Video review of the Velocitek SpeedPuck posted to YouTube by Stern Scoop.
Posts Tagged ‘sc-1’
Velocitek SpeedPuck Video
Monday, February 16th, 2009Race Track Image from GPS Export
Monday, May 26th, 2008
Bill & John’s Race Track, (Uploaded by Bill Blevins)
John Landry and I took out the two 2.4 Meter sailboats and we both ran SC-1′s for the race and I compiled the data to make the image of the course. Very light winds and you can tell from the tracks in the image that wind shifts were frequent.
Sailing Practice Track on May 24, 2008
Sunday, May 25th, 2008
Sailing Practice Track on May 24, 2008, (Google Earth)
This is the track export from the Velocitek SC-1 and viewed with Google Earth. With no place to go, it seems like I just sailed around in circled. The winds were very puffy and shifty and I’d say constant at 10 knots with gusts over 20 on occasion. This export function is new to me and this is the first time I’ve used this feature. Once the device is used in a race, the computer automatically will divide the tracks into separate races and then it can export data on each race in HTML. It shows things like wind direction and speed over periods of time from “best 10 second run” to “best 500 meter run” based on average speed. Still playing with this one. Stay tuned.
Velocitek SC-1 and Mac OS X Leopard
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
I managed to get the Velocitek SC-1 working on my MacBook Pro running OS X version 10.5.2 after a whole lot of effort!
Parallels 3.0 running Windows XP wouldn’t work. I tried for several hours.
I did get the Windows OS to see the units via the USB ports using Parallels and the Velocitek Control Panel software did see each of them too but the firmware update only ran to about 85% before throwing an error. Many attempts either didn’t start because of an error or it only made it to 5% before quitting. Most didn’t even attempt to start without the error message popping up.
Here’s what worked.
Today I installed VMWare Fusion for OS X and reinstalled Windows XP.
Everything went smoothly until I got to the point of doing the firmware updates. The control panel software started throwing errors and that was if it could even get started (again)!
I tried and tried everything I could think of and here is what worked:
- Turn off the Velocitek Control Panel software
- Unplug the SC-1 from the computer
- Remove the batteries
- Put the batteries back in
- Plug the SC-1 back up to the computer
- Start the control panel software
- Run the firmware update
I did this twice with two units. Only in this specific order would the firmware upgrade work but I finally got it.
I was determined to make VMWare play nice with the SC-1′s and now I’m wondering if I just didn’t give Parallels enough trial and error effort.
Anyway… tonight, I used it to map my trip home from work (max speed was 32 knots).
Again though, when plugging in the unit, I had to remove the batteries, then put them back in before plugging in to the computer and starting the control panel software to download the track.
I’ll post again after the first use on the boat, possibly Saturday afternoon. I can’t wait!