realized that smartphones are now capable enough to operate. As a very key element of your data system. They don’t have good enough sensors to record the data themselves, but they can display it really well. Those two things kind of coming together, like affordable, really good sensors and powerful supercomputers in your pocket are what made our business possible.
Crew Chief Eric: So like any good IT. Company, it’s two guys in their basement or in their garage, no budget and a desire to change the world. So that sounds like the Apex pro story. Yeah, absolutely.
Phil Ingalls: Did some of this come out of you when you were at Auburn university and he was part of their, uh, drift team, correct?
Andrew Rains: Formula SAE team.
Yeah.
Phil Ingalls: That’s kind of where you started your seeking your data so that you could be better at that.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. You can actually see [00:04:00] the picture, uh, audio only listeners. I apologize. There’s a picture of a race car behind me. It’s a Formula SAE car. So I went to like Fillside Auburn university, which listeners in the South will be familiar with anybody that watches college football might recognize it, but they have a huge engineering school and I was a business student, but I happened upon this race car one day at an autocross that had Auburn logos on it.
And I’m like, hold on a second. I’m about to go to Auburn. Like I need to look into this. And so I realized that there was this. University funded organization that builds a race car. Like Phil said, I was actually club racing at the time. My dad and I had bought a vintage race car and I was kind of stringing that together, doing one or two events a year, maybe.
And then I got into Formula SAE and that really lit the flame, kind of fueled the passion behind it because now every day I’m with him. 10 or 20 like minded people that are just trying to figure out how to design and build a race car. And even though I didn’t go to school for the technical aspects of it, I learned a ton about building a car from a blank sheet and a big part of that is data and we ended up probably [00:05:00] spending 20, 000 on ECUs and MoTeC sensors and damper pots and wheel speed sensors.
And, you know, we had everything on the car, you know, it’s sensors for everything, and we knew all about the health of the motor and everything, but. We weren’t using it for driving. We were just using it to make sure the car wasn’t falling apart. Nothing against MoTak. I use MoTak sometimes when I coach.
It’s, it’s a great product for some, but it requires a lot of technical experience and it’s not really designed to deliver inflammation to the driver that’s actionable. It’s more of a tool that you use to expose deeper things to solve a lot of problems. That’s a big part of it. Yeah, you’re definitely right.
Crew Chief Eric: So you actually hit on something that’s really important here is most people in let’s call it road racing. So we’re going to qualify that as. HPDE, club racing, time trials, anything that falls into, you know, circuit racing that we’re all accustomed to, they have their loyalties to competitors out in the market.
Some of the more prominent ones in HPDE world, because it’s cheap, Harry’s Lap Timer. For those of us that are trialers, we’re used to using AIMS and AIM Solos and AIM [00:06:00] dashboards, et cetera. And then we have some newcomers in the market, right? Last year, Garmin announced So they came out with their own driving tool.
So how does Apex Pro stack up against some of these names that we’ve become familiar with over the years?
Andrew Rains: That’s a great question. It’s kind of a marriage between what you look at from the entry level app type products, the Harry’s or the track addicts, but kind of more on the hardware side. It’s more similar to aim where the sensors are obviously much higher end.
They’re very sensitive to how you Mount them. It has to be calibrated properly. Not that that should intimidate you, it’s all easy to do, but there’s a, you get the device with the sensors in it, right? Which is a huge difference between that and the app world in the app space. You can buy GPS dongles to pair with apps and stuff like that.
But what’s really unique about us is that we make an app and we make a piece of hardware and those were designed from the beginning to work together. So they’re very simple and easy to use together. If you’re on a budget and you’re trying to string together 10 Hertz GPS and run it with an app and pay a dollar a month for the app and buy a hundred dollar [00:07:00] GPS, you’re going to end up with a compatibility issue.
You’re going to end up with a lack of support. There’s a lot of ways that that can kind of sour your experience with data. So we’re kind of trying to be the easy button for the person that wants to go there and kind of step out of that into something that’s a more purposeful hardware device. So we kind of want to be the bridge.
Our product is primarily app based. There’s a lot of power in the app. Truthfully, it’s works for 95 percent of drivers. There’s probably a small population of people that need more information than we provide. There’s other ways to do that. When you mentioned the Garmin, it’s very, very different than the Garmin.
It’s a different tool. I can definitely compare and contrast them. The biggest difference is the price point. They’re twice our price, but if you’re an audio, like learning style, if you’re an audible learner, then the Garmin’s probably got some really compelling features. If you’re a visual learner, or if you are compelled to, You know, learn how to leverage data.
Then Apex pros is probably what you want. If you’re looking for the easy button, I think that’s probably a simple quick fix.
Crew Chief Eric: I noticed that you didn’t mention the [00:08:00] abundant frustration that most of us have with race studio and all the, the programs that go along with the aim. So I’m hoping to hear some positives to maybe convince people that, you know, this would be a good thing.
A huge change for them, at least in how they interpret their data. Cause most of us spend our time trying to get it to work more than anything else. Right?
Andrew Rains: Yeah. Yeah. We can definitely touch on it. I try not to focus too much on what I don’t like about our competitors. Cause they do a lot of really good things, but I’ll definitely put out there the differences between if that’s the software you’re using versus what you experience using ours.
Phil Ingalls: If I can interject something here, because first off, I started off with Apex as an end user. I kind of reached out to Andrew because I had ideas when we were forming MaxSpeed to provide data to everyone. And he kind of explained to me that logistics of that in a track day style format was pretty rough, but I ended up becoming a dealer of Apex units and a very basic end user at the beginning, so I got my first Apex unit.
And really all I used [00:09:00] it for was lap times, but then my buddy and business partner, Brendan, you met him last time we had a podcast, he got one and neither one of us really knowing a whole lot about the data, but we would just sit down and look at, okay, how fast are you going through this corner? How many red lights are you showing or whatever?
Super simple stuff. And if I was a couple of miles an hour faster, Brandon would be like, well. Okay, then I I know that I could I could go faster through the corner if you can stick it because our cars are identical than I can stick it and it was just we would sit down on a couch after sessions and just look at each other’s line and data and how much apex score we were using and it was super simple and we got faster.
I shaved four seconds off my lap times that wrote Atlanta over the course of a weekend using an apex pro and I knew nothing about data. It was just the lights and looking at the path going around the track. So for a new introduction person to data, the Apex app and device is mind blowing. And then of course, Andrew has taught me a lot about data since, and now I can really drill down into it and learn how to get [00:10:00] better.
For a first time user, it’s super intuitive and simple to use.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. I think what’s important if you’re like in this space and you’re looking at different product offerings, I can’t speak to the other company’s mantra or customer service or how they deal with things. Our goal as a business and all we focus on is we want to make you become an apex pro essentially.
Like we want you to be able to get into any car and drive the wheels off of it. Data is a big component, you know, quantifying your performance of learning, but it’s not everything. There’s a mentorship and a coaching role and connection community that really drives the learning process. You know, finding people that you can connect with, finding a good coach, finding the right, right seat instructor, finding tools and resources to leverage the data that you have, no matter how simple the data gets to see, there’s a process that your brain has to go through where you have to understand it.
Right. And it can become too simple. We want to respect that people can learn how to use data. We just have to present it to them in the right format. And so that’s, our goal is to help you learn to drive the wheels off of anything through this vehicle of data. [00:11:00] So what Phil’s talking about is like there’s subjective elements where I communicate a lot directly with customers.
And we talk about track nuances that might not be present in data or. We might talk about a track nuance and I say, Hey, guess how you can see that if you’re a laptop or plus subscriber, you can see grade and elevation change, you know, as a graph or colored on the track map and you can go see why I am telling you you can roll more speed through a certain turn because there’s compression or there’s something that’s
Phil Ingalls: turn six roto
Crew Chief Eric: line.
Yeah, turn
Andrew Rains: six.
Crew Chief Eric: So it almost seems with the light. It’s to be a little bit Pavlovian in a way where there is some psychology in there too. Because are you anticipating those colors to be there? Because the way I’ve understood the product is there’s a double edged sword to this, right? Where the visual side of it on the phone, you don’t have time to look at while you’re driving.
You use that after the fact to analyze your data versus the onboard, you know, device that sensor you were showing, you know, has those lights. It gives you an immediate gratification and immediate feedback while you’re driving, you know, red, yellow, green, et cetera. You guys have mixed in some [00:12:00] psychology in there as well, right?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, honestly, I think that’s the goal because, and you can probably speak to this, Eric, as a coach or a right seat instructor, there’s, there’s very, very small amounts of information you can communicate when a driver’s in the headspace of driving, they’re focused, they’re trying to get into the flow state, there’s very, very minimal amounts of information.
So what we find is that people that drive with Apex Pro drive with it for months, years, and eventually the lights start to become very significant to them. Because they start to understand having looked at the data and having, having seen them what they represent and they start to believe that it helps them all the matters for us as drivers is that we believe what we’re being told that we have confidence in the car, you know?
So like the days of thunder, right? When Harry hides on the radio and he’s like, you can run the high line and turn forward. You can make it stick. That’s what, yeah, that’s exactly, that’s what he says. Followed by, you
Crew Chief Eric: can come on down here and get yourself some ice cream. That’s
Andrew Rains: right. We’re having ice cream.
The psychology of driving a car is everything. Our [00:13:00] mental state is everything. So if we can. Find a way to blend the data with the human brain. And the only way that I currently really know how to do that is by getting hands on and helping people bringing the technology along so that it brings people to those conversations at a more educated level, we want to educate people in a way that they can understand why they need to drive a certain way, not just be told to do a certain thing.
And coaches and right seat instructors are great at providing the instruction for where we turn in, where we break some of these other things. But when we start to really explore how we. Get the most out of a car, how we keep the apex pro lights green all the way around the track, which means you’re using all the tires ability.
There’s not really a black and white answer. Should I break later? Should I break softer? Should I come off the brake later? Should I come off the brake, you know, sooner, whatever it is, you have to have the tools in your toolbox to apply it when it’s appropriate and there’s an art form to the formant of those skills.
