Tuesday, 11 April 2017

America's Cup realtime viewer

Live display of America's Cup racing  

Thanks to Ken Milne, Mark Sheffield, Stan Honey, Russell Coutts and unknown others for making the data available.







Requires Excel Professional and internet connection. 32-bit only at present.


What is this about?

The America's Cup Event Authority broadcasts data from the racing yachts in realtime. 

This spreadsheet connects to the stream, deciphers some of the data and displays a simple graphic of the yachts' racing.

What does it show?

Simple 2D graphics of America's Cup yachts racing 
  • It is not video
  • Data is streamed direct from racing yachts over the internet at 5Hz
  • Data includes speeds, headings, latitude, longitude, boundaries, mark times, penalty calls
  • Yachts are drawn using their Lat/Long positions 
  • Yacht outlines are accurate within ~15cm
  • Zoom to course boundaries
  • Follow a chosen yacht
  • Commentary ticker
  • Coastline

Real or fake?

America's Cup Race Management have a website with documents governing the event as well as the streaming formats and a test program called ACView in Peli-Sim software. You could write your own... 

Links and thanks

Others have delved into the ACEA data stream and I learnt a lot trying to read their code.
https://github.com/douglasdecouto/ac34-ios
https://github.com/Ontropix/amcup-streaming
https://github.com/CircuitPeople/Americas-Cup-Data-Lib

PS
Yes, I know there are far better tools. I once hammered a nail with a spanner too. 

3 comments:

  1. Hi, can you make this work on 64bit machines?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry but I don't have 64bit Excel. Also I don't have expertise but think it is not very difficult.

    Search for "vba update 64bit" and you should find good instructions.

    If you get it working then the 64bit parts can be incorporated in the master spreadsheet with a check on 32 vs 64.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks very interesting blog!

    ReplyDelete