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Virtual Eye, Silverhook and IBM Bluemix.

Racing the world's fastest mono-hull powerboats has many challenges. SilverHook's 'Lucas Oil 77' competes at 140+ miles per hour on the open sea, and salt water can wreak havoc on electronic and mechanical equipment. Monitoring the boat and it's engines and occupants is vital, so 'Lucas Oil 77' is equipped with telemetry equipment that gathers over 70+ boat/engine related measurements at 100 times per second. Getting that data to the onshore team needs to be achieved in realtime, and so does the Max RPM and Speed data monitored by onshore race officials.

A functioning prototype was desired for the IBM Insight Conference in late October. A full scale simulation application was developed in python on IBM Bluemix, utilizing actual 'Lucas Oil 77' telemetry data from previous races. Virtual Eye engineers coded the visualization and layouts in New Zealand, coordinating with IBM jStart and DataSkill engineers in Raleigh, Orlando USA, and Belarus. IBM Bluemix Platform Product Manager, Marvin Goodman, called the resulting presentation the "Coolest IBM Insight Demo EVER!".

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Above: ARL CEO Ian Taylor takes to the IBM Insight stage in his Dunedin Gigatown tee-shirt, alongside SilverHook Powerboats president Nigel Hook. Also pictured are images of the simulator in action.