So anyway, we can kind of promote proper driving techniques and give people Solid things to look at in their data to track that performance and then [00:14:00] open up this whole world of allowing them to learn these things. You know, you don’t know what you don’t know. So would
Crew Chief Eric: you say then that it helps facilitate the ability to learn how to drive by feel?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, I think using data properly does because what you hear previously, you know, in the industry before data was commonplace and it still isn’t enough. Most people still aren’t leveraging it. A lot of people say, well, that feels faster. Usually feeling faster means it’s a little scarier. It’s a little more intense or the car’s loaded more laterally a lot of times.
And there’s lots of things that you’re like, Oh, that feels faster. But when you look at the data, you know, you may have carried more speed into the corner, but you didn’t get a good exit, whatever it is, what we’re trying to do with the data is calibrate. Our feel to what actually the data says is fast, then we’re really, really powerful.
Then we’d look at data totally differently. We can kind of anticipate what it’s going to tell us. And I can speak to my own driving. I have a sense for when I attack the entry too much and I compromise my exit. I know on a scale of did that hurt me or not? And was that an entry speed corner or an exit speed corner?
[00:15:00] I can quantify those things more easily now and kind of have a sense for that more naturally than before I really was a student of. The data and understanding what that meant.
Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk about how the system works under the hood. You know, a lot of our listeners, it’s kind of an interesting dichotomy where you have it nerds and car people.
They happen to be the same persona a lot of the time. And when you start talking about machine learning, you get all, you know, the hairs on the back of the information science guys next standing on end because they’re like, well, is it really ML or is it AI? Without giving away any, any secret sauce here, but just to talk about how the system works in general, and then maybe compare and contrast it to some of the other leading systems that we’re used to working with.
Andrew Rains: Yeah, sure. So I’ve spent a lot of time explaining this and talking about the backend. So I’ll start by kind of prefacing what Apex Pro is and what it displays to you and how powerful that information is. And then I’ll kind of talk about fundamentally why it works, because that’s not a technical thing, but it’s a truth that we all know.
And that’s the [00:16:00] reason why it fundamentally just works. And, and you need to know that before you know anything about it. So on the apex display, while you’re driving, you see red and green lights. And the red lights indicate the limit of the car’s potential or the limit of the car driver combination, its potential.
It’s not ultimately what that car can do with Michael Schumacher behind the wheel. It’s what that car can do today with you driving it and the green lights represent your performance. So the, the raw sensor reading. So it’s all based on kind of a. A friction circle, right? Like we’re taught early on with the string theory.
And if we are graph, you know, lateral and longitudinal G you end up with a shape as you drive around the track, that looks kind of like an ellipse, kind of like a pear shaped thing that represents lateral and longitudinal load. So what Apex Pro is doing is it’s taking that, but it’s measuring accelerations in nine axes with a nine axis IMU.
For the more technically inclined, that’s a nine axis IMU is like three axis accelerometers. Um, one of them’s a gyro. You’ve got a lot of different sensor [00:17:00] readings that you’re taking in on accelerations, uh, and then there’s also a 10 Hertz GPS and the device that is used for speed and position. And that’s obviously very important as well for the traditional data output that you’re going to get in the app.
You’re going to use the GPS. And then we also do some other cool stuff with the GPS, like crew view and streaming your position and some other cool stuff that we’re working on. That’s what you see when you drive. So basically if there’s red lights from the braking zone to the track out, there’s more potential, meaning the tires, not at the edge of the friction circle.
Crew Chief Eric: So red is not necessarily bad. It’s just
Andrew Rains: unused potential.
Crew Chief Eric: Okay.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. It’s opportunity is the way I like to think about it. Yeah.
Phil Ingalls: If you see red, I don’t focus on it anymore. It’s just in my peripheral vision. Right above my steering wheel and I’m looking down, but I can see if I go through a corner that there’s one red block there and I don’t focus on it, but I know next lap, I can make that all green.
Maybe I need more entry speed, or maybe I need to set up my corner entry better to pull more speed through the apex, but I know that there’s more there. I know that I’m [00:18:00] safe to push that little bit more because it’s showing me the red.
Andrew Rains: It’s kind of indicating like the car can take more input.
Phil Ingalls: Yep.
Andrew Rains: And that input could be steering, pedals, something that’s going to get the car closer to the edge of the friction circle speed.
Just, it just depends. That’s part of the learning process. Yeah. We touched on that. With the 9 axis IMU, you can measure, obviously, accelerations and lateral longitudinal. So you’re kind of traditional. Axes, you obviously have a gyro for your slip or jaw axis. Uh, and then you can also measure all these other axes of acceleration, right?
So apex actually can model camera corners. The data filtering that’s happening from the IMU when it’s intaking sensor readings, it’s actually saying like, are we flat? Like how we calibrated? You know, when we press the calibrate button, or is the car tilted? Uh, or is it going uphill? Have we been traveling and accelerating?
You know, uphill or whatever, or downhill it’s measuring all those things. So it’s filtering out to where it knows the grade or the camber. [00:19:00] And that’s, that’s very important because that affects the limit of grip, right? You have slightly more grip when you’re going uphill, depending on the steepness of the grade.
You have slightly less grip than a flat surface when you’re driving downhill. Same with on camera and off camera, right? The reason NASCAR tracks are banked are because gravity is now pushing the car into the ground, right? You have kind of more contact patch. You have more static mechanical grip. That’s important to know.
But the fundamental thing that I think everybody that’s either speculative about Apex Pro or not convinced that it can do what it does, all you really have to know is that some corners are not driven optimally, like some drivers just. All of us actually, I’m sorry, some is the wrong word. We all drive one corner better than another.
We all go faster someplace on the track. We’re all more confident in a certain corner than another. And it could be the fast wide open corner where we can see all the way through the exit and our first lap out, we’re already tearing through there. Or it might be the slow speed corner. Cause we come from autocross and we can just trail the brake off into that corner.
The car rotates, we get some oversteer on the exit and it’s not a [00:20:00] big deal. That fundamental truth is how Apex quote unquote learns the limit. That’s what it uses as your baseline performance. It’s taking that performance that it sees there. You’re pulling a certain number of G’s. At a certain speed with a certain banking in the track, a certain grade of the surface.
And then it knows all those things. It knows the grade, the bank, all that. So the next time you go through a corner that has a different grade or banking or radius or speed, it can say, well, back here, we were doing this many G’s at this speed with all these other variables here. This is slightly different, but these things are the same.
So we can logically say, if you’re pulling, let’s say negative 0. 9 longitudinal G. Going up a hill and on a flat surface and a flat breaking zone, you were pulling negative 1, then it can say, okay, there’s reasonably more potential for the tire to grip here.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So with that being said, there’s some other variables there that maybe people are kind of.
Thinking about right now, as we’re talking about this, scratching their heads going, well, what about the different tire [00:21:00] compounds? What if I start the morning on a low grade R comp? And by the end of the day, I switched to slicks or my tires have to come up to temperature before they’re sticky or they’ve superheated.
And now they’re no longer grippy. Like we see that all their time. There’s so many variables when it comes to tires. How do you consistently pivot off of that as your data point?
Andrew Rains: I mean, that’s, that’s really it. There’s so many variables when it comes to tires and the theoretical potential of, of a tire to grip a surface.
The surface changes throughout the day, right? With cloud cover temperatures are going to affect, we all know good weather is cloud cover, relatively cool temperatures, right? That’s when you’re going to go the fastest. So Apex doesn’t know any of that stuff. That’s not even a consideration. All it’s looking at is the accelerations.
The raw data from the sensor. So it’s really showing you in real time, like, did you have more potential right then carry more speed through that corner to accelerate harder in that particular instance. So it doesn’t know if your tires are up to temperature or not. All it knows is that you’re accelerating it this much in this corner.
And in this corner over [00:22:00] here, you’re not doing that, not necessarily the same exact performance, but a modified version of that same performance that it thinks is reasonable in those conditions. So the, basically the answer is it doesn’t take any of that into consideration. And that’s, that’s part of how it works as well.
How a part of how it represents something that’s accurate in all of those conditions. And the only time that it’s something that I would recommend that people change is when you go from a dry track to a wet track very quickly, because it learns your peak grip, peak traction, your peak, uh, edge of the friction.
Phil Ingalls: Right.
Andrew Rains: The, the display won’t be as helpful like unlearning all of that. Like, okay, you were. Decelerating a negative one G and now you’re decelerating negative 0. 6, right? Cause it’s wet, but the other way around works exceptionally well. And this is, I hear this a lot from drivers and I’ve had this like epiphany myself, but on a wet to drying track, it’s kind of unfair because you’ll be feeding into the power and you’re at slower speed cause it’s wet.
It’s a little easier to be able to get the visual feedback and you can just tell so easily, and it’s like a truth meter, [00:23:00] right? You’re like going to the power and you’re like, I don’t know if I can go to the next floor. And you’ll see all these red lights started to populate and you just feed the power to the floor.
I’ve had that experience so many times where it’s just like giving me more confidence sooner in drying conditions to start pushing the car’s limits. If you’re a skeptic of the product, that’s a hard situation to like to replicate. But if you can get on a wet track or a drying track with one, it’ll open your eyes.
Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t know that it’s skepticism so much as like to use your word, a recalibration of what we’re used to. AIM does it a certain way. Harry’s does it a very linear way, et cetera. So this is a different way of thinking. So it takes a minute to kind of wrap your head around how it works. I think some of the other questions that may come into people’s minds as, as they’re thinking this through right now, as you’re explaining, it might be.
I guess it really doesn’t take into account the line either. So you could be a habitual early apexer and it doesn’t matter because the machine learning is learning how you drive and then [00:24:00] setting those optimal limits based on what you’re doing. So I guess there’s a negative to this in that if you don’t drive a great line, whatever that means, because that’s a truly ambiguous term, honestly,
Andrew Rains: it’s
Crew Chief Eric: really only scoring you.
But what happens say, you know, you get that classic situation and then my buddy got in my car and he beat my lap time by three seconds in my own car. Then
Phil Ingalls: Andrew will tell you about the easy button when you’re speaking to people, data, let Andrew drive your car.
Andrew Rains: Yeah, well, that, that, that’s a really powerful tool because the, when you turn the apex pro off, it, it.
erases that calibration. It doesn’t store the memory of that performance, right? And there’s a lot of reasons for that. Mostly conditions changing and the grip potential always being different, different times of day. But if you leave it on. So if I go, you know, drive a super fast lap and then Phil hops in, those red lights are gonna be more prevalent and they’re gonna more Easily expose those types of things.
