Lotus Europa Community
Lotus Europa Forums => Technical Articles and DIY tools and tips => Topic started by: BDA on Monday,January 04, 2021, 08:00:43 PM
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Everybody knows about using a cell phone for GPS, speedo, streaming music, or even to make a phone call but I recently came up with some others. I was at a friend's house who had an bore scope and I thought that was pretty interesting so I bought a USB endoscope for my cell phone. The only difficulty was finding the app that produced the best resolution but I found a good free app and now I have a bore scope/endoscope that cost me about $20! Literarymadness came up with another use for the endoscope and that was to be able to read the numbers stamped on my flywheel. They are small and my eyes have a hard time reading them from even as close as I can get to it. Another use would be to inspect the inside of a frame.
I was watching some videos on using a leakdown tester on youtube and some of people used a microphone to amplify the sound of air leaking so I thought a microphone would be another good addition to my cell phone. I got the mic from Amazon for about $6 and found a free app that routes the sound to the cell speakers, provides graphical sound wave, and supposedly will record the sound (I haven't tried that yet). It is very sensitive such that I have to worry about reverb as well as how noisy it is in the garage (eg. the compressor must not be running!).
Can anybody come up with new uses for those tools or other tools you can use with a cell phone?
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Ages ago I called in to my usual cafe for coffee.
Outside was a truck with one of those platforms with a two man lift arrangement. They were kinda blocking the entrance and getting ready to start work on the electricity connection to the building. They'd apparently forgotten the instrument that sets the platform level.
I have a level app on my phone and offered that if it might help. Great, they said.
We calibrated the app, set it down on the platform and the guy pulled various hydraulic levers to get the platform level. There's probably heaps of health and safety legalities with using a passer by help do the job, but they seemed happy enough.
Nothing get's between me and my coffee.
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Idle thought.... how accurate is the angle measurement ?
It might make a cool camber gauge held against a straight edge & the rear wheels....
Brian
ps - since I've joined the 21st century with a smart phone I've got addicted to the novelty of having a pocket computer. So far I've written a couple of apps for my hobby of archery and even a prototype app for working out the results from the old string alignment method. For anyone else interested in that aspect, I'd strongly recommend B4A (Basic for Android) a free compiler which is far easier than the alternatives.
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With a wireless OBDII adapter ($15) and the Torque pro app ($5), you can make a gauge for any thing the ECU sees and data log too. I used it to set up a piggy back to pull timing under boost. It also gives codes and you can clear them but a regular scanner is faster for that.
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My iPhone 7 makes a great coaster for my tea.
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My iPhone 7 makes a great coaster for my tea.
Oh I like that one.... :)
(are they up to iphone #7 now ? )
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Wives' can use them to find out where you are....... :-\
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Wives' can use them to find out where you are....... :-\
Or let them ring till they go to voicemail when you call them, but complain if you don't answer before the second ring... :confused:
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From my experience, to really answer the question of "What can you do with a cell phone" - we need to ask your average 10 year old :FUNNY:
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From my experience, to really answer the question of "What can you do with a cell phone" - we need to ask your average 10 year old :FUNNY:
:)
oh so true. The same goes for anything with a remote control.....
Brian
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Idle thought.... how accurate is the angle measurement ?
It might make a cool camber gauge held against a straight edge & the rear wheels....
Don't know the accuracy though it's likely adequate for wheel alignment, if a tad awkward to use.
But really, those cheap digital angle gauges available these days have a magnetic base and everything.
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Yeah, that’s what I used for my camber gage I described earlier. Joe made it a sticky on the forum.
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My iPhone 7 makes a great coaster for my tea.
Oh I like that one.... :)
(are they up to iphone #7 now ? )
12 and counting!
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I'm reviving this thread because I recently became aware of a cool alignment tool that uses your phone.
Lately, I've been using the string method of alignment and putting the measurements into this web page (https://robrobinette.com/DIYAlignmentCalculator.htm). This seems to work pretty well but it is a bit clumsy. Using inches I can measure to about 1/32" but then every measurement needs to be converted to a decimal measurement. It's not a deal killer but a pain. I thought it would be cool to somehow streamline the process.
Then I found out about the Gyraline wheel alignment system. It comprises of a plastic jig to chuck your phone in and you download the app in which to enter your toe and camber measurements. The app does the rest. It measures front and rear toe, camber, caster, and Ackerman angle. At the moment, the app is for iPhones but there is an Android version that is currently in beta. The price is US$139.98 and you can get 10% off to register your email address.
I do have a hesitation though. In order to get the rear toe around the centerline of the car, it requires you to take an angle measurement on both sides of the car. The measurement should be taken on two opposing positions of the car that are "hard" points by which I mean will necessarily be the same angle to the centerline on both sides. The suggestion is to use a door glass or a frame member. I would hope that those angle measurements can be stored for later use since if you use a frame member, You'd likely have to take off a wheel and that would mess up your alignment. I think the rear part of the frame inside the rear wheel would work. I'd worry that measurements at the window might not given the "soft tooling" and manufacturing tolerances Lotus used.
If you're interested, you can get it or ask questions about it at https://gyraline.com/.
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Could you get a measurement from the wheel centre cap ?
Regardless of wheel toe in or out the centre cap should be neutral, a sort of pivot point for the wheel toe ?
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I think the (what I call the) angle at "hard points" is to give you the equivalent of the parallel strings required of Roginette's Alignment Calculator. In the case of the Gyraline tool, whatever angles you produce on both sides of the car are to fix the centerline. I don't know that but I can't imagine it meaning anything else. So I think those angles have to be taken from points that are known to be equidistant from the centerline? I further guess that it takes angles from both sides rather than from one side with the width of the car (because the tool only measures angles)... As I say, I'm guessing but I plan on asking them about it.
