Making sure that the right time is recorded...

Timing System

Moderator: Jani Soderhall

Locked
Kevin Dunne
Posts: 113
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2006 3:08 am
Location: Oceanside, Ca.
Contact:

Making sure that the right time is recorded...

Post by Kevin Dunne » Wed Nov 28, 2007 5:44 am

Not sure where to post this so I am trying it in a couple of spots:

Timing is probably the most important aspect of racing and it seems prehistoric to relay on somebody to manually enter a racer's time into a spreadsheat. Is there a way to avoid this step and have the timer (not the person in charge of timing...the actual piece of equipment) transfer times directly to the computer? At almost every race that I attended this season I witnessed critical errors on the part of the person recording times into the computer. I saw wrong times recorded (ex: 27.926 instead of 27.296), racer's times switched (racer A had racer B's time), racer's courses switched (Red course gets time of White course...again resulting in racer A getting racer B's time), etc...
The way it is now, it just seems that it all comes down to human error and that is something that needs to be removed from the process of recording times. I don't know what it would take, or if it is even possible, but it is something we need to look at...

Pat Chewning
Pat C.
Pat C.
Posts: 1400
Joined: Mon Sep 16, 2002 2:00 am
Location: Portland Oregon

Chronocone does this, Trackmate has potential....

Post by Pat Chewning » Wed Nov 28, 2007 6:30 am

This was the main reason I developed the Chronocone timing system.

It directly enters the time into the score-keeping spreadsheet, rather than relying on a human to re-type the time into a field and potentially transpose digits (26.567 instead of 26.657).

The latest Trackmate timing system has the potential to "upload" the times into a spreadsheet -- but requires someone to attack the software/firmware development to get this to happen.

On a related note, I think the current most error-prone portion of racing is cone counting. I have some ideas about embedding "wireless network sensor" components into each cone to enable automated cone-counting, but I don't have the time or capital to move this forward right now.
Last edited by Pat Chewning on Wed Nov 28, 2007 6:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Pat Chewning
Pat C.
Pat C.
Posts: 1400
Joined: Mon Sep 16, 2002 2:00 am
Location: Portland Oregon

Post by Pat Chewning » Wed Nov 28, 2007 6:34 am

PS: I suggest that the "Timing System" forum is the right place to discuss this.

http://www.slalomskateboarder.com/phpBB ... m.php?f=58

Locked