And, and you can get a sense for things that are [00:25:00] line related. So like, if I were to strictly look at the apex lights, I could kind of tell if you’re an early apex or a late apex, or if that’s kind of habitual, it’s kind of helping you, if you’re running a consistent line, it’s going to be most helpful. And that’s kind of where us as like early, you know, early stage instructors.
That’s what we’re trying to get our students to do is drive consistently in the same place on the track. Obviously learn how to do. Things in other places on the track, break offline, overtake in different situations, have different site pictures. It’s going to be most helpful for you on with some basic understanding of the principles of the line.
And I’m not a believer in teaching people the line and saying, this is the line, because I think the line is a function of utilizing the, the, Tires grip the entire way around the track. And if you do, even the,
Crew Chief Eric: even that the car’s natural tendencies as well, some cars, we joke all the time that we call it fun wheel drive, right?
For the front wheel drive guys that are out there, there’s a concept that we throw around known as anticipated understeer, which translates to track out. So if you can get a front wheel drive in the corner correctly and rotate on its [00:26:00] hind legs for a moment, it’s. It will basically push its way out to track out.
That is not a natural thing for a rear wheel drive car, but if you master those kind of, we’ll call them techniques, you can make a front wheel drive very fast. Right. But it’s unorthodox. So those are the kinds of things I’d be curious to see, like how a system like this would pick up on those, those nuances of the different types of cars.
You know, there’s a certain way to drive a Miata fast, but it’s not necessarily the way you drive a Corvette fast. So I often argue like you that the line is this mythical thing. It’s the baseline at which we all learn how to get around the track safely, but to go fast is an entirely different thing.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. I could, I couldn’t agree with that more. It’s. You drive the car, not the track. You take advantage of the track. You take advantage of what the track gives you. Your goal is to drive the car at its limit. And by consequence of that, drive the tire at its limit, which is dictated by physics and for contact patches or for contact patches, right?
There’s ways that you have to manipulate. And I’ve got, I’ve got a lot of front wheel drive racing experience. Uh, so, you
Crew Chief Eric: know what I’m talking about? I love
Andrew Rains: front wheel drive [00:27:00] cars. Yeah. I have a lot of conversations with guys that are diehard rear wheel drive cars about, you You know, that can’t wrap their head around.
Why would I ever want to drive a front wheel drive car? And it’s a totally different approach, but it feels very different, right? It feels so different driving a front wheel drive car to a Miata, to a Corvette. But what the tire is experiencing to drive an optimal lap is very similar. Trying to get it into a similar place, right?
You’re trying to. Rotate like the rear tires are maybe sliding slightly more than the front entering a corner so that the car rotates more naturally without steering input and less scrub so that you can, you know, direct a car, the car to the exit and go to power sooner. And that’s exacerbated in a front wheel drive car because you have these natural tendencies towards understeer from the time you get on the power.
Right. But those types of things are why that kind of that fundamental, like we’re trying to, we’re using physics, tell people this all the time. And I think maybe Ross Bentley said it. Or Peter Krause or somebody that’s my senior in this coaching, you know, industry and business. And the only laws that apply to driving are the laws of physics.
There, there are no [00:28:00] rules. There, there are suggestions. There are best practices. There are things that we do to safely get the car on the track. But when it comes to laws, it’s the laws of physics. And that’s why Apex Pro can work. The same way in a downforce dependent car as it can in a front wheel drive shit box.
Yeah. .
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Andrew Rains: Which, and that’s a, that’s an endearing term
Crew Chief Eric: in a, in a . No, it, it’s, it’s, it’s plastered on the side of all of our front wheel drive cars. It’s okay. Yeah. Shit. Box edition. It’s all good . But uh, that being said, you know, again, going back to this kind of re-imagining of the data, a lot of people are hyper-focused on, I think two big things, the lap time.
And the data that’s coming from the car and you see it all the time. I mean, there’s countless YouTube videos, man, look at my awesome lap at road Atlanta. And it’s like in car video and OBD2 data. And you’re like, is that lap really that good? What are you showing me here? Right. And in the days of Harry’s being like the more prevalent one, you always saw the, like the little G meter that looked like it came out of grand Turismo or Forza.
And you’re like, it’s so [00:29:00] gimmicky. Right. So I guess the bigger question for. Folks that may be interested in this or looking to transition is they want to get that experience at the day, because they want to show their friends, they can’t show their friends, blinky lights. So is there the equivalent to, you know, that smarty cam or that overlay or that OBDU data in the Apex pro system?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, we have a, we have a. Video rendering and data syncing feature, uh, that’s part of our advanced feature set within the app. You can basically, with a touch of a button, you can render your, your iPhone video with your, your data. So you can actually see the lights overlaid on the data. So you can go back and see your relative, you know, position, trajectory.
Where are you on the track? And did I have any red lights or not? Right. Is that a place I need to go work on? Uh, and then also speed and some other things. And we’re constantly adding capabilities to add different things to renderings. But it’s very important to be able to have that hero lap. Cause we all go to the track for fun and we all want to show our friends what we did.
And, uh, some people learn a lot from video, but that’s definitely something you can [00:30:00] do. There, there are certainly limitations, um, when you start talking about. Technology to phone cameras, to OBD, to information, what you can actually get from the car without going down a rabbit hole. Uh, and that’s funny that you bring that up.
Cause I spend a lot of time talking with drivers who come to me asking advice, thinking they need information from the car when really they’re trying to learn their braking tendencies or something that’s more about them as a driver, which is all, in my opinion, again, we talked about this 95 percent of drivers are going to get enough out of a driver.
A GPS based standalone system to learn about their driving. If you need vehicle health measures, you need to make sure that you have that taken care of. But if you’re just looking to like, learn about your driving, you don’t need brake pressure and steering angle, even though it sounds, even though those are, those are things that they’re like, well, I turn that and I press that.
Right. I need those. Well, you can learn almost exactly what you’re doing with those inputs from longitudinal and lateral g force inputs, right? It’s not exactly the same, but it’s even more powerful because it’s the [00:31:00] end result of your inputs. And you can, you can learn enough about it that for way less money.
You can get to the same exact place. And I spend a lot of time talking with drivers about that. Like if you want to break pressure trace, turn your long G trace upside down.
Crew Chief Eric: There are two data points that are missing from this equation that I actually think are relevant from the OBD2 data. And that’s throttle position and RPM.
Those cannot be derived, but those to me would be the only two data points that are valuable in that whole, you know, compilation of information. You’re getting to your point, break pressure. You can, you can calculate that. You can figure that out steering angle. Who cares? But those other two points, they’re so very finite.
You know, you can get the exit speed of a corner. But at what RPM, what gear, you know, how much throttle was I at when I achieved that perfect exit speed? Was I at full throttle or did I back off a little bit and I was at half throttle? Or the other thing that it won’t pick up is lift throttle over steer.
If you drive with your pedal, you cannot sense that on [00:32:00] any sort of GPS or gyro or anything, because you’re feathering, you’re working, you’re making the car do things, and I think that you almost would get a false positive in that way.
Andrew Rains: Yeah, there’s, you know, the reason I mentioned brake pressure and steering is because no car communicates those over OBD2.
It’s on the CAN bus of modern cars. If you have a relatively new car, you can get that information by buying a device that can access the CAN bus. And it gets really confusing because. The OBD2 port can access CAN bus, but OBD2 and CAN are not the same thing. OBD2 is a standard that all automotive manufacturers agree to.
And they, they’re required to put some information that may be required, maybe coming from the CAN on a newer car or from something else on an older car. But you can access, and I’m glad you mentioned that you can access throttle position and RPM because those are required OBD2 standards, which means it’s going to be less expensive regardless of if you’re using the Apex Pro, OBD2.
Device or if you’re using someone else’s OBD2 device, you can get throttle position and RPM. So I spend and a TPS [00:33:00] trace throttle position sensor trace is very, very important to understand at a certain point in your driving and can teach you a lot, even, even really early on as well. Um, and then also with OBD2, you get something called pedal position.
Which usually TPS is measuring the throttle position sensor. So the throttle body in most cars, um, which will be like, if you have a modern car with stability control or traction control, the TPS trace will be influenced by those if the throttle body is used for traction control on most cars, it is pedal position is the measurement of the throttle pedal.
So you can actually more linearly see what your foot is doing. So on Apex pro, you can use our OBD2 device. That’s a Bluetooth OBD2 that tethers in to the app, just like our standalone GPS and accelerometer hardware unit. And you can get all that information. Cause the question that you mentioned, Eric, what gear am I in?
Is a, is a really important one. And that’s not always super easy information to access. Cause it’s kind of hard to remember that, especially when you’re learning a new track, or maybe you’re in a car that’s new to you. Or you’ve changed gear ratios. [00:34:00] That’s a vital information to know and to compare. I can’t tell you how often I remember doing this.
Even before I was involved with Apex pro, I was traveling and doing some crew work for some pro teams. And then I got into professional racing myself. And I remember how often I saw the drivers when I was on the crew. And then myself with my team and engineers and stuff asking like, is this faster in third or fourth?
I don’t know. And it’s not super easy to know. You can see in a speed trace where you up shift, right? So you can get a sense that I go to 4th there, but you can’t always see that. Right? Or if you’re in a PDK Porsche or a DSG BMW, you’re not going to see those shifts in the speed trace. So being able to tell your position is pretty important when you’re looking at that type, particularly a corner that’s got like a 70 mile per hour minimum speed.
In most cars, that’s third or fourth gear. Yeah. So you make some really good points there. And TPS is really cool too. Once you get into it, cause you can see part of our learning curve. We over slow the entry of the corner pretty substantially. And we all have the tendency to go back to throttle before we can actually be at wide open throttle.
To drive the car out of the [00:35:00] corner. So we have to lift off the throttle again. You can see that in long G, you can see that in the speed trace, but you’ll see it obviously in the TPS, right? It’ll go flat line to the top. And
Crew Chief Eric: the other thing is, if you really want to geek out, you can calculate the latency between the throttle position sensor at the pedal and the throttle position sensor at the throttle body.
To figure out if you’re lifting is actually doing anything. Cause some cars have a baked in delay there where lifting your foot actually isn’t doing anything. And the motor is still at whatever position it was at exactly. So
Andrew Rains: not
Crew Chief Eric: to nerd out on that, but let’s nerd out on something else again, which you brought up kind of alluded to, you know, going back to that, you know, ML versus AI, you said the system resets itself every time you go back out so you recalibrate.
