 Poster: A snowHead
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Can anyone recommend a simple wireless timing system ?
To be used on snow for ski-club races and training.
Needs to be easy and quick for coaches to set up...
Ideally simple to use and not to expensive either.
Been doing some goggling - but interested in any recommendations!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@Haggis_Trap, We saw a club training in Sweden 4 or 5 years ago and they had a set up that basically was a mobile phone at the top and another at the bottom (they actually had two at each end). I have no idea how it worked, or what system it used to work, and whether they were connected to (via 4G or something) to a central timer, but certainly the main hardware was very ordinary.
Hope that gives you a starting point at least. Let us know what you find.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I'll add that the two phones at the top weren't facing each other creating a "beam" or anything, they were simply side by side on a stand. We didn't get a close look at the bottom.
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I spent a while looking for something similar for our ski club, but in the end we went with the £3k Brower system as I couldn’t find anything suitable.
A mate who’s into electronics suggested it would be relatively easy to build - two synchronised clocks that send trigger signals to a computer which then works out which competitor each pulse refers to and calculates the times, with manual intervention for DNF etc. However, this would have taken a few months to get round to doing, so we went commercial.
It’s a bit surprising, given the price of the ommercial systems, that there isn’t a £500 Chinese system available (at least that I could find 2 yrs ago when we were looking).
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| snowdave wrote: |
It’s a bit surprising, given the price of the commercial systems, that there isn’t a £500 Chinese system available (at least that I could find 2 yrs ago when we were looking). |
My guess : there might be 2 reasons for this...
1) FIS / homologated races apparently required wired timing.
2) Many alpine ski clubs will train in a designated 'stade' with wired start hut etc.
However for training purposes there must be some kind of simple / cheap / easy to set up timing system ? (as you say!)
| thecramps wrote: |
| @Haggis_Trap, We saw a club training in Sweden 4 or 5 years ago and they had a set up that basically was a mobile phone at the top and another at the bottom (they actually had two at each end).. |
Exactly : Something like that would be ideal.
Will need to do more googling when I have time!
Can imagine a system in my head that uses bluetooth or 4G to connect to a start-gate / finish line / phone-app.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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@Haggis_Trap, All the clubs that I know use commercial systems, some of these are wireless.
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@Haggis_Trap, any system using mobile phones is going to have substantial jitter, probably on the order of 100ms, even with 4G. Depends how the system timing is done, but it's probably not going to be accurate enough for your purposes.
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| Steilhang wrote: |
| @Haggis_Trap, any system using mobile phones is going to have substantial jitter, probably on the order of 100ms, even with 4G. Depends how the system timing is done, but it's probably not going to be accurate enough for your purposes. |
Good point - though 0.1s would be fine.
It is for timing fun kids races / training / stubby courses etc. Nothing serious.
The ski club have an (old) wired timing system but coaches never use it as taking it up hill and setting up takes ages.
Can't help but feel there must be simple wireless solution. Though most commercial timing kits cost close to 3k.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Surely a mobile phone based system wouldn't just send a crude 'start' message, when it could send a message with a timestamp from a common, accurate timing source, such as GPS?
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| Tubaski wrote: |
| Surely a mobile phone based system wouldn't just send a crude 'start' message, when it could send a message with a timestamp from a common, accurate timing source, such as GPS? |
I think the devices (start / finish) would need to communicate via bluetooth or 4g ?
Which presumably introduces some timing errors.
Though cant imagine these errors would be problematic for a kids race / training.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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@Haggis_Trap, I agree, if they are sending stop/go but if they send a timestamp from a common source the latency /jitter issue goes away. As the system could calculate the run time as the delta between the finish gate GPS timestamp and the start gate GPS timestamp.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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The commercial systems are available as components, you presumably already have a start gate and finish photocell, you could just look at adding the wireless bits to connect them.
One thing that does work well for training is the Tag Heuer system that has a stopwatch for each trainee that they carry, you don't need to tell the system who is on the course and they get an instant readout of their times. I suppose you could write something for a smartphone to work in a similar way.
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How accurate does it need to be?
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You know it makes sense.
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| altis wrote: |
| How accurate does it need to be? |
More accurate than a radio plus stop watch  I reckon roughly 0.1 sec would be fine for kids training and fun end of season club races (etc).
We only have 30 trainees and might only time once or twice a season. Spending £3k on timing kit doesn't really make sense.
Last edited by You know it makes sense. on Mon 22-04-19 16:26; edited 1 time in total
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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@Haggis_Trap, I was hoping it would be about that.
You can get used vehicle tracking devices fairly cheaply off eBay. These have a GPS and bits from a mobile phone. Many of these also have a few digital inputs and outputs and can be loaded with a script. Should be a fairly simple job to look for a digital input, grab the GPS time and then text it to another mobile. Here you could just look at pairs of texts and work out the time difference or use some sort of script.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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^ cheers guys.
some interesting options / ideas & apps above.
have M.Eng in electronics - so cobbling something together an option
if I can find some time!
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@Haggis_Trap, why not see if any local clubs will rent you their equipment when you need it?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| johnE wrote: |
| @Haggis_Trap, why not see if any local clubs will rent you their equipment when you need it? |
Apparently Snowsport Scotland can provide timing kit for races etc.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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If it's not for official purposes then surely a couple of mobiles and a stopwatch would be enough?
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| foxtrotzulu wrote: |
| If it's not for official purposes then surely a couple of mobiles and a stopwatch would be enough? |
yip : that is exactly what we do at the moment : two radios plus a stop watch at bottom.
it works, is simple and cheap.
however it does means coaches are tied up timing (rather than coaching kids).
cant help but feel that in 2019 there must be an easier / slightly more elegant solution ?
that ideally doesn't cost 3K.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| foxtrotzulu wrote: |
| If it's not for official purposes then surely a couple of mobiles and a stopwatch would be enough? |
just create a strava segment and give each kid a smartphone 
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There's an app called sprint timer that looks like it does most of what you want and looks very clever.
It can do motion detect finishing and remote starting so it might be worth contacting the developer to see if he could add motion detect start on one device and finishing on a second and then you'd have a complete solution.
details are here https://appmaker.se/home/sprinttimer/
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