u/mrblahhh

Before I reinvent the wheel, is anyone working on a live data encoder similar to how smartycam and vbox work?

I do this with a race capture Livestream setup to sdcard now but I really want to downsize the junk in the trunk

I've only really got one hard requirement. It needs to be flexible enough to take any kind of Data logger like my race capture or whatever and I don't want to give up the beautification I've done in race capture

Sample that I realtime encode now

https://youtu.be/ZIuRHLWNyKI?is=F1sv7YpWT2DJrAMT

I needed the following

autosport grade power supply with reverse protection

onboard SD card adapter

1 canbus on board transceiver

nice to have: bridge to enable voltage dividers onboard for 5v sensor signals

no esp32 pin conflicts, i.e., grounded on boot, used for memory etc etc.

will be used for various projects, but first for my R53 mini shift led and bluetooth wideband integration. I do this with a jumbled mess of wires right now..

github here https://github.com/MrBlahhhh/esp32-autosport

I got wideband data logger integration working with my Android app last night.

The logging feature in the app should work on any r53

I think I can get these Bluetooth Bridges produced for 25 bucks plus shipping, And if anybody wanted to do it yourself, it's not too hard. It's just a voltage divider going into a esp32.

While I was at it, I also added some 3D displays. It reads the tune map off the ECU and then displays it in a 3D cube and it overlays your wideband reading either live or from a log from the app so that you can see if you're plus or minus over your AFR Target. I like to be between 12.5 at 2500 and 11.5 at 7500 but I did make it a parameter that can be changed this display only works on facelift ECU That's the only ECU I have the full formulas and damos for.

More details on my blog post here and if anyone wants to use the app, it's not fully live on the app store And I'm not sure I'll ever make it fully public on there, gotta join the test group to install the app.

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/tech/2026/07/24/r53-logger-play-store.html

I showed up thinking I would destroy my personal best of a 1:42 in a heavier 135i street car with a lot less Tire..

Ran Michelin s9m+ which give me -4 seconds at vir, but it didn't happen. 1:43 was my best and then my times were plus one second every session I never got to go flat out over the kink because the rear end grip just got worse and worse.

8 and kink were never comfortable to push hard, and both carousels were a challenge.

Still drifting on exit is a lot of fun. Even though it's not fast, it's definitely challenging and I'm exhausted when I get out of the car.

Another weekend testing my pyrometer hardware and Android app. It's it's really nice having it automatically capture heat cycles and heat spread and peak internal air temp for me, I did have to make a couple app updates to let me long click on cards to reassign sensors and wheels to corners so it was more aware of where everything was at when it exports the tire data log

https://youtu.be/ZIuRHLWNyKI?is=Kck0VARMqaPAfLF8

I have the module coding app ready for users, read the blog, know what your getting into this is not the same as clearing engine codes... Recommend doing a ncsexpert backup of your module BEFORE you play with settings in the app.

I put in some standard workflows, let me know if they need tweaking, I've tested this on 3 cars now, but all are late cars.

anyone can try it out, but writing changes is paywalled

more details on my blog along with instructions on how to join the testing group.

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/tech/2026/07/26/r53-coding.html

I tune minis quite a bit and got tired of dragging my laptop around so I built an app to read and flash tunes with a couple common fixes to get people by until they get a real tune. It calculates and fixes checksum on flash along with a few flash time options.

Kline datalogger and a code reader built in, that was my original intent and those parts do work on any r53. are there other features I should add?

I built this for myself and the flash/checksum fix only works with facelift ecus, everyone should upgrade to them anyway....

More details on my blog here

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/tech/2026/07/24/r53-logger-play-store.html

I do a fair bit of tuning on R53s and needed a more portable data logger. Couple days of sniffing ISTA and I've got a tool. Still working on the graph and I have to wire up my wideband ble injector. This is so much better than generic OBD2 data..