So one of the guiding principles of ML is that it has been feeded and seeded data and that it continues to evolve over time. So if it doesn’t retain the data, now it’s this goldfish kind of circling the castle. So is it really starting a new every [00:36:00] time or is it an AI that is now recalculating on the fly?
Bye bye. What you’re doing based on that particular session.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. But by that definition, it’s, it’s AI because you, it is, it starts from a baseline of like the software that’s embedded in the circuit board basically has kind of a baseline fundamental understanding of like what we talked about, physics,
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.
Andrew Rains: And that was calculated. That was the original testing that we did to kind of get the logic was in my Pirelli World Challenge, Honda Accord and Robbie Foley ran one in an MX5 and the MX5 Cup. And then we had a couple of downforce cars, um, that we used. We got kind of a wide range, a couple of high horsepower cars.
I drove an LS swapped early 944. For a while, uh, that it was a friend of mine’s car that if you went to full throttle too soon out of the corner, just shoot the axle out the side of the car. The most ridiculous early nine 44 is don’t hold up super well to V8 swaps. So get a turbo. You’re going to do it.
Uh, yeah, 525 horsepower and a 27, 2, 700 pound nine [00:37:00] 44 is really nuts, but yeah. So, so that’s kind of like where the, so it’s, it doesn’t start from nothing. It starts from an understanding of the basic physics and driving dynamics. But yeah, by the definition, if you turn it off, right, then it’s an AI software algorithm.
Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk a little bit more about the Apex pro. And this is, you know, obviously where we’ll probably start to differentiate it from some of the other systems that are out there. So, you know, I’m very intimate with, you know, the aim I’ve been using it for years, probably like a lot of our listeners that are tuning into this episode right now.
A lot of us have gone through the, you know, the training and certification classes and stuff like that. One of their big things is they push. How many satellites are being used to get this exacting information to this, you know, minutiae of how many blades of grass you just blew over as you went through a corner and they, they, they emphasize how important that is, you know, where you are on the track at any given point, you know, were you an inch off of the apex, like they can give you that level of fidelity in the data.
So, you know, their minimum is like eight satellites in order to triangulate on you when, you know, your [00:38:00] typical in car. Satellite only uses three, you know, stuff like that. So I guess the question is because you are using a GPS receiver, let’s start with that, how many GPS points is the apex using in order to create that level of granularity?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, we, you need more than five to really even get to a use usable, you know, track position and in our. Opinion seven or eight, the baseline number of GPS satellites. I’ve learned a lot about GPS going through all this, but some of the natural limitations or GPS is it’s controlled by depending on where you are, it’s controlled by the department of defense in the U S maybe Phil can tell us more about that, but they only, they only allow you to get so accurate.
for national security reasons. So
Phil Ingalls: three meters, that’s one.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. One meter, which is in racing terms, as far as like how far am I off the apex one meter might as well be a
Crew Chief Eric: barn. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Rains: You can drive a Miata through there, right? Like that’s, that’s too much, but I mean, that, that is very important. And that’s a big differentiator between.
Us and who we view as the [00:39:00] primary, not necessarily competition, but where we’re looking to bring customers into the Apex pro world as folks who are using their phone as a data logging device, that’s where you’re going to see the biggest difference between using like a phone with an app and then buying something like an Apex pro or a 10 Hertz GPS unit to get a better position.
You’re going to see a much more accurate position on the track. Now there are, you know, instances where, and you’ll see this with any GPS system where you’re going to have GPS satellite shift, or let’s say we have seven satellites we’re connected to, and one falls below the horizon. Now you have to reconnect to another satellite.
Sometimes that’s going to end up, you know, moving where you are. Sometimes that can affect the systems that we use to talk to the GPSs and all that sort of thing. You know, most of the GPS systems are using the U. S. GPS system. The Glonass system, which is the Russian system. And then there’s a Chinese satellite network as well.
So you’re, you’re able to tether to all these different satellites. So that’s not a huge problem. But what is interesting about satellites is they’re most accurate when they’re low in the horizon. So like a GPS that’s right above [00:40:00] you is not good. Finding your position because it’s not triangulated, right?
You want like GPS is coming in from very far extreme kind of horizontal positions to position you accurately. So a good GPS program is going to be finding satellites that are low in the horizon. They’re more likely to shift off the horizon and have to move in that direction. By that definition, we actually have, I’m working on an Apex pro online course that has some detailed information about GPS that I think is really fascinating.
And for anybody that’s more than just trivially interested in GPS, I think it’s, it’s important if you’re using these systems, anything that’s a GPS powered system to kind of understand the limitations, the capabilities. The natural tendencies of the technology. I don’t know if I actually answer your original question.
Crew Chief Eric: No, actually, you’re, you’re right on the money. I wanted you to go down this path so that people understand that it’s not as simple as it looks and there’s more to it, right? And your phone alone can’t do it. And that’s why, that’s why. Specialty, you know, systems like this exist and that they [00:41:00] exercise more points for more granularity and more fidelity and an easier ability to track where you are not only laterally, but, you know, even your elevation, right?
All of that is factored in when you’re talking about GPS. So we could nerd out on that. Probably all day long, but you know, there’s some other things to that. And you know, when you look at it from a convenience perspective, people also leverage and go, well, my GPS thinks I’m at X track. So is that being done at least through the phone to geo locate, you know, off the cell towers and say, Hey, you’re at summit point, or you’re at VIR Carolina motor sports park.
And then, so that is part of. The display package, but the apex pro itself doesn’t really care what track you’re at. Is that, would that be a true, true or fair statement?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, yeah, that, that is, that’s true. So when you open up your app and you had to connect your apex pro. And you’ve just driven from somewhere out of state to Road Atlanta or Thompson or Watkins Glen.
It’s going to use the phone GPS to say, Hey, are you at this, this track? Right. And provide different configurations if [00:42:00] the track has them. And then you select them so that, you know, you have the proper track selected. Now you’re good to go. Obviously it’s when you hit start, the next time you cross start finish, it’ll start tripping laps automatically.
Right. It’s nice and, and succinct.
Crew Chief Eric: So the communication between the apex pro unit and the phone, I’m guessing is Bluetooth, right?
Andrew Rains: It is. Yeah. It’s Bluetooth low energy. And it, I believe the transmission rate between the two is 10 Hertz. So it’s sending, it’s sending data 10 times a second, not to be confused with the sample rate of like the actual algorithm and the sensors in the apex pro hardware.
That’s at a much, much, much higher sampling rate because at an extremely high rate. A good GPS system or necessary for motorsports is 10 Hertz in my opinion, and not really any more than that is necessary unless you’re at a really high average lap speed, but some systems use higher frequency GPS is because they derive accelerometer measurements more from the GPS than the actual accelerometers.
We use accelerometers for the accelerometer measurements.
Crew Chief Eric: So does that mean that the apex then is caching data and then. Basically [00:43:00] forklifting it over to the phone, or is it a near real time stream from the device to the phone? And the phone is a bit of a flight recorder. And then post processing occurs after you’ve completed your session.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. So it’s, it’s actually sending that data over kind of in batches. Like when you trip a lap is when it’s sending the bulk of the, of the communication of like the recorded information.
Crew Chief Eric: So unlike like a Harry’s where. I would be seeing it basically processed there in near real time. This is done after the fact.
Andrew Rains: Yeah, it’s a little more post. It’s a little more post than like a live stream, right? Back and forth, but BLE like Bluetooth low energy is a really powerful tool for being able to transmit this kind of information. It’s actually pretty impressive what it’s capable of doing now. And you can also have multiple Bluetooth signals with it.
You can do. All sorts of different things,
Crew Chief Eric: which is why you can use the OBD2 Bluetooth connector along with the Apex Pro on the same unit. That’s probably going to raise another question for a lot of people. What’s the minimum spec for the particular phone that they’re going to have [00:44:00] to run to do all this kind of processing as it’s happening?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, well, certainly the newer, the better in most cases. So we’re, we’re an iOS centric product, so we’re focused on the Apple devices. That’s a, that’s a big conversation. There’s a lot of reasons. For that, but fundamentally just to get it out of the way, we don’t support Android actively currently, because when we started this business, my business partner, I had an Android developer, business partner, and another business partner decided to learn how to program for iOS and learn the Swift coding language.
We ended up buying out our Android partner for like a hundred bucks or whatever, you know, it was like early days. My other partner, Mike, what’s that
Phil Ingalls: I said, beer money.
Andrew Rains: Probably. I, you know, this was like six years ago, right? It’s like hard to even remember. And in 20
Crew Chief Eric: years, we’ll do the, where are they now?
And that guy will be like, I regret getting out when I
Andrew Rains: can’t believe
Phil Ingalls: case of Pabst blue ribbon.
Andrew Rains: Oh, man, that’s good. But, uh, so we ended up with iOS competency [00:45:00] just because we had the analysis development. So we’ve pursued a lot of different options for Android and we decided, you know what, we have a really good.
Really, really reliable, strong connection with the iOS devices. We’re getting better and better and better. We’re doing some other work outside of Apex pro for other customers in that space. So we’re just going to stay in our lane. And now this is not like a leak or anything, but we’re finding a way to get back into Android without having an out of house we’ve tried to grapple with.
How do we avoid paying somebody? Several hundred thousand dollars to get a, an Android product that needs constant maintenance. That needs a lot of, that’s not going to be exactly what we want, which is what you’ll get with a, with an out of house. Plus there’s too many
Crew Chief Eric: flavors of Android, depending on the provider versus Apple as Apple is Apple at the end of the day, right?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of simplicity there when you’re looking at like, uh, options. You know, if you’re actually, and this might be relevant, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, I have an idea for an app or a product. Android, you kind of have to make the tough decision of like, which versions of Android do you want to support and which hardware devices do you want to focus on, and you have to kind of auto select people out of your [00:46:00] range.
Cause you can’t do them all. Cause they’re, they’re very different. Um, whereas with iOS, it’s a much simpler structure for different hardware. So to answer your original question, any iOS device that runs iOS 14 will run the latest version of our app. Uh, and conceivably has enough power to do most everything.
