I finally got around to performing some formal testing of the Racebox Mini S, and I think you’ll find the results interesting.

I first wrote about the Racebox in April, and was really interested to see if it would be a good tool for measuring a vehicle’s speed and attitude (yaw, roll, and pitch). With a 25 Hz engine, tri-axial accelerometer, gyro, and $269 price tag, it’s intriguing.

Yamaha XSR900 equipped with Racebox Mini S (on tank) and ScenePro CI 200 (on tail)

However, I know from prior testing that it’s difficult to accurately calculate absolute yaw, roll, and pitch from IMU and GPS data. It takes a well-tuned Kalman filter. As such, I set out to compare the Racebox to my trusty ScenePro.

I took my Yamaha XSR900 (fresh off two days at Laguna Seca, hence the shagged tires) for a little rip down a local canyon and compared the Racebox and ScenePro data. Lean angle data from the Racebox (blue) and ScenePro (white) are shown below.

Lean angle vs. time for the Racebox (blue) and ScenePro (white)

As you can see, while the general trend was good, the Racebox consistently underestimated lean angle by about 15% during this testing. In better news, the speed was spot on.

So, from what I’ve seen, the Racebox Mini S is a good tool for speed and to give you an idea of a vehicle’s attitude, but probably shouldn’t be used for scientific purposes when knowledge of true orientation is important. Granted, this was not an exhaustive investigation and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I would love to see VBOX integrate an IMU into something like the VBOX Sport to calculate absolute orientations. That would be a slick setup. Considering my current needs though, I’ll be sticking to the ScenePro when I need scientific-grade data of this nature.

Thanks for reading, keep exploring!

Lou Peck
​Lightpoint | Axiom