Beano and The Granites meet-up

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Well, I have been in Finland these past 10 days, mostly in Helsinki, but last weekend I travelled to Tampere to catch up with the Granite Devices Team.

Of course, we started the weekend by testing a new setup at their office, the rig just got back in from a Robotics event that afternoon, but it was setup good enough for a few laps. Winner got free beers for the evening, so there was much to race for.

I will see if Tommi can share the pics he took of me and I will post them then, here is the Granite Boyz showing the Test Monkey from Down Under how they reckon things should be done:

Granite owner, Tero Kontkanen - somehow he always enjoy it so much when driving with his beloved creation:

Co-owner Timo Piiroinen showing his stuff, with Tommi Rajala (foreground) and Aki Korhonen (red shirt) providing inspiration:

Tommi Rajala having a go, working the servo pretty hard - can’t say much here, but sharp eyes will notice perhaps I blanked some info out in all the shots. More about this in due course…

And the guy who penned my mad ideas about Simucube down and put it to PCB, Aki Korhonen himself…showing big concentration in setting up a good lap…

And then Mika Takala, the brains behind the SimuCUBE firnware - pushing the Moocedes to good times around Yokohama…

Beano-shot to follow, hopefully soon…

Edit: Here, added by Mika with an image by Tommi:

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Saturday followed and we had an outing to a pretty popular public sauna, Kaupinojan Sauna, a short drive outside Tampere center…a few random shots, also the ski-path on the lake which provided plenty enjoyment for the afternoon, until I fell pretty heavily…not easy when 108kg come down from 6ft up…was bloody winded for about 5 minutes.

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After the mishap on the ice, decided to salvage my pride and did a 5x sauna and 5x swim-in-the-lake routine…great fun, very refreshing…

Always remember Safety First!!!

And the ever-popular-if-daunting hole-in-the-ice…that’s not hot water, that’s a powerful pump circulating the water to prevent it from freezing…water temp was at 2 deg C, outside was approximately -11 or something…brrr…but pride restored, I did a pretty good cycle there…

Catch ya all later - at the airport awaiting my return flight to Oz, just thought I share this with you all.
Beano

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@Mika:PLease ask Tommi to upload the few photos of me to some place where I can grab them, then I can update the post above too :slight_smile:

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awesome.
looks like you guys had lots of fun.

is it a thing in finland to take your shoes off in the office or does everybody just prefer driving the rig with socks?

also tommi driving like an elderly lady leaned in and with the hands on top :smiley: (no offense)

who won and got all the free beer though? tell us beano are all these finnish guys natural aliens like it seems sometimes or are there actual humans among them?

nature looks awesome, i have only been to sweden but when i am seeing that i think next time have to go a bit further and check out finnland.

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In homes, that is the custom. Also, office culture with strict dress code -> you will wear shoes. But otherwise, shoes off (or switch to well-ventilated office sandals or something), much less foot sweat and more comfort.

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Its been bad in recent years - last winter the lake didn’t have good ice for many days. This winter, however, has been very good, as in Europe in general. Spring is about 2-3 weeks late already…

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ah yeah that makes sense.
i mean there is a carpet so i dont see any reason to mess that up with your shoes, especially considering all the snow and how you will probably always have kinda wet shoes when entering the office.

yeah. here in middle germany it was snowing today. at the end of march. everything melted right away though. so nowhere near as nice to look at as your scenery right there.

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Snow is not actually too bad, it is just water. But when it melts, it is weeks and weeks of dirty slush mixed with gritting sand, thus, mud everywhere. :frowning:

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Man I thought it was bad here in the midwest US come on spring. Looks like fun and beer is good guys.

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Good fun, thanks for posting!

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Cool pics Guys!
I am glad I finally know what everyone looks like.
I have spoken to Tommi so many times via email I had a picture in my head of what he looks like.
My first instinct when I saw the picture was that is not Tonmi! LOL
Oooops wrong picture in my head! :slight_smile:

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Hehe nice to see the Granite team, and yes @Mika please ask @Tommi to upload Beano pics.

And last but not least thanks @phillip.vanrensburg for sharing this.

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Nice to put faces to names… ok who won???

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Beano was by far the fastest. I had never driven the Mercedes, so was about .8 s off-pace. The rest of the guys… are not sim racers, but some of them stayed on track :slight_smile:

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Ha, finally back home, got in a few hours ago, but had to nap for a couple there, was a long trip to Down Under. Almost direct opposite side of the globe, lols.

Mika did very well in a car foreign to him, I had to focus quite hard to set some decently fast clean laps. Having been using the oculus exclusively for the past 18 months, my first time back on a screen was…weird…

But we had heaps of fun, and as Mika says, FOV was good enough for demo system, we all faced the same challenges. Screen was a big 55" TV, with surprisingly good response behaviour and low input lag for a TV, was a pleasant outing in that rig.

Also, the higher I pushed the torque, the better I went - we were conducting some background testing. and it was immense fun wringing the Moocedes around Yokohama.

Thanx again for Granite Team hosting me, was a great time, and I luv the new office and all the secret things it contains :slight_smile:

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Hey Beano,

I thought it funny when seeing the pics, as I always thought Mika would be the youngest with the talk of University. I should have known if he was PHD he would be the older of the bunch.

And I thought Tommi would be the wise older man in the sales department.
Compared to me at 55 years old the Granite team look like youngsters. :slight_smile:

I bet they wore you out at the pub! I know first hand that the Finns can drink! My Brothers best friend here in the USA was born and lived in Finland until his early twenties.

Now you need to get ready for F1 in your city!

Talk later,
Joe

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Actually, the opportunity to get PhD came very late for me, so there is that… Me, Tommi and Tero are of similar age, and Aki is around 5 years younger.

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what do i see there in the top right corner 60 fps :wink: thats far from optimal for a demo system 60 fps is unplayable for a racing sim :wink: i hope you guys have v sync on ? turn it off and lock it to 200 fps it will give a much better experience :wink:

otherwise turn some graphics down fps is really important in how a game feels.

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The PC also has some GTX 1050 only, its not a gaming system.

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As photo of Beano him self is still missing, I dug older photo of him testing 50 Nm DD servo at our earlier place.

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Another view to the sauna. I was shocked to find out that Beano was the most finnish of us. Before nobody even noticed, he was waiting us in the icy lake while others of us were just warming up in the heat of the sauna.

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Ice tracks were in mint condition. Maybe next time we’ll find a suitable place for racing on the lake ice! I bet it would be strong a point for finnish drivers, and perhaps we could win Beano’s lap time the first time :slight_smile:

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Cool thanks for the info Mika.

I hope nobody was offended that I said you guys look young. In the USA it is a compliment.

I think it is AWESOME what you guys have achieved! And we should have Granite Devices for a long,long time.