The data files are pretty small, like megabytes. You know, it’s like a, like less than a picture of storage space that’s going to take up on your device. So you don’t need a ton of storage. Certainly RAM is helpful. So a newer phone with a newer processor, more RAM, you know, more storage is going to, is going to help.
Uh, everything, if you’re considering using your phone primarily for video, the iPhone 12 is one of the best, um, that I’ve seen with like stabilization or the iPhone six S is actually incredibly good with video state.
Crew Chief Eric: That makes me wonder though, you know, you’re talking about Apple devices and you know, this is where we’re really geeking out here and hopefully the IT listeners are appreciating this, but you know, we all know that Apple devices run pretty hot.
So there’s always cooling concerns, especially when you’re at the track on a hot day, you got that thing mounted up on your dashboard. [00:47:00] And now it looks like something out of the Borg collective, right? We got wires coming in cause we got to
Crew Chief Brad: keep
Crew Chief Eric: power going to it all day long. We got our apex pro, we got our OBD two sensor.
We got all this other stuff going on. Maybe I want to live stream on Twitch all at the same time. I don’t know. Right. So that means you, you inevitably are greeted with Apple’s version of the blue screen of death, which is like the core meltdown screen. What are some recommendations to get this thing to run cooler?
Or have you guys optimized the code in such a way that it doesn’t really overpower the device in these types of extreme conditions?
Andrew Rains: Yeah. So the camera, uh, and filming or like being on a phone call or something, that’s always going to take the most RAM. That’s going to heat up the processor the most that’s going to cause the most work from the phone.
Um, the app itself is very low energy, so it is very well optimized for not being a huge draw from a heat generation standpoint, but you know, some, and I saw this in the show notes. I was like, you know, they’re, they’re the first person who’s like actively addressed that as like a common issue. Like we need to talk about it because.
Yeah. It is a problem. [00:48:00] And you’re going to run into that with any of your battery powered electronic devices in your car, particularly something like your smartphone.
Phil Ingalls: I will throw in that our very first event was in August at Roebling Road in Georgia and 95 degrees plus. And I’ve run my Apex with the phone in the window on a, on a windshield mount.
Every event we’ve had in August at Roebling, I’ve never had an issue with it, like causing the phone to shut down. And that’s running video because I’m a Laptime Plus subscriber. So it’s, it’s running the video for the laps and everything, and it’s always just run fine. So, yeah,
Andrew Rains: well, that, that’s a, that’s a good point.
And that’s where I was going to go with the tips for keeping it is that if you can keep your phone from like being contacting flat against a surface and that surface is really hot, that’s a really good way to keep it cool. So keeping air around it. So a phone holder or, uh, um, something that’s containing your phone that.
Allows your phone to be exposed to, to air and the majority for the majority of the actual device. Or if you can put it somewhere shaded, like in a, in a glove box or in your pocket, uh, [00:49:00] I, I very rarely see, um, and I, I do this a lot when I wear my driving suit, I’ll go drive somebody’s car, coaching client’s car, or I’ll be at an event where I’m hopping in people’s cars to set data labs, or I’m riding right seat and I just keep my phone in my pocket.
I put my Apex pro on the dash phone in the pocket. If you’re in a situation where that’s a viable solution for you, that’s Phone’s never going to, never going to overheat in that situation. Anytime you can keep it shaded, the times where you really run into the heat problems are when it’s on or near metal that gets really hot, or when it’s sitting flush, like flat on a dashboard or on a contact surface that has a lot of heat.
Obviously you’re going to get a lot of heat transfer, um, into the phone. So those are my best tips. Buy a good phone mount and that’ll help you a lot.
Crew Chief Eric: Does the Apex Pro have a dependency on the phone or are they mutually exclusive from each other? Meaning it will give you the feedback you’re looking for.
Whether your phone is present, you forgot it in the paddock, it’s turned off, the battery died, et cetera. Are you still going to get the same experience or does the phone have to be there?
Andrew Rains: The phone does not have to be there for the, for the real time [00:50:00] information on the device. You can actually just turn the device on and never, never tether it with your phone.
It’s going to go through the same exact learning process, kind of adaptive play process.
Crew Chief Eric: And how many laps does it take before it activates and does, and starts to show you information is about one lap, two laps.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. And in a normal session on a two mile track, uh, if, unless you’re like tire warming or there’s a big train, right.
It’s, it’s about a lap before you’re going to see relevant information. I was testing some new stuff on the, just driving around on the office test track, like around the road today. And, uh, you know, I went into somewhere where I kind of do a little bit harder braking, a little more aggressive turn all well under the speed limit, probably 30 miles an hour.
The second or third turn that I went through, I’m now seeing a A bunch of red lights that turn in showing me I’m not, you know, I don’t have enough combined load in the corner. I knew I, at that steering angle, at that speed, I could probably go 20 miles an hour faster. Right.
Crew Chief Eric: So can it determine start finish?
Or is that relative to information on the phone?
Andrew Rains: That’s relative to information on the phone. [00:51:00] It’s not going to, it’s not going to determine the start finish without looking at the phone
Crew Chief Eric: because I’m sure people are curious, how does it know when you’ve reached the exact same corner again, so that it can compare the data from the previous time to tell you those red and green lights?
Andrew Rains: So it knows when you cross start finish, right? And it knows your distance from start finish. But it’s not actually using like the specific position on the track. It’s kind of building a more holistic model.
Crew Chief Eric: Okay.
Andrew Rains: Um.
Crew Chief Eric: But if the phone isn’t present, then what happens?
Andrew Rains: If the phone isn’t present, then it doesn’t, all it doesn’t have is like the, the data to trip that.
But it’s not, it’s, it’s not dependent on like, Oh, you went through turn one. Last time doing this. It’s it’s just seeing the similar conditions and comparing it to other places,
Phil Ingalls: right? It’s where you cross reference points
Crew Chief Eric: or where it sees a repetition. Yeah, I gotcha. Okay, cool. No, because that could be a little confusing, you know, when you’re talking about decoupling the phone and the unit and things like that.
So I just wanted to clarify that.
Andrew Rains: No, that’s a good question.
Crew Chief Eric: Which was going to lead into my next question, which [00:52:00] is all of the software is on the phone. There’s nothing for me on my PC or my laptop or anything like that to be able to download the data and then work with it there. It’s all driven either by tablet or phone,
Andrew Rains: right?
Yeah. It’s all iOS based. So. iPad, iPhone, and you’re, you’re touching on like my, my wishlist because I spend a lot of time on my, on my computer and I would love to be able to use my mouse for more dexterity with data. But there are some third party options currently like the track attack software that’s fairly commonly used.
And that’s, it’s kind of a data bridge. So you can take data from different systems and put it into track attack. And it does a pretty good job of combining it and letting it be comparable. Um, there’s always going to be some differences because they’re all using different systems. Sensors and they were mounted differently and there’s not a lot of uniformity there, but that’s a really good software.
And you can take a CSV export from the Apex pro. So every Apex pro session can be sent or shared as a Apex session, which is like our, our iOS file that’s proprietary to the [00:53:00] Apex, the way that we save the data, uh, or you can send it as a CSV file, which you can do a number of things. Whatever you can do with a spreadsheet or a CSV file, you can do with that.
So you can use it in. Like race render for your video overlays, um, so you can get more accurate, like GeForce and, and speed data, or you can use it in, in track attack, which is pretty popular, but that’s certainly on the long term horizon. But what’s interesting for those of you who may not know about Apple’s like development, they are trying to marry to some extent.
And Eric, you might know more about this than I do, but basically iPad OS is kind of migrating to be more interchangeable with Mac OS so that you could take an iPad app and put it on a Mac. And have the functionality between the different ways that you computer use a mouse and you click and on an iPad, you’re using your finger.
That’s kind of where they seem to be going. And so that’s
Crew Chief Eric: a, that’s a hashtag because Google and Chromebooks, but we’ll, we’ll leave it there. Right?
Andrew Rains: Yeah,
Crew Chief Eric: absolutely.
Andrew Rains: So maybe we’ll be able to benefit from that before too long.
Crew Chief Eric: So, since we’re talking about wishlist and to kind of round out our nerd out session here on, you know, [00:54:00] how it works and the technology and what’s involved and all that.
I’m wondering any ideas on maybe putting an SD card on the unit and letting it do the recording locally and then be able to pull it down later. And then the second question, and I know this goes straight to some of the guys that listen to our show. Is there an API for Apex pro?
Andrew Rains: So the SD card question, uh, I guess that’s, that’s been a common one from the beginning.
Um, unfortunately the, the way the logistics, mostly the situation make it difficult because we’re app based. So like a micro SD would be the easiest thing to package into the unit. But to get a micro SD into something into like a SD card reader, or just something that you can actually get into your phone, like your lightning plug on an iPhone to get the data into the app is a little bit of a challenge, right?
Well, couldn’t
Crew Chief Eric: you then Bluetooth the device and then download from it or create a local wifi, almost like a GoPro? I mean, what I was thinking was with the SD card on there. Then the ML can go back and reference data points that it has from previous times. Now, granted, you’d have to [00:55:00] give it some reference information that this data is summit point versus VIR, you know, let’s not go down that rabbit hole, but I think it would be really cool if it did have onboard memory, could do a lot more with it, you know, from that respect, but it’s kind of switching to the API, right?
I know a lot of guys would like to. To dive into this and how do I access? What can I do? You know, is that an available option?
Andrew Rains: We really don’t have an open API and there’s, that’s just kind of how we’ve decided to approach this. We keep everything more or less focused on simplicity to the user. And some of that inherently comes with.
A little bit more of the it’s not open framework. It’s not open structure. Now you can take the CSV data and do a lot of stuff with it. That’s the limitations there, but we have strongly looked at the SD card or the internal storage is what we would call it internally. Pun intended to those Develop and utilize some of the things you’re talking about, like iterating the, the, the ML through the various sessions, right.
Or to you could technically like, yeah, like [00:56:00] create a local wifi network, or you could even pull some of it via Bluetooth, but you run into some pretty big, again, logistical constraints. If we look at how our users are mostly interacting with the app, you really end up where I want to see my data. Right now after the session and know how fast I went.
And that’s a, that’s a barrier. Cause you would have to kind of commit to the internal storage. We’ve been down that rabbit hole, I guess, is a good way to put it. It’s an interesting, it’s an interesting question, but there’s the cool thing about those types of questions though, or that we really make one product right now.
