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Timing participants in motor races requires
extremely fast and accurate operator response. Due to the
special demands of such races, there are usually two operators
who constantly watch the start and finish line in order to
not miss any of the tens of even hundreds of participants
in the race.
Multiple races per day are a common requirement
as well as a dynamic start order based on results from previous
races. Accurate and fast reporting and timing to the millisecond
are also required on any race day.
These tough conditions almost impose the requirement
of managing the departures, arrivals and participants on the
computer.
Our software meets all the above requirements
and is capable of almost fully automate the detection and
recording of participant start/finish times as well as race
durations, start order, reporting, etc.
How it works
The system uses a serial port and a proprietary
protocol to connect to a specially built electonic device
that uses infra red beams to detect participants crossing
the start or finish line. There are two such devices: one
for the start and the other for the finish lines..
A smart setup screen is provided to enable
the operator to select the comm port and also to test the
detection devices.
The software runs on two computers at the
same time and allows real-time communication between them.
One computer is at the start station and the
other one at the finish station. Start and finish times detected
at each of the stations are automatically propagated and displayed
in real-time on the screens at both ends without the
need of a screen refresh command.
The user enters race details and the participants
list. Subsequent races can be populated with participants
by simply copying from previous races. The copy operation
inserts participants in a start order dictated by the previous
results on the day.
At the start and finish lines, each operator
has a dedicated screen which detects a participant crossing
the line. At that time the operator can easily select from
a pick-list the participant number and assign the time to
him/her. Multiple particiants crossing the beam at the same
time are easily handled by the software.
Fast and accurate reporting at the end of
each race enables the operator to handle hundreds or even
thousands of participants per race and decide the start order
in a few seconds.
All the information is stored in a database
and can be used later on for statistics and further reporting.
We don't write our software,
we craft it!
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