Sleipnir Velocity is a timing system for RC Aircraft. It works by measuring the time it takes the aircraft to fly between two points and calculates the speed.
System highlights
- Quick and easy to set up at the field
- Immediate feedback of results using speaker
- No special hardware required on the model
- Built using ready available cheap hardware
- Videos are saved and can be reviewed
- Can time pretty much any aircraft from a small quad to a large plane or helicopter
- Do not need an operator, it’s completely automatic
- Very cheap for the accuracy it delivers
- Free, Open Source and available on github
Explain this to me!
Sleipnir Velocity works by filming the aircraft and uses motion capture to find the aircraft in the video. This is done on two cameras set apart by say 100M (configurable). By having the exact timing and knowing the exact distance Sleipnir can calculate the speed. The cool thing is that this is done in realtime and the speed is announced to you immediataly after posting a correct run. You will need a fairly fast computer to act as the base station doing the motion tracking and calculations.
The hardware needed for this is based around Raspberry Pie computers with cameras available for cheap. The accuracy is high, within a percent or so of the true speed.