Producing the product isn’t just about the physical cost of materials. There’s marketing cost, facility upkeep, employee pay, customer support, future development and everything else rolled into that $550.
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I love this as a DIY project. Worthy of a new topic.
As a commercial product, I share the sticker shock… but then again I have MyChrons that are 20+ years old still working. That’s not an easy feat when you consider how harsh the environment can be on a kart. Call it $25 a year and it’s a good deal.
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I can’t believe how poorly received this is by some of the people who have commented here. I’m excited.
“I want the best datalogger for my kart, not my body - I’ll get separate specialized equipment if I care enough about that, thank you”
As someone who has worked with TONS of drivers who get tired and refuse to admit it, and then bitch about how the “engine stopped running” or the “kart fell off” the prospect of overlaying the drivers biometric data to show fatigue over the course of a session is an absolute god send. Also, the cost of the separate specialized equipment to do this is more than a MyChron 5/6 anyhow (if you’re using a decent Garmin device), so incorporating this without the need to go buy all the shit is a great value add, wether you see it or not.
If people are actually honest about performance, its not just the equipment, it’s the driver as well. If you want to use the data as a random excuse generator, that’s fine, however I’d argue that getting a better understanding of, and addressing the human fitness side of it will yield greater performance improvements than agonizing over a 5 mm track width adjustment, a click of camber or 1psi of tire pressure over a 20 lap session.
I’m hoping we’ll be able to customize data fields and bring in more BLE sensors to display/record. I’ve done testing with CORE, and hDrop, and it would provide a fair amount of context to the stress drivers are under and how well prepared they are for the event.
Further, the native support for CAN without having to buy another module opens the stock units up to a far wider range of sensors with less additional cost.
What do I want to see in the future? A cloud data platform. We have bluetooth now. Auto upload to a cloud service after each session once connected to the owners cell phone would be excellent. Allow users to share data with other users or account types automatically. This would entirely eliminate the need for teams to have to lug around routers, set up networks and constantly make sure the devices are on to manually pull data from them. I’d make the cloud service a monthly/annual subscription as the maintenance of it would be ongoing. If it succeeds, they could feasibly lower the entry price of the hardware to funnel more users towards a recurring revenue model. I’m sure I’ve now offended half the people reading this post on a religious level.
Someone mentioned AI analysis, that’s not likely to happen for a long time given how in industries with larger markets this is still not really a thing that works. We’ll get there eventually, but baby steps.
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The MC5 was a big jump in price, and I understood the sticker shock. I wished AIM would produce a stripped down version that just did lap time, one temp, and RPM without any other bells and whistles. No download, no expansions, just a dumb dash. For 90% of recreational guys that’s all they’re after. They just want to know how fast they are/aren’t and make sure they’re not blowing their engine up.
On the other side, the MC5 was a better value than the MC4 for users who were really interested in the analysis side of things. An MC4 + GPS module was more expensive than an MC5. If you wanted to actually download any of that data you had to have a Data Key, (which had to be the most profitable product they ever sold) and if you wanted to add any more sensors it necessitated an eBox, which drove the price further and was a pain to mount. All required separate firmware which could randomly become problematic at the least opportune times.
The MC6 now improves the value proposition for the more intensive users, but doesn’t really fit the recreational market any more than it did in the MC5 generation.
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I just received my printer 
So they added heart rate, but no bluetooth for download?
It’s possible it only has Bluetooth LE (Low Energy). Which has approximately half the data transmission speed (1 mbps vs 2 mbps) but much lower latency, which is why it’s used for sensors like heart rate monitors. However it’s also possible it does have normal Bluetooth as well and they’re simply not communicating clearly because most people don’t know there’s even a difference.
This isn’t really an answer to Alfano’s offering, & my wild a$$ guess is the hold on price point might be partially owed to the comparison to the Alfano’s feature set. But perhaps making it easier/friendlier to work with analysis tools will prove more useful for the tent teams & such than tire sensors will. Redicing ancillary hardware for data transfer is a step up.
HR monitoring sounds interesting, but can’t say how useful that’ll actually be. If someone can’t already figure out by now that being fit benefits their racing (really, everything), then, well, I dunno. Will a HR monitor motivate them? Hard to say.
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This looks like an iPhone 4 made for karting.
That’s an interesting take. If that was truly the case though we’d see a lot more iPhones or pixels on steering wheels.
I’ve used an iPhone 5 as a datalogger and I can say with confidence that it’s effectively useless in karting because the GPS is so poor. In fact I think even the GPS in modern day phones is inferior to that of the likes of the Mychron, Alfano, RaceBox etc. Race Studio is quite a bit more powerful than the logging software I’ve used with iOS too.
You can get external hardware to augment the phone’s GPS of course (Ie race box) but it’s kinda cumbersome having separate pieces of hardware compared just having an all-in-one unit that’s in a weatherproof casing.
For people going the phone route, the race box seems to be best option as a way to get useful data. As long as you don’t need tog temps or RPM. Which most of us do, at that point the Mychron/Alfano makes the most sense by far.
Quoted for emphasis.
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Oh I don’t think the HRM is going to motivate any individual to get their fitness together, it’s going to be a real piece of hard data to tell your insufferable customer who’s living vicariously through their kid who doesn’t give a shit about driving that the issue isn’t the kart as their once in a generation talent is claiming it to be. 
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Why release it if youcant/wont answer the the two most important quistions Avilibility and price range.
End of January , 550 €
Because you want to announce it at PRI. Can’t blame them for it honestly.
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550 is a Sharp price compared to unipro and Alfano
550 + you need to add all the sensor… it’s gonna be in the ballpark of 750€ as the current one.
Not sure what we’ll do as a team , the latest 5s had tons of issue.
Unipro with extension, splitter, temp sensors was $700ish if I recall when I ditched my Mychrons last year.
The Digital Output is the most interesting thing to me. Can it be pulsed at rates to indicate different things? Will it be able to use information from the sensors to make decisions? And how extensive is the amount of logic that can be used to program it?
I put together an anti-trail braking kit for my son. Mainly to teach him he needed to brake earlier. Pedal and steering wheel sensors tied back into an arduino which fired out a PWM signal to a small amplifier that ran to a headphone. If the brake was pressed and the wheel was turned too much - BEEEEEEP! About the time I finished it, he had figured out how to get on the gas sooner. 
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