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Well, after watching the video on their website I've got to admit I have no idea how that's working. But as I am only slightly more technically advanced than a dinosaur, perhaps that's not surprising and I need an 8yr old to explain it for me....
I can see how camber and castor works but watching how the guy measured wheel alignment on his MR2, well, I'm stumped. If this is as accurate as they claim then there's some very clever maths and sensors at work and I'll admit I'd like to see the maths they've used.
As you know, I've also used the Robinette calculator and figured out the maths that allows for an offset string box, but that relies on knowing the front & rear track IIRC. I can't see from the Gyroline video how they get that number unless I missed them inputting the data further down the video. Also I'm not convinced that taking an angle from the window or body panel is good enough. Heck, I wouldn't trust 1960s Lotus to have the body symmetrical to within half an inch across the centreline !
Having said all that I've got to say that the accuracy claims are simply amazing. I've got a reasonably expensive digital level/angle finder but the 0.01deg they claim is pretty stunning for something that's measured using a cell phone. At that level I'd be wondering about the accuracy of the 3D printed carrier !
https://gyraline.com/pages/study1 (https://gyraline.com/pages/study1)
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I THINK I know what it's doing (at least in the simple cases). The front toe is done by defining a "reference" plane when you "measure the angle of the first wheel." You really aren't measuring anything, you're just defining the plane that the next wheel angle measurement is in reference to. So I think you get something very similar to what I get when using my Dunlop optical toe gauge. You just get the angle between the two front wheels.
The real problem is the thrust angle and the rear toe. The angles measured from some points on the car (in the Body Mode video here: https://gyraline.com/pages/how-to-videos) are used to define the centerline or center plane of the car. I think it has to assume each of the angles are the same with respect to the centerline. If the angles diverge toward the front of the car, it calculates the intersection toward the rear of the car and vice versa if the angles converge toward the front. If the angles are parallel to each other, then you have Robinette's situation. Apparently, it has the ability to programmatically define a reference plane. It should be able to deal with knowing where the centerline of the car is or that there is no defined centerline because the angles are parallel.
My concern, as I said before, is that I don't trust that any panel or windows on either side of the car to have the same orientation to the centerline because of the sloppy tolerances at Lotus. I haven't taken off a rear wheel but I think the frame is exposed enough to take a measurement for "Body Mode" there so I sent them a message asking if hose measurements can be stored and retrieved later. It would be VERY cumbersome to take those measurements, put the phone in the gyraline tray aside, put the wheels back on and then resettle the suspension to do the rest of the measurements every time you did a rear toe measurement. And since those "Body Mode" measurements don't change, it would be nice to do it once for every car and store them for future retrieval. So far I haven't heard back. I'll report back when I do.
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Everybody knows about using a cell phone for GPS, speedo, streaming music, or even to make a phone call but I recently came up with some others. I was at a friend's house who had an bore scope and I thought that was pretty interesting so I bought a USB endoscope for my cell phone. The only difficulty was finding the app that produced the best resolution but I found a good free app and now I have a bore scope/endoscope that cost me about $20! Literarymadness came up with another use for the endoscope and that was to be able to read the numbers stamped on my flywheel. They are small and my eyes have a hard time reading them from even as close as I can get to it. Another use would be to inspect the inside of a frame.
I was watching some videos on using a leakdown tester on youtube and some of people used a microphone to amplify the sound of air leaking so I thought a microphone would be another good addition to my cell phone. I got the mic from Amazon for about $6 and found a free app that routes the sound to the cell speakers, provides graphical sound wave, and supposedly will record the sound (I haven't tried that yet). It is very sensitive such that I have to worry about reverb as well as how noisy it is in the garage (eg. the compressor must not be running!).
Can anybody come up with new uses for those tools or other tools you can use with a cell phone?
Just bought this:
https://gyraline.com/
It works. Came up with the same toe settings in my garage that the specialist alignment shop set my car to. It works.
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I assume you checked out your rear toe. What did you use as your "reference" since the frame isn't accessible without taking the wheels off?
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I assume you checked out your rear toe. What did you use as your "reference" since the frame isn't accessible without taking the wheels off?
Just to test...I used the lip edge of the boot opening. It's parallel side to side; I measured the opening in 3 places and it's the same. (now, whether to the car frame or is centered in the body or not is a different story...probably not after all this time).
I'm thinking that this is a good quick check of the basic alignment of the car...but, putting it on a laser rack with someone who knows what to do and how to do it is still the best. But finding someone that can translate the inch measurement into the degree angles that most new racks give measurements in is a bit of a searching hassle.
But I'm ok with what the gyralign came up with. A lot easier than strings, jack stands, tape measures...and how my car rides down the road (take the hands off and it tracks straight, and friends who've followed me didn't mention that it was dog-tracking) is just fine at this point.
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Thanks for your comments about the Gyraline. I wasn't worried about it for a steel car - especially a "modern" one, but I was worried about getting a good reference angle on a 50 year old Lotus. I did think that maybe the crease under the 'B' pillar might be a good place to take that angle. I didn't think about the boot opening and having at least two choices makes getting one an easier decision.
Translating from inches to degrees can be done here (https://robrobinette.com/ConvertToeInchesToDegrees.htm)
And from degrees to inches can be done here (https://robrobinette.com/ConvertToeDegreesToInches.htm) if that helps.