Uh, we make one hardware device and our ultimate goal is to be a long term player in the motor sports data world. And that’s a world where there’s a lot of niches within our motorsports niche that we need to cater to. And there’s elements of it that might require an open API or might require the internal storage element where I don’t have to have my phone in the car.
And that’s all stuff that we want to address. Eventually we just have to figure out who’s our customer. What’s our core business. How do we grow this customer base so that we’re as healthy as possible as a business. And then [00:57:00] we can go and address some of the other fine kind of areas that we’ve, that we’ve seen.
Cause that, that has been a pretty common question.
Crew Chief Eric: No, and, and not all of our listeners are computer scientists either. So we should probably get back to talking about cars and going fast and lap times and that kind of stuff. So I think the next question is, you know, as we’re talking to different folks that have experience with different tools.
Be it, like we talked about, you know, the, the Harry’s lab timers, the aims, the new Garmin, you know, all those tools that are out there, there’s always a learning curve and sometimes that’s a barrier to entry, right? Some people just want it, want the easy button as Phil pointed out earlier or something else.
So does Apex offer classes? What’s the curricula like, you know, what’s the expectation there? How long does it take?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, absolutely. So we’re actually working. And for those of you who are familiar with Apex pro already, you’re probably going, yeah, I’ve done your webinars. So we, we already do address that in a lot of different ways, but we are working on an online course that you can take.
That’s probably less than an hour time commitment all in, end to end. And it’s kind of [00:58:00] everything you need to know to be a successful Apex pro user. What every single icon in the app does, uh, how we present the workflow and how it’s kind of meant to meant to work, um, which obviously it’s as user friendly as possible, but there’s still all of us use software every day for work.
And the only reason that we use it well is because we use it every day. And the unfortunate reality with motorsport software, the various data system software or any other things that the teams are using and stuff like that, unless you’re using it constantly, you don’t get those. You’re not getting that seat time to have that recall and that muscle memory and that familiarity.
So we’re trying to combat that with. More education, better UI, better overall UX for how user user interface, user experience for how people interact with the product to make it simpler to get to the important stuff. But currently our course format, if you kind of look at like from the funnel, from the top down, we have a Facebook live kind of session that I do sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly.
I try to be consistent where we have guests. We kind of talk about Apex pro to cursory level. We mostly highlight different areas of motorsport, whether it be [00:59:00] safety or in some of the ways, maybe some of the topics you’re addressing here, just different format, much shorter. And then we kind of moved down from there.
We use that to promote our webinars, which some are free. We have an intro to Apex pro webinar that we do once a quarter that goes out to everybody who’s purchased an Apex pro in the last couple of months. And they get invited to take a free webinar. And that’s an hour long, me presenting for about 40 minutes and then people asking questions.
And we see a ton of excellent feedback from that because of that. Hey, I have my specific question. I want to ask it this way. And so that’s been really successful. And then from there, we go a little deeper and we do paid webinars, which range from like 29 for lifetime or plus subscribers. Up to 59. If we have a guest and we’ll cover topics as simple as the speed trace.
And I say simple, if you don’t know what that is, it’s, it’s a very foundational thing in data. And it’s only simple if you know what it is or know, know of it, or how to use Apex pro the Apex pro lights to assess your corner entry speed, right? That was a whole webinar just on corner entry phase, Apex pro lights, correlating the [01:00:00] two all the way down to a race craft or more specific driving techniques.
I might not even be. Data related, but we see a demand for that or people talking about it within our, you know, online communities and stuff. So, yeah, that’s the process we have. We have a couple of different ways to interact with our education. And before too long, you’ll start seeing a more formalized like online course that will kind of give you a certification for learning it and quiz you on different aspects.
So you kind of retain it. And there’s some stuff in the app as well that can teach you. And there’s a little question mark, but if you tap it, it walks you through everything that’s happening in the app.
Crew Chief Eric: Phil, you mentioned on the other episode, you did something called data and donuts. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Phil Ingalls: That was actually, it was a spinoff of what Andrew had done. At their location in Birmingham, I sat down with him and then we had another instructor, Clifford Robertson, who is one of our Apex pro reps. When he can come and rep the product at our events, he’ll come and demo it for people, put it in people’s cars, help them interpret their data.
And so we got with Andrew because we wanted to [01:01:00] host. Uh, data and donuts at our garage club and sat down, I guess we spent what, an hour and a half on webinar, you and I and Clifford, and honestly, as a dealer and as a, as an end user, I learned so much about it in, like he said, you could really dive in deep and become an expert in this device.
In an hour, an hour and a half, it doesn’t take weeks of learning different points to be able to understand it. And then you can pass that information on. We did that. We helped people learn, like he said, the speed trace. And then also as a provider for HPDs and, and a dealer, I can take this device and put it in somebody’s car, hook them up on their phone, let them run one session, come back in, spend 10 minutes with them sitting down, and then And showing them a couple things and they disappear and play with it for half a day and they buy it because it’s that user Friendly and then if they’ve got a buddy that has it the social aspect of the apex pros You can share your session data between other people that have the [01:02:00] device and have the have the app to compare data so you can overlay your buddy’s lap over yours or vice versa.
I can send data to Andrew and he can look at it and say, Hey, you know, you suck right here. So, which is pretty much what he’d say everywhere. I think, for me anyway, I’m still learning, but, uh, it’s such a, to me, it’s such a, a, a simple. Intuitive system for people to put in their car and, and learn how to drive faster that until they, until they put their hands on it and use it, they don’t realize, wow, this is, this is great.
And so, like I said, if we put one in a person’s car, 90 percent of the time, they’re going to buy it. And it’s just. They kind of sell themselves because once they played with it, they’re like, man, this is awesome. And, and I have got real world stories of people showing up, putting an apex pro and they’re familiar with the track.
You put an apex pro in their car in the morning by lunchtime, they’re two seconds faster just from. watching the lights or looking at a little bit of session data afterwards and realizing, [01:03:00] Oh, I’m leaving, I’m leaving speed on the table in this corner. And it’s that easy to use and to help yourself improve.
So it’s a great, it’s a great system.
Andrew Rains: I was really honored when you, when you did the data and donuts of them, we had, we had these, uh, winter, uh, you know, gatherings that we started doing in the off season last year. Before COVID hit, obviously, and had a bunch of people in the office. I bought coffee and donuts for everybody.
And we just talked about, you know, kind of did a focused on our local tracks, you know, our home tracks in our area and had 15, 20 people. And they all shared their data and we talked about it, what it meant. And I, I started to learn the power of the community aspect of data where you hear somebody else.
Say what they see and then someone else sees it and they go, well, I see this, right. And you all start talking about, and then you end up in this kind of subjective conversation. That’s more kind of big picture. And then you kind of go back to the data and you’re like, but that says that that’s not necessarily right.
The way we’ve all been doing it. And so I had a bunch of people who drive Barbara motorsports park a lot in here. That I know drive it a certain way. They [01:04:00] turn in too late in a lot of places, right? Way too late because they’ve been taught the traditional HPD safer late turn in to the point where they’re adding more steering angle and it’s probably not safer, but we debunked a lot of those myths, not by me saying, Hey, you’re turning into late and you’re slow.
But by saying, tell me what you see, uh, and here’s a faster driver and here’s a slower driver. And so that, that became really powerful. And so a lot of the tools that we have in the app, uh, you know, you can airdrop data to people. And that has really been very popular. And then our crew view features where you can see other users on track.
So you can hop on there and see like a map view and see if someone else is driving today. Uh, and then you can also submit your records to compete against other Apex Pro users to see where your lap times, uh, stack up with other people. And that all is, is we’ve been working on that in the off season to, to improve it.
Um, but I just want to say quickly, Eric, as well to, to folks who are using another system, that’s more detailed, a little more like a Excel spreadsheet kind of vibe, just so you know who I’m addressing, there’s a lot [01:05:00] of power there. There’s an enormous amount of power there. And if you love making math channels.
And you get a lot of benefit out of that. That’s value to you. That’s very high value. If you’re tiptoeing through that software and every time you get into it, you’re like, Oh man, I forgot how to navigate this stuff, or like, this is such a pain that I can’t get laps displayed. Apex pro is an extremely good alternative for you.
You’re going to get to that point and get to where the data is in front of you in an immense, smaller amount of time. And then you’re really going to be starting to think about. The actual driving aspect. So I kind of gauge my success as like a salesman for the product and a marketer is like, how many conversations do I have that are about driving versus tech support?
And it usually skews more towards driving, right? It was, it was more tech support early and we’re still developing stuff. And as the UI gets better, that gets smaller, but the amount of driving conversations, the amount of emails I get with just like a screenshot or a data session that says, what do you think about this or how did this go?
I post on our, our Facebook group. What about this? I think that’s a good [01:06:00] indicator of that’s where we want to get with data. Cause like, like we said at the beginning, we’re trying to break the barrier down to being kind of a scary thing and just, yeah, there’s some complexity and there’s some detail there, but anybody can do it.
Anybody can learn it. If you can drive your car on track, that’s a lot harder than learning data. Uh, and that’s, that’s what we’re trying to promote.
Crew Chief Eric: Now that we’ve talked about education, there’s still one more big question on the table, but we’re going to save that until after this next one, which is many of the telemetry systems are often touted as multi discipline and plenty of us use our cars at the track, maybe at autocross.
Maybe there’s some of us that do rally cross, whatever, and your product and competing products claim that they can work in a multitude of different, you know, motorsports, uh, arenas, disciplines, et cetera. How does this work? Right. I get it from a track perspective, rally, cross, you know, anything that circuit base makes sense, but for a point to point, like an auto cross or, or a time distance rally or anything like that, how does that work?
And [01:07:00] more importantly, for our other listeners, does Apex pro work on a motorcycle or with go karts?
Andrew Rains: Yeah. Good questions. The, uh, certainly the, the, the feedback element works the best on the circuit. As far as giving it the most information to be the most useful for you. But if you’re looking for, uh, high quality lap times, high resolution data.
You know, better stuff that you can, much, much better information than you can capture from your smartphone in a point to point environment, autocross, hill climb, rally cross, something like that. It does work great. Custom track feature that we have. Um, in my opinion, it’s really easy to use. You basically set your start finish points that you actually take the device with you.
