Motor Sports Application For The iPhone

The iPhone finally goes on sale in Vermont this Thursday. Sure it’s a phone, but it’s also packed with other advanced tech features including an accelerometer which detects movement. The primary purpose of the onboard accelerometer is to turn the screen as you rotate the device. So if you are holding the iPhone upright the display is upright, turn it sideways and the screen immediately turns sideways giving you a widescreen view. Manufacturers of iPhone game applications or “apps” quickly saw the potential for this technology and built games like Super Monkey Ball whose action is controlled as you tilt your hands - similar to the Nintendo Wii.

Now Dynolicious has created an iPhone app for the motorsports crowd. The $12.99 Auto Performance Meter can measure and record:
•    0-60 mph acceleration
•    ¼ mile elapsed time
•    Lateral G’s
•    Horsepower
•    Downloadable timed run graphs
•    Downloadable skidpad graphs

It even stores a history of your runs, showing averages and trends. You can upgrade your car’s performance and then show before-and-after results giving you a depiction of the effectiveness of your efforts. They claim the device is very accurate, with samples taken as often as one hundred times per second. It is described as needing no setup, wires or additional hardware. Road and Track magazine calls it a “killer app for the amateur road-tester” whose color-coded graphs “practically leap off the device”.

I guess that’s one more good reason to get yourself an iPhone. I suspect I’m going to be seeing them mounted to the dashboards of many of my performance-minded friend’s vehicles this season.