Projects SHOWCASE
22 raspberrypi.org/magpi
>STEP-01
The device
A Raspberry Pi forms the heart of the telemetry
device. It’s packed with sensors and placed inside
the cockpit of the North American Eagle.>STEP-02
Azure cloud
The Raspberry Pi connects to Microsoft Azure Cloud
during the speed run. It runs Windows IoT Core and
uses software written in C# as a Universal Windows
Platform application.>STEP-03
Doing a run
Users can join in on the speed run and send
messages to the team, which are displayed during
the run. Telemetric data from the run is sent in real-
time back to the team on the sidelines.HIGH-SPEED
TELEMETRY
The more entertaining aspect
was the real-time interaction with
observers during the test run.
“People using [our mobile] apps
could also send goodwill messages
through the cloud and out to the
car, where they were shown on
an LCD display,” says Mark. The
messages were displayed in a
screen behind the driver.
Mark also placed a GoPro camera
behind the driver to record the
user messages on the screen. “The
driver could not see them while
driving,” he explains, “as that
would be a distraction, but the
camera could see the display and
the cockpit.”
Naturally, the team needed to
filter out inappropriate messages.
“The system is configured to
check a user message for profanity
by calling a third-party SaaS
service, Web Purify,” says Matt.
“If the message passes, then it’s
sent back into the system and
onto the device in the cockpit
for display.“The extra benefit [of the
camera] is that it also gave us a
front view out of the cockpit,”
continues Matt. This video was
used during a debug session
with Jessi Combs (one of the test
drivers) after her first run.
“We also invested in two drones
to record video, which gave us a
great field of view during runs, as
well as recording other aspects of
the event and its remote location,”
adds Matt.Technology matters
“The technology that makes this
real-time and scalable is Azure,”
Matt reveals.
“Azure provides a delivery
mechanism for global
communications in real time,”
he explains. “We can capture
the telemetry from the device,
messages for users, and analyse
or even replay data exactly
as it occurred.”
Matt tells us that North
American Eagle’s comprehensive(^22) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi