RallySafe Streams Live Race Car Location, Status With PubNub

RallySafe is a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-race control safety, timing and tracking system that transmits hazard warnings via in-car units in competitive motor sports events. A small electronic module is embedded into a vehicle, and automatically transmits warnings and vehicle status data from unit to unit and Race Control in real time. This automatically generates hazard warnings in the event of an accident. Real-time race data is transferred between the vehicle and the iOS, Android, and web application. In addition to safety, RallySafe also provides two key benefit streams – fleet

, also streamed to the client application.

The Need for Real-time Speed

When it comes to vehicle safety, every millisecond counts. Race Control needs to be alerted of an accident as it happens, not five or ten seconds later. The device in the vehicles is a custom embedded system running a Kinetis processor, with onboard GPS, g-force sensors, radio, GSM and satellite communications. The device collects and transfers location data from the vehicle to the client application. If the g-force sensor is triggered in the case of an accident, that data needed to be streamed as quickly as possible.

Moving High Volumes of Race Data Fast

Data transfer in the RallySafe application goes through two different layers. The first part collects data from the embedded device in the vehicle and sends it to the RallySafe servers. The second part then takes the data from those servers and streams it to the client web or mobile app. The RallySafe development team originally built out a custom, open source real-time infrastructure to move the data from the servers collecting location, tracking, and timing data to the client application.

Our infrastructure became too cumbersome, and we knew we needed a distributed, real-time provider. We were using Azure and a small local service provider for hosting. Our main motivation was to reduce the traffic load on our web servers,

Simon Haines Status Awareness Systems, makers of RallySafe

The app was originally built on a model of query table-based updates. However, by the third live RallySafe event, the application outgrew its capacity and the ISP was overloaded, and as a result the entire system crashed. The development team needed a way to offload traffic onto a different system.

Picking PubNub

To increase both the speed and reliability of the RallySafe application, the development team needed a way to get the immense location data traffic load off of their main application servers. Instead of relying on query table-based updates, RallySafe moved to a model of streaming data updates between the servers and the client application. With PubNub Data Streams, they could do just that.

We have two gateways, one for GSM and one for satellite messages. PubNub is used on both, to forward on information to clients connected via our web or mobile apps. These both sit on Windows Azure, so all our PubNub traffic originates from there,

Jono Rogers also of Status Awareness Systems.

Speed and reliability were not the only factors that led the RallySafe team to go with PubNub. Ease of implementation was also key, especially because the architectural change came in the middle of racing season, and the dev team needed to get the new real-time infrastructure up and running as quickly as possible.

We got the system up and running very quickly. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend on implementation, especially in the middle of a racing season. We’re a small team, so it was all hands on deck. The PubNub API was really easy, and quite simple and painless to implement,

Haines

Building a Lighter Weight Data Streaming Infrastructure

It’s been really good for us that we’ve been able to greatly increase our processing capability. We also don’t have to deal with a constant stream of traffic hitting our servers. Those two things have been so valuable for us, Haines

With PubNub, RallySafe was able to significantly reduce the traffic load on their main application servers, particularly with the servers that look after the safety aspect of the race. Taking the load off the main servers that crunch the safety data, the RallySafe mobile and web applications are kept updating smoothly and seamlessly. In doing so, this insures that location, timing, and tracking data is delivered on time, all the time. Implementing and building PubNub into their internal infrastructure, RallySafe increased their server capacity, reducing the number of servers and necessary maintenance on those servers.