It uses the GPS, so it gets a more granular position from the actual device. And you carry it with you on your first walk. And you go stand by the start gate and the finish gate. Uh, you don’t have to walk the whole course. Uh, same for any other point to point course or a custom circuit course. Um, you can also do it just like driving in your car.
You can set the start gate, just like drive up to the start, finish, and tap. You know, set start point. [01:08:00] The data is a little, you know, I don’t want to say different in autocross, what you value from the data is slightly different than what you value from when you value on a road course. Distance is really important in autocross.
Like how much distance did I travel? And so there’s all those tools to access in the app. If you want to see things based on like how much distance did I travel on this lap versus this lap? Because that a lot of times indicates autocross. And usually towards the end of the run as well, you’re going to get some utility out of the lights.
Particularly if you do multiple runs without turning. So the, the model itself, I should say that only when you power off the unit with the button on the side of the unit is what resets the model. If you hit start and stop on your session, as long as you keep the power on, on the unit, that display model, the underlying Apex pro algorithm is going to keep building on itself, keep adapting.
So that’s, that’s going to be helpful. And carts and motorcycles, the GPS based data works great on a motorcycle. You’re not going to get the same real time grip related feedback on a motorcycle. Cause the dynamics are so different, you know, you’ve got two contact patches instead of four, that’s a [01:09:00] slightly different problem to solve.
Uh, and then on carts, in my experience, yeah, it works great on a cart. It’s just a little more violent of an environment, harder to fit your phone with you. So there are products that are more specifically designed for those areas. But if you already have an Apex pro. You’re primarily like an autocrosser or a track day or club racer, then yes, you can absolutely use them in those other environments.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And it’s not advised to mount the Apex Pro to the steering wheel on a go kart. Like we do everything on a go kart. So not, not a good idea. You’re going to get false data. It’s not
Andrew Rains: going to help you. Yeah. It’s going to look, the data is going to look kind of jumbly.
Crew Chief Eric: You know, the 900 pound gorilla, that final question about the Apex Pro, right?
The thing that’s now on everybody’s mind, they’re excited about this. They’re really psyched up. They want to try it out. What’s it cost?
Andrew Rains: Apex Pro is 549. So 549 bucks. The app, the majority of the features are free. So what I suggest that people do, if you’re in the market for this type of product, you can shop around and find some stuff that’s within 100 either way.
But I would definitely recommend downloading the Apex pro app for free. There’s sample data [01:10:00] in there. You can get your friends to send you data. There’s no restriction on how much data you can have from your friends on your phone. Hop on the Apex pro users group requests, you know, that people send you some data, reach out to us.
I have data from like every track in North America that I’d be happy to share with you. Apex at apex track coach. com. And watch our webinars. That’s the best way to shop for an Apex pro is to get involved with the community and see how people interact with the product. Take on one of our webinars before you invest in the product itself.
Um, and then the units 549. And then if you want to unlock more features in the app. We have like a yearly membership. It’s a hundred dollars a year that unlocks all this additional functionality. And there’s all, it’s constantly evolving. So we’ve got a whole slate of stuff coming for this track season for that.
And there’s also a monthly option for that as well. Um, that’s nine, nine, nine, nine.
Phil Ingalls: That’s the lap timer plus, correct?
Andrew Rains: Lap timer plus.
Phil Ingalls: And that’s what also allows you to render the video overlay from your phone video. from the unit overlaid on your video, [01:11:00] literally while you’re sitting right there at the track, and then you can edit that and send a portion to somebody and say, Hey, how did I go through this corner?
How did it look? And they can see your data and your video all at one time. And I mean, it’s, it happens within minutes, which is one of the things that I love is you don’t have to go home and plug into track attack or something else. And, and, you know, do all this combining of data and video and information.
It’s just, it’s right there. So that’s one of the features. That’s why I’m a Laptime Plus subscriber.
Andrew Rains: And it unlocks additional functionality too. You know, you get predictive lap timing on the phone screen, a whole bunch of new data channels, try to release like a custom channel every couple of months, um, you get some extra functionality with the OBD2 device, the gear position calculator.
Um, you can do sector times and see theoretical best lap times. You can do all sorts of different stuff. GPS grade is one of my favorite.
Phil Ingalls: The theoretical best lap time by the sectors is actually very helpful because you can look at, you know, it takes all your best sectors [01:12:00] over the course of your day or your session and plugs them in together and says, okay, so if Bill ran a one 26.
Whatever it Roebling his best time now instead of one 26, 70 is one 26 Oh three or something. So I know pretty quickly that, okay, I’m leaving half a second on the table. So just another great feature.
Andrew Rains: Yeah. And that’s a, that’s something that if you’re using data now, you’re probably familiar with, or if you’re coming from iRacing, you’re probably familiar with, and that’s, you can really get granular with sectors.
So Laptimer plus is designed for people that want easy video rendering overlay. Predictive lap time displayed on their phone, or they want more advanced data features. So that’s who that’s for, but you can get a lot of utility out of the app without subscribing. So the, the, what I advise people to do is once you do your research, buy the hardware, use that, get to know the app, decide eventually, if you want to upgrade to like an OBD2 device, we sell a phone mount to display your phone.
And then. What features does lifetime or plus hold that I think that I can leverage and use that, that I want and try it out for a month and then, and then buy the annual to [01:13:00] get the discount, right? Cause it’s, it’s 20, 30 bucks less to buy the annual.
Crew Chief Eric: So as Phil, you know, very eloquently pointed out at the top of our conversation, the number one mod.
is always seat time for any driver. It’s all about experience. It’s all about being on track. To your point earlier, Andrew, it’s about that muscle memory, you know, and using the software over and over again and getting acclimated to it. So you don’t forget things. But at the end of the day, all of these telemetry systems don’t do the work for you as a driver, right?
They’re a guide and we don’t want to falsely get anyone’s hopes up. So what kind of Results should people expect to see from a tool like apex pro, will they go slower at first because they have to build faith in the system or are the results really immediate so long as they follow the given recommendations of the system?
Andrew Rains: You know, I don’t want to say that if you buy this product, you will go faster because I don’t think that’s the case for everybody. I think it’s, I think it strongly increases the likelihood that you will. Whether that be just from an in [01:14:00] car reminder or something that you notice on the display or from you learning in the data, what it does do and what we try to focus on as a company, kind of like we talked about at the top, we’re trying to make everyone an Apex pro.
And what that means is not that you can set the fastest lap time because lap time is kind of a roving metric. It’s not really a good indicator of proper driving performance. We want you to have proper driving technique and exhibit. Good driving technique across the board. And that’s really what we want to do.
So I think if you get plugged into the Apex pro community and you buy an Apex pro and you start to learn how to use the data, you can expect your driving technique to improve if you are willing to put in the work, the consequence of that is always better lap times, driving technique, and sometimes you’re right.
You make it, you make a point, Eric, sometimes. And I do this when I’m coaching people personally say, Hey, can you do this my way right for now, like, just, just do it the way that I’m asking you to, and that might be slower, but we’re building a foundation and data is kind of going to do the same thing. It might cause you to take some pause to [01:15:00] learn, but it’s going to open up a world of improvement that you didn’t know it was there.
So I would say it’s pretty common to hear. Testimonies from customers like Phil saying, Hey, I looked at the data. I heard you say something about this corner on this track. I started to recognize that I’m over slowing in this corner because now I’m using the data and I can see that and I’ve tracked my improvement and now I’m going a second faster just like that.
I’ve certainly had people call me and say, I’m 10 seconds faster because I’m using your stuff now, right? That’s like the embellished. Yeah,
Crew Chief Eric: your mileage
Phil Ingalls: may vary, right? Yeah,
Andrew Rains: exactly.
Phil Ingalls: Your mileage will definitely vary, but I know just from personal experience, and I really haven’t done a whole lot of modifications to my car other than adding a hardtop.
From the first time I put an Apex Pro in it, and this is just road Atlanta, to the last time I rode or drove road Atlanta, was from a minute 57 to a minute 48. And that’s 9 seconds in a 112 horsepower car. That’s a lot of improvement. It’s and it is seat time too. It’s just learning. I mean, I’ve [01:16:00] picked his brain about red Atlanta countless times because he’s a great asset to have, and as a dealer, I have extra extra access, but it’s mainly sitting there and going through the data in the device and using that as a tool to teach me, okay, I’m leaving time on the table here, here, and here.
That’s what it tells me. So, so then I trust the app. And when you actually turn in earlier at six and you stay in the throttle and, Oh, Hey, look, it sticks because the data has been telling you that it will. And then you go a second faster. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a very powerful tool in my opinion, at least for an entry level data device.
For new drivers or even experienced drivers. So it’s just a great product.
Andrew Rains: Yeah, I would say that’s, that’s a common experience. And if you certainly begin to peel back the layers of what data can offer you, you can expect there to be a lot of benefit, both in your understanding and in your speed. And that’s what we try.
That’s the. That’s the book that we try to be to people, the resource that we try to be.
Crew Chief Eric: All right. So Andrew, you [01:17:00] know, with every good software or hardware application, you can’t just stay on version one forever. So what does the future of Apex pro look like? Is there a version two coming? And if so, what’s involved?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, excellent question. Uh, so, so there is, like you said, especially in the technology space, you’re constantly trying to improve the product because every, it seems like every day You learn about something new that comes out, some new sensor or, you know, hardware component or programming style or something that can be, you know, used to your benefit that can improve the product.
And so you can do some firmware updates and some software updates. Obviously in our world, we have. Hardware and an app. So we can kind of augment, you know, the user experience with it, with software updates, and when it comes down to it, we released the first generation Apex pro device in 2017, and it’s now 2021 and technology has come a long way.
So we can now get similarly priced sensors like I’m using GPS’s. With more capability from what we were using four years ago. So yeah, Apex Pro Gen 2 is on the [01:18:00] docket for spring 2021. So in May of 2021, you’ll probably see us announcing the release of this new device, which is really exciting.
Crew Chief Eric: So what are some of the expectations for somebody that’s going to be picking up a Gen 2 versus a Gen 1?
Other than the IMU and GPS changes, is there anything that’s coming? Yeah,
Andrew Rains: it’s, uh, it’s fundamentally different, uh, and, and better. I should say it’s very much the same ethos. And as far as how the product functions, the user. We’ll have a very similar experience as far as connecting to it with Bluetooth, using their phone as kind of the remote control and the data review tool, but the actual Apex Pro hardware is going to be totally different.
