I discovered an app on the iPhone App Store this week that I'm shocked is not more well-known. Maybe it is, but some quick googling doesn't bring up much. It's called RC Timing, and is essentially a personal lap timing tool. My local track doesn't leave their timing system on all the time, so I've been looking off and on for a few weeks now for a solution to measure my progress with my car. If I'm honest, I'm still pretty shocked at just how well it works.

So here's how it works. You need to position the iPhone camera above the track in such a way that the entire width of the track is visible in frame. This shouldn't be an issue in most driver stands, and something like a GorillaPod works great for holding the phone in place.

Within the app, you first setup a driver by providing your name and vehicle description. You then setup a vehicle by telling the app what color your car is by positioning it in frame and tapping on the primary vehicle color. At this time you can tweak the tolerance for when the color is registered and the trigger value for how much of the color must be visible to trigger a lap. This might take just a tiny bit of experimenting, but I got mine working on the second attempt.

That's pretty much it. You then start a Practice or Race session. I'll speak to practice, as that's all I've used so far. When you pass the camera the first time, it announces, "<Name>, start". Next time through it announces your lap time. If you set a fastest lap, it announces that it was a fastest lap before providing the time. The audio can be output to the iPhone speakers or directed to a external bluetooth speaker or headset.

I was honestly pretty skeptical, but it worked exactly as it is described. The idea is pretty ingenious, but I really didn't think there was any way it would work as well and as reliably as it did. There were even three other cars on the track with me this evening and not once did it trigger a false positive. It did fail to register maybe 2-3 laps out of probably more than 100 completed, but that is totally acceptable for what it is.

Just super-excited about this app and had to share. If you have an iPhone, do yourself a favor and give it a try. You can configure one car and one track (with a minimum lap time) for free with ads. There are two in-app purchases, one for $3.99 that lets you track up to 10 cars and one for 0.99 that lets you add unlimited tracks. Throw the dev some money if you like it!