The goal of this project is to output acceleration data from LFS to an excel sheet. I need the acceleration data to import into a program called "Optimum Lap" to produce an autocross track I produced in LFS's track editor.

I don't really know how Insim works, but I have it setup in my cfg file. I know a little of VB6, Java and Python, but I'm not sure how to get started. How do I interface, for instance, Python with Insim?

Thanks in advance!!

http://pyinsim.codeplex.com/
http://pyinsim.codeplex.com/So ... l/latest#pyinsim/insim.py

As for the output to Excel I suggest you write your data into a CSV file. Excel can parse such files with almost no extra work involved and it is easy to read those files with other tools as well.

LFS has built-in function to export telemetry data (from singleplayer hotlaps) and there are some tools that read & display that.
I do not know what it takes for "Optimum Lap" compatbility but they can display graphs for speed, acceleration and much more:
http://www.lfs.net/?page=analysers

There is also this thing
http://code.google.com/p/lfs-raceonaut-logger/wiki/HowToUse (has no real documenation yet) which exports to text files and from those can make something like

Thanks guys! The Racenaut program is pretty interesting. I read that I can download it through SVN by after getting it there, and "save target as" the src folder, it wants to download an HTML file I think if I can get it to work, it would be the perfect solution for what I'm trying to do.

As for Optimum Lap, it's asking for an CSV file in the format of [distance], [speed], [lateral acceleration].

So I've gotten Outsim to work with Python by using the sample code provided by the author of the PyInsim library.

I'm currently extracting lateral acceleration data and speed data by using two functions getLatAccel(), and getSpeed() that I added to the pyinsim library. For the speed function, it is extracting the local variable self.Vel[1]. Is this the actual speed the car is travelling forwards, or is it "wheel spin" speed?

EDIT: I removed the functions, and am directly accessing the variables from the object via packet.Accel[0], etc. I found out that I was getting an actual vector for speed (was negative one direction, and positive the other), so what I did to get resultant component was by using Pythagorean's Theorem on all three components of velocity, Vel[0-2].

EDIT 2: Stuck on distance. Current delay in cfg is set to 1 (0.01s), so my original plan to calculate distance was to multiply my vel variable by 0.01s to get a distance travelled in that 0.01s interval and accumulate that to a "dist" variable. However, I am unable to accumulate this distance because all the variables are local to the function and get re-initialized every time a packet is sent. Any suggestions or ideas?

I got it to work! My obstacle now is working with Optimum Lap, which seems to love to drive our car at 0.1 km/h

My solution was to have program A print out: [time signature], [speed], [lat acceleration], and then get program B parse the data, calculating the distance by multiplying speed by the interval between the time signature on the current row by the time signature in the previous row, and then outputting a CSV file in the format [distance], [speed], [lat acceleration]. The track that is outputted by the Track Maker in OL looks awfully close to the line I ran on LFS.

Quote from GenesisX :

Thanks guys! The Racenaut program is pretty interesting. I read that I can download it through SVN by after getting it there, and "save target as" the src folder, it wants to download an HTML file

Yes, think that does not work. The page is not really for downloading like that. It is online code storage thing and meant to be used with programs such as http://tortoisesvn.net/

Cool that you got it work with your program
If you dont mind to share it (the picture and/or code) would be interessting to look at I think.

Quote from Gutholz :

Yes, think that does not work. The page is not really for downloading like that. It is online code storage thing and meant to be used with programs such as http://tortoisesvn.net/

Cool that you got it work with your program
If you dont mind to share it (the picture and/or code) would be interessting to look at I think.

Thank you!! Trust me, I really want to give back to the community who made it possible for me to get this to work. But at the moment, it's not very convenient for me to publically release the code; it's for the Formula SAE (Hybrid) team at my university.