It’s a brand new circuit board, totally redesigned, but we’re using a different battery using the new GPS and a bigger GPS antenna using a newer version of the same, uh, nine axis IMU. But the big thing is that we, um, at Apex Pro, and not a lot of people know this, but outside of motorsports, when we first designed Apex Pro, we How to do this connected technology thing where we’re using Bluetooth to communicate with hardware.
And since then, we’ve kind of [01:19:00] expanded on that capability and we have. Another business under our roof that’s been developing products for other industries, for other customers, for other niches. So we’ve done industrial products. We’ve done a yacht IOT product, which is super, super cool. Like retrofitting older boats with ballast sensors and GPS and streaming it all through a wifi hub to your phone.
So you can see a bunch of information, indoor positioning systems for like. Big overhead cranes and manufacturing facilities, done some athletic stuff with sensors on golf clubs and human athletes and stuff like that. So long story short, we’ve developed a lot of products since we originally launched Apex Pro.
So just kind of the natural evolution into the second gen Apex Pro device. We’re coming at it with a lot more competency and a lot more refinement. So now I feel really confident that this device is just going to come out of the gate and be perfect. Better in every way, more reliable, better battery life, better sensors, better quality data to the end user.
Ultimately, uh, we actually, we ended up improving the Apex pro coaching model, which is what displays on the LEDs. So previously, if you’re an [01:20:00] Apex pro user, you’re familiar, the green lights. are good. Red lights mean there’s more potential or there’s more performance available. And, um, that’s true from the braking zone to the trackout point.
But on the straightaways, essentially the device is expecting you to accelerate at your hardest acceleration longitudinally. And that’s what the red lights are showing you. So you go down a straightaway at all these red lights start to appear even when you’re at wide open throttle. But we’ve basically through collection of data.
Um, and then through just some seat time in the race car, testing it and validating some changes to the model. Now, if you get your optimal exit out of the corner, you’re at wide open throttle. Soon, you’re going to see the same thing down the straightaways that you see in the corner. Right. Even though I’m not accelerating at my peak acceleration, I’m doing the best that I can right now, given my gear ratios and my horsepower and.
That’s really exciting for me because I think it’s a more intuitive product for our customers.
Crew Chief Eric: And what does that mean for existing customers? Is the software still going to be backwards compatible? When does the Gen 1 product go, you know, EOL or end of life? You know, is there going [01:21:00] to be an Apex Pro 1 versus Apex Pro 2 app where they’ll be fundamentally different?
Or is there, you know, You know, how is that all going to work?
Andrew Rains: Yeah. Great question. So the, the app will be compatible with Apex Pro Gen 1 and Gen 2 devices. There’ll be no changes there. There will be a big app update coming at the same time Gen 2 comes out to take advantage of a lot of the new features from Gen 2, but as a Gen 1 customer, if you, if you’re not upgrading, or maybe you bought one more recently, you’re still going to reap the benefits of us now selling a new hardware device.
So you’re going to get. Um, a reimagined interface. You know, we’ve just had a lot of experience watching people use the app and improving the UI UX element of our, uh, our business, uh, and really becoming better internally at understanding how to develop a UI that, that works. And then there’s a lot of new features baked into that software, obviously, because.
Now we have more capability coming from the Gen 2 unit. So really no changes for Gen 1 users other than you’re going to have a new interface to adjust to. But our social platform, which we call CrewView is getting enhanced dramatically. [01:22:00] So as a new user, now you’ll have to, you’ll notice, even if you already have an account with us on our app, you’re going to create a new account because we actually changed our whole.
Backend, our whole server situation. We were using Apple’s kind of embedded server, the iCloud tools that they provide you. And now we have our own server and our own network that we’re managing all that on, which to the end user, why is that important? It’s important because it’s going to let us do more for you with the data that we get from your submitted sessions.
It’s going to allow us to, um, just offer you more pointed information to be a lot better, essentially as a business. So you’re going to create a new account when you log in and now you’re going to be able to submit your data. And compete with people just like we have now, you can see the top 10 fastest drivers at every track, but now it’s going to be separated by tire.
So we’re going to have a category for slicks, a category for your R compound track tires, uh, and then category for street tires. Now you’re kind of in a little more of a level playing field, right? You could still have a Miata and a GT3 on slicks and not be that close. We’re at least kind of narrowing it down because we’ve noticed [01:23:00] that’s a huge part of what our.
Customers want is they want to see how fast my friends are. Am I beating my friends? How fast did my buddies go this weekend? Are my friends on track this weekend? And we’re trying to help people answer those types of questions.
Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. So, you know, for all of us, technophiles out there, we always want the latest and greatest thing.
So I’m going to assume in the future, there’ll probably be some app changes where it’ll say, you know, gen two only or something like that. Features will be grayed out, but you know, we always want the newest and shiniest objects. So is there some sort of buyback trade in or promotional program going on for gen one customers that want to have the newest toy and the hottest thing on the market right now?
Andrew Rains: Yeah, there is. So when we roll out the product and you, you might’ve already heard this, but if you subscribe to our in app purchase, which we, uh, our in app subscription is called Laptimer Plus, which we talked about, you know, already, we are offering a 120 discount. Basically gives you a free year of the subscription plus an extra 20 off.
Um, because the subscription is [01:24:00] 99 a year. So you have to reach out to us. There’s a form on our website. You can go and fill out and that’s going to, uh, submit that information to us. We’ll reach back out to you and we’ll hook you up with the new gen two apex pro. So yeah, yeah. Great question.
Crew Chief Eric: Very cool.
Well, thank you for that update. And I’m sure a lot of folks are going to be chomping at the bit to get that gen two product and see what it’s all about. There’ll probably be, you know, 57 different YouTube unboxing videos as soon as it hits somebody’s doorstep. So looking forward to that and, you know, keep up the good work.
Andrew Rains: Awesome. I really appreciate it. The last thing I’ll include is we’ve had a lot of customers ask for live streaming of data. Uh, and because we require having the cell phone in the car. We can do that via cellular. So look for more information with gen two only about telemetry streamed from the device.
Crew Chief Eric: So as we wrap things up here, Andrew, are there any shout outs, anybody you want to call out to while you still have the airwaves at your attention?
Andrew Rains: Well, thanks for Phil for, uh, for having me, uh, for inviting me on the show. And, and thanks, uh, uh, Eric,
Phil Ingalls: that was Eric that came up with it after we did our max speed podcast. [01:25:00] So.
Andrew Rains: Well, no, I, I mean, I, obviously I’m not the only person at Apex pro. I’m the only person that people are going to see on social media, but, uh, I have a team here, uh, multiple business partners, one who’s a lot smarter than I am with.
Accounting and numbers and math and was a worked on wall street for a while. And another, who’s a mechanical engineering PhD. Uh, we now have a full time electrical engineer who works on Apex and other projects. We have one of our engineers is really Bluetooth specialist. He knows everything about, about BLE.
We’re working on some other industry products to help them solve Bluetooth related issues. We’ve got a really cool, uh, network of people that operate out of our building and, uh, I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it without them. So you might see my face publicly, but there’s a lot that happens behind the scenes to make it all happen.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, again, congratulations on everything you guys have been doing. I mean, the progress looks awesome. I mean, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the product itself. So I’m looking forward to seeing where things go from here. So, you know, keep us apprised of what comes next. [01:26:00] But I want to tell all of our listeners out there, if you’ve enjoyed this episode and you want to learn more about Apex pro, remember to visit apextrackcoach.
com or look for Andrew smiling face on Facebook and Instagram at official apex pro. And also be sure to check out their computer base or CBT training at Apex track coach. com forward slash education. That way you can get up to speed on Apex pro as quickly as possible. The one thing I do want to do before we close out here, gentlemen, is remind everybody that’s in the room.
listening to this particular episode that there is a give and take with any of these digital systems and that they do not understand you or your vehicle. There are physical limits that need to be reviewed when you’re using a system like this, this one, or one like this. So always use your better judgment.
When attempting to push for better performance, better lap times, whatever it is that you’re reaching for, make sure that your vehicle is [01:27:00] mechanically capable and that your awareness is at its optimal, right? It’s about you and the car at the end of the day, if you’re looking to push and improve. So don’t take unnecessary risks.
Especially at driver’s education events like max speed events where timing is frowned upon. Remember that folks check track schedules for open days or test and tune events so that you can maximize your training experience. with a tool like Apex Pro. And the last thing I’ll leave everybody with is to never stop learning.
This is a great tool to be able to expand your driver knowledge, your ability, your techniques, all of that. So I can’t thank you guys enough, Andrew, for coming on the show, Phil, for being my guest host this week. You guys, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been awesome.
Andrew Rains: Thanks, Eric. Very well put.
I appreciate it. Thank you, Eric.
Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on [01:28:00] www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
org. We’d love to hear from you.
Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.
For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com. [01:29:00] patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports and remember without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.
Highlights
Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.
- 00:00 Introduction to Break Fix Podcast
- 01:12 The Birth of Apex Pro
- 02:40 Developing Apex Pro: From Concept to Market
- 05:33 Apex Pro vs. Competitors
- 08:35 User Experience and Benefits
- 15:09 Understanding Apex Pro’s Technology
- 37:17 GPS and Data Accuracy in Motorsports
- 43:42 Bluetooth Connectivity and OBD2 Integration
- 43:55 Minimum Phone Specifications for Apex Pro
- 44:06 Why Apex Pro Focuses on iOS
- 45:15 Challenges with Android Development
- 46:43 Cooling Concerns for Apple Devices
- 49:39 Apex Pro’s Real-Time Feedback Without a Phone
- 51:57 Data Analysis and Software Options
- 57:15 Educational Resources and Webinars
- 01:00:31 Community Engagement and Data Sharing
- 01:06:17 Multi-Discipline Use and Compatibility
- 01:09:41 Pricing and Subscription Options
- 01:13:23 Expected Results and Driving Improvement
- 01:16:58 Future of Apex Pro: Gen 2
- 01:24:42 Final Thoughts and Shout Outs
Learn More
Guest Co-Host: Phil Ingalls
In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host. | | |
Interested in purchasing an Apex Pro or getting more info?
Reach out to Phil Ingalls an authorized Apex Pro Dealer (of MaxSpeed Track Days) to learn more!
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