Each photo checked
The app reads every photo as you take it: it counts the floor targets in view, flags a blurred shot, and shows where the floor is still thin.
Field guide
From a box of targets to toe, camber and caster.
The whole procedure, start to finish. About ten minutes of setup, 20 to 30 minutes of shooting, and the rest happens in software.
01 — The pieces
What's in the kit.
Print the PDFs on any A4 printer and glue them to cardboard, 3-D print the parts from the files in your account, or have the kit arrive made. Same software, same result either way — the targets only have to be flat and rigid.
A ×20
Floor tiles — the accuracy layer
One per A4 sheet, about 210 × 210 mm of printable area, each mounted on legs (3-D printed, or offcuts, boxes or books) so the face sits somewhere between 40 and 140 mm off the floor. Vary the leg height tile to tile — that spread is exactly what gives the map real 3-D structure, and a single height re-flattens it.
Each tile carries two large coded targets plus a scatter of small dots in a unique per-tile arrangement. Glue the paper flat to a stiff face. The face size doesn't need to be precise: the software self-calibrates each tile's true shape.
B ×112
Anchors — the coverage layer
112 single coded targets, four to an A4 sheet, cut apart. These lie flat on the floor — not propped, not tilted, not on stands. Their job is to link photographs that can't otherwise see each other. They carry coverage, not accuracy.
C ×4
Wheel plates — the spin targets
One plate per wheel, 210 mm, with four coded targets at the corners, clipped on with its holder. It does not need to sit square or centred on the wheel — the software compensates for how it was mounted. Each wheel's four ids are unique, so every photo knows which wheel it is looking at.
D ×1
Your phone
An Android phone (iPhone app: soon). Its camera must be calibrated — focal length and lens distortion. This is the one hard requirement in the whole kit. The app guides a one-time calibration from photos of the printed calibration sheet.
Why paper is enough
Nothing in the printed kit needs to be dimensionally accurate. The software measures your actual glued layout rather than assuming the nominal one, so print tolerance and paper stretch come out in the wash.
02 — Place · about 10 minutes
Setting up the floor.
2.1
Park it
Flat floor, roughly a metre clear all the way around the car.
2.2
Stand the tiles
Around the car on their legs, roughly 0.8 m apart — dense, no big gaps. Lean a few at an angle against a block; that variety helps the solve.
2.3
Scatter the anchors
Fill the gaps, flat on the floor, spread evenly across the working area. Keep targets out from directly under the car, and clear of the space you'll need to jack each wheel.
2.4
Fit the wheel plates
One per wheel, readable face pointing outward.
The app helps
Live coverage is shown while you place and shoot, and it tells you where the floor is still too thin to solve.
03 — Capture · about 20–30 minutes
Five parts, in this order.
The app shows each part and ticks it off. The car is measured as it stands, so the order matters: all four wheels are spun first, and the photos the angles come from are taken last, with the whole car back on its wheels.
Part 1
Steering wheel straight, and held
- Best as you drive in: roll the last two metres straight and stop with the steering wheel straight.
- Check it: rest the phone flat on the steering wheel, and the app shows how far it is turned.
- Hold it there with a steering-wheel holder, or two straps from the rim down to the seat rails. Not the steering lock: it catches at its next notch, not at the centre.
- Touch nothing in the cabin until the last car-down photo.
Part 2
The floor walk
- Fit the four wheel plates first.
- Walk two slow loops around the car — never over it — filming the floor targets, several in view at once, and close the loop.
- Run the phone up and down as you walk, waist to eye height. Do not hold a fixed height: view-angle variety is the entire point.
- The app shows coverage as you go and says where the floor is still thin.
Part 3
Each wheel on the jack
- Jack the wheel clear of the ground.
- Stand at an angle to the plate — about 45–60° round from facing it square-on — and close, under a metre.
- Turn the wheel slowly through one full turn while you film, the whole plate and some floor in frame. Then step about half a metre to the side and film a second turn.
- Lower the wheel and go to the next. No car-down photos yet.
Part 4
Car down, tyres let go
- All four wheels on the floor, every jack out, the steering wheel still held.
- No floor target within 40 cm in front of a tyre or behind it.
- Gear in neutral, brake off: push the car back 20–30 cm and forward again, on the body, not on a wheel or a plate. With slip plates under the wheels, pull their pins and push each end of the car down twice instead.
- Brake on. From here nobody leans on the car or sits in it.
Part 5
The car as it stands
- For each wheel, 24 still shots of its plate from clearly different places — walk a little between them.
- The plate and some floor targets in every frame. These are the photos the angles are read from.
Pro
Caster and SAI — optional, front wheels
- Only after all the car-down photos: the one part where the steering is turned.
- Front tyres free to turn where they stand (slip plates with the pins out), brake held, steering-wheel holder off.
- For each front wheel, seven shots from about 10° left, through the centre, to about 10° right, the steering still for each.
- Then centre the steering wheel again and put the holder back before you adjust anything.
04 — The read · automatic
What you see while it works.
Every wheel, or a reason
When the last car-down photo is in, the app reads the car. A wheel that fails its own checks gets re-measure and what to re-shoot, never a guess.
One wheel, live
After a read, point the phone at one wheel and its camber and toe follow your adjustment on the screen.
On paper, and kept
Each measurement becomes an A4 report, kept in your account with the car you named.
05 — Results
What you get, and what you don't.
You get
Toe and camber per wheel, both total toes and the thrust angle, plus caster and SAI at the front when you add the steering sweep — in the vehicle frame, as an A4 report you can print, with each wheel checked against a general passenger-car band, or marked re-measure.
Accuracy
Toe and camber up to 0.05°, caster and SAI to within 0.5°, reported at 0.01° resolution.1 A wheel is printed only when its own consistency checks pass; otherwise the sheet says re-measure. How the figures are tested: how we test accuracy.
Specs
Factory specs. The app reports what your car's geometry is, not what the manufacturer intended it to be. Take the target numbers for your car from its own service data.
A note on flagged wheels
If a wheel doesn't meet the confidence bar, the report shows re-measure and no number at all. A wrong angle stated confidently is worse than no angle — so the pipeline is built to refuse rather than guess.
Want one?
One email when you can order. The list gets first pick of the made kits.