Issues with GPS data from Gobandit Race camera

[salva]

Hi, just bought RR and love it, I am using it with my camera a Gobandit Race with GPS and accelerometer, the camera records GPS embedded on the video and seems that RR has issues decoding the GPS data, most of it is ok but some times some garbage appears that causes the software to stop updating the data on screen, or jump values, etc. This is a sample of the garbage data on the RR_Data:

$GPRMC,093846.000,A,3704.0235,N,00323.1497,W,23.14,271.17,130415,,,A*45
$GPGGA,093846.200,3704.0235,N,00323.1513,W,1,09,1.0,2792.1,M,48.9,M,,0000*7E
$GPRMC,093846.200,A,3704.0235,N,00323.1513,W,22.79,268.89,130415,,,A*4F
$GPGGA,093846.400,3704.0235,N,00323.1528,W,1,09,1.0,2791.9,M,48.9,M,,0000*7B
$GPRMC,093846.400,A,3704.0235,N,00323.1528,W,22.33,267.61,130415,,,A*46
$GPRMC,093846.600,A,3704.0234,N,00323.1543,W,21.68,266.06,130415,,,A*45
$GPGGA,093846.800,3704.0233,N,00323.1558,W,1,09,1.0,2791.6,M,48.9,M,,00 !ÿÿÿÃ*Ã¥’Â�aÀˆ,)kJ^–TI=«ÇIÃ�‹[,Jÿ*$–Ñ\“Õ»KsæŒÃ™Ã�°£Â�Ã�¾â³|!÷ÖÚ™*…Œq®`ËÇÃ*Tý1Â�ˆ†‹Ã‚ÃŒOõçP–Ã’x±$“°§yð*½LŒZ‚/¢3(“âj•Ã�…ÕÔflÃ*•1e™ÃµE(vLÃ�ÓFK[¦hz
$GPGGA,093847.000,3704.0232,N,00323.1572,W,1,09,1.0,2791.5,M,48.9,M,,0000*7A
$GPRMC,093847.000,A,3704.0232,N,00323.1572,W,20.51,263.55,130415,,,A*4E
$GPGGA,093847.200,3704.0231,N,00323.1585,W,1,09,1.0,2791.3,M,48.9,M,,0000*75
$GPRMC,093847.200,A,3704.0231,N,00323.1585,W,19.89,262.65,130415,,,A*4A
$GPGGA,093847.400,3704.0230,N,00323.1598,W,1,09,1.0,2791.2,M,48.9,M,,0000*7F

I can send a sample video file to test, the camera is working fine with the camera provided software, so it mast be some sort of incompatibility between RR and Go Bandit.

Thanks for your help.

[Weston@HPTuners]

Looks like a few samples are missed there... The junk data at the end of that GGA line is most likely being ignored by RaceRender, but its presence is indicative of some issue occurring when extracting the data around that time. Typically, a file like this should have an RMC sentence paired with a GGA sentence for each timestamp. There's a missing GGA for 093846.600, then a missing RMC for 093846.800, so that could likely cause a momentary display pause or glitch around that time.

Is there any data export functionality in the GoBandit software, such as to CSV, NMEA, GPX, or Text? When available, that's usually the most reliable method for getting data out of a system for RaceRender to use. When RaceRender itself handles extracting the embedded NMEA data from within the video file, that's a universal approach that works well for most GPS-enabled cameras with this type of data, but could have issues with less-common formatting or data layouts that some cameras or brands might use.

[salva]

Is there any data export functionality in the GoBandit software, such as to CSV, NMEA, GPX, or Text?

Nope, that's the main issue ... The camera, with its onwn software, seems to take and render the GPS information well, that is why I believe is a Race Render issue.

This camera has been very popular in Europe and there are a great number of them in the market, is there any chance that I sent you a video sample so that you can check the issue and see if it can be fixed ?

[Weston@HPTuners]

Nope, that's the main issue ... The camera, with its onwn software, seems to take and render the GPS information well, that is why I believe is a Race Render issue.

This camera has been very popular in Europe and there are a great number of them in the market, is there any chance that I sent you a video sample so that you can check the issue and see if it can be fixed ?

Yes, if you can send either a video download link, or attach a small sample video, to Info@RaceRender.com, I'll take a look at what's in the file and see if we can get RaceRender to better extract GPS data from this camera...

[salva]

OK, will do, I will send the email with link with video download.

[Weston@HPTuners]

Got it... Looks like RaceRender was able to extract the vast majority of data, but the camera was intermittently truncating some of the NMEA sentences, causing the next piece of data to appear to be part of the same line (which caused it to be ignored). I have a good start on some additional logic to accommodate that situation, so that improvement will be in the very next release of RaceRender (will be version 3.1.6 when it's ready)...

There still remains an issue where some samples are simply missing, though. The data just doesn't appear to be in the video file, so there's nothing we can do about that... I see the NMEA sample before and the sample after, but nothing discernible in the data between. So, there may be the occasional data glitch or lag for that reason, but my expectation is that much of that will not be noticeable to the user, due to the GPS being at 5Hz and RaceRender's interpolation.

[salva]

Thanks, that's very encouraging. Do you see the G sensor data as well in the stream ?

[Weston@HPTuners]

I do see some samples that appear to be in their own proprietary data format, but the meaning is unclear, so we're not able to use that. If it's accelerometer-based G-force, the readings would likely be all over the place anyway, being that accelerometers are heavily affected by tilt and you are moving the camera around in this case. RaceRender does automatically calculate the approximate G-forces based on the GPS data, so that may be of some use here, although that is more tuned for high speed vehicles.

[ruan.swrt]

Hi. I am still having issues with the GPS data from my GoBandit Race. Is there a specific way to import the video?

[Weston@HPTuners]

Hi. I am still having issues with the GPS data from my GoBandit Race. Is there a specific way to import the video?

When opening the video with RaceRender, it should detect the embedded NMEA data (ie GPS data) and offer to extract it and add that to the project. After you answer Yes to that, it will present you with the data overlay template menu, and then you should have both data and video displayed.

That's all that you normally need to do for most video files that have GPS data embedded within them in a compatible way. However, due to the apparent intermittent data truncation issue with this camera (as mentioned in one of my earlier posts), it's still possible that you may get some odd results here. RaceRender will do some data checks and filtering to help mitigate those kinds of problem, but ultimately there are limited options when dealing with incomplete or corrupted data input.