Timing System

I think we would only need about 25 stopwatches at most... Even whizzy ones that could download their data to a PC would only cost about £750...

I agree!

. I should mention that BIG advantage of stopwatches over manual lap-counting (5-bar gates) is that you can review the lap times and instantly see if you've missed a lap.

Edited by GeoffBird - 09 October 2012 at 2:40pm

well when the dust settles, I've said let me look at the timing system over the winter. I'll take it from Hill2 and fault find if needed.
if people wish sure set the stop watches-up for the start of next year and or video (perhaps some one might write an NI image grabing code and count riders :)

rgd
Gd

The system does seem falling apart but without a closer look I know nothing; it certainly has been failing quite a lot more this year compared to last year and that was different to the year before. It may be due to a lot of things, none of which can be dealt with by talking here.

One problem with live monitoring is someone has to do it; a beep might be audible on a bike solo but in a bunch, in a streamliner or even just racing, the rider won't hear it and it is unlikely anyone trackside will. Similarly having the race results coming up live on a computer is all well and good but monitoring it it is one hell of a job to put on someone for the duration of a race.

The problem with the stopwatches is they were too unreliable, or those using them, which resulted in Thee Keeper Of Thee Records doing lots of work to get the results sorted. This is why I put a lot of time into trying to get working what Kit had produced.

The AMB system is ridiculously expensive for a club our size, though in the unlikely event of getting the correct numbers on Saturday I would buy it. It also does seem to need a lot of handling though this may be the add-on software.

A lot of time and effort has been spent on what was a reasonable solution to our timing needs, for whatever reason  and before we dive off and spend more on some stopwatches than we have spent in entirety on the timing system we have, maybe we should give it another look. Graham has offered to cast a professional eye over the system so lets wait and see what the problem is before we do anything else.