I only have facelift (silver case) ecu's on hand but that's all I use anyway and everyone should upgrade and immo delete while they are at it...

any features I should build into this? I did tiered polling so it does some channels fast and some like SFT/LFT slower to keep spark/rpm/injector faster

My first android app went live this week, it'll be a while before this one can be published as I tie up loose ends with my pyrometer

ViR north last weekend with my r53 mini

Unfortunately it might be the last because of attendance. Everybody wants to run full. I don't think they know what they're missing..

Car has all the bolt ons and hoosier sm7.5. I did break cords in 3 tires, all were takoffs I got from a local scca team

https://youtu.be/ro8xmLvv-bk?is=aYB1sBXpGEXhGUdE

My first android app is live on the app store.

A combination of things that I did at the track manually and I'd prefer to automate so I did and others might find it useful.

Tire temps — OUT / MID / IN across all four corners from my custom open source PyroTC BLE pyrometer, turned into camber and pressure advice from the spread, the code is public along with the STL.

Tire pressures — cold and hot PSI from cheap BLE TPMS sensors (Zeepin and DJTPMS), plus an all-day background monitor that logs pressure and temperature and auto-counts heat cycles.

Corner balance — cross-weight from ProForm wireless scale pads streamed live over Bluetooth, with “move this much onto the diagonal” recommendations.

Tire inventory with heat-cycle tracking, resettable packing checklists, CSV export, and full JSON backup. Everything is on-device — no accounts, no cloud.

Now I have no excuses on tracking tire cycles, I still need to make a screen to manage tires and track how long they last with the data it collects

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/tech/2026/07/22/trackday-pyrometer-helper-play-store.html

I need more of these, warning the audio from the props is a bit loud

car is a bmw 135i LS3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykRNRI7TUgg

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/2025/10/15/135i-l92-track-build.html

I need more shots like this..

Warning the drone sound is a bit annoying

https://youtu.be/ykRNRI7TUgg?is=VZjX8MFPYsRXlUmo

Ducts, deflectors and more air

More details here

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/tech/2026/07/14/135i-brake-cooling-ducts.html

anyone opened up this front port? Even 25 years ago these font ports wouldnt stay clipped onto the front core support. I got tired of that and made a new snorkle a few years ago. I'm thinking I might enlarge the hole as I dont need those tab holes anymore.

already running a big airbox and a large jcw style dry air filter, along with a 64mm throttle body and the tune is modified to open the throttle body a couple more degrees (factory overboost code enabled)

I do print these for locals but I dont like dealing with shipping, will have the car at VIR north next weekend instructing for BMWCCA

more details on my design history here i'm on v4 of the airbox now, the first design is about 10 years old, one of my first cad projects

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/tech/2026/07/11/r53-track-airbox.html

track vid here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqJysvKZr80&t=1s

ran the gladiator drift - grip tires at NCCAR, for a dirt cheap tire they did well, my alternator not so much.

I took my student out in my wifes 135i/n54 out saturday afternoon when it was like 105 and only got 4 laps before water temp limp, never had that happen before... I did have the AC on though. She was able to drive it both days without issue

pics & vids here

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/2026/07/06/nccar-gladiator-tires.html

broke another clip today testing a vin change/immobilizer delete for another customer..

first time I've used my pop4 scanner, and first with a blue laser, it did a good job getting the shape, not a printable part by any means but enough to model around the scan in fusion 360

details here.

https://mrblahhhh.github.io/car/tech/2026/06/30/r53-mini-ecu-cover.html

What started out as a cross balance app turned into a lot more, I went way down the rabbit hole

Reverse engineered my proform scales Bluetooth and integrated reading the scales live into the app

Added a handheld esp32 pyrometer that syncs the 12 values to the phone via ble this part is open source on GitHub here https://github.com/MrBlahhhh/PyroTC

Added Tesla tpms to get psi and temp via ble to track cold and hot temps

Added my packing lists with an uncheck all that follows my normal workflow

Designed and printed a handheld case for the pyrometer collector, stl will be on github with the esp32 code once I finish the final print.

Now I'm learning how to publish a android app to the app store...