Timing Chips (Read 956 times)

Anybody know where one can get chips to time races? At the minimum, I am looking for a chip that will tell me a time and a bib number in a text file or something. I've been looking around the internet and they don't seem to be easy to find. Any help is very much appreciated. Thanks

what?

I wrote some software to time a race, print off results, and a handful of other stuff. I'm my program, they user has to press the enter button whenever a user crosses a line, which isn't always to reliable. To deal with this, I want a chip that will tell me what the persons time is, like itiming or any other company that comes in and times a race for you. Where do these company's get there chips, and/or is it possible for me to get a couple and a mat or whatever to play with?... hope thats a lil clearer

The chip is a small part of a very elaborate setup.  The bulk of the complexity is in the timing equipment set up at the start and finish lines.  This equpment is very expensive, complex and not something you can just borrow or toss together.  In a  nutshell, unless you've got  a couple of hundred grand hanging around, you can't get this stuff.

 

 

The chip is a small part of a very elaborate setup.  The bulk of the complexity is in the timing equipment set up at the start and finish lines.  This equpment is very expensive, complex and not something you can just borrow or toss together.  In a  nutshell, unless you've got  a couple of hundred grand hanging around, you can't get this stuff.

 Why would it cost that much?  I can understand for professional races you need a certain high standard but for the OP's purposes it looks like a lot less would do.  RFID chips and readers are fairly cheap these days.

Tag cost appears to be under a buck: http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/20/85

Readers from $150 to $750: http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/20/86

Do-it-yourselfers might be able to build one really cheap.  Especially if you only need one mat at the finish and not worry about recording and synchronizing multiple timing mats.

(Edit: that's not counting computer hardware and software interfaces of course...)

 Why would it cost that much?  I can understand for professional races you need a certain high standard but for the OP's purposes it looks like a lot less would do.  RFID chips and readers are fairly cheap these days.

 

Tag cost appears to be under a buck: http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/20/85

Readers from $150 to $750: http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/20/86

Do-it-yourselfers might be able to build one really cheap.  Especially if you only need one mat at the finish and not worry about recording and synchronizing multiple timing mats.

 

(Edit: that's not counting computer hardware and software interfaces of course...)

 

 

I know...a touch exaggerated on my part.  But proper race-tough timing systems will run into thousands just for simple setups.  The bulk of this stuff isn't designed for outdoors, and it needs to do more than just read the chip, it's got to identify from the scramble of readings which reading constitutes 'on the mat' (or whatever other timing array is set up), so there's distince differences between basic rfid and the needs of race timing.

The latest issue of Canadian Running had a pretty good article on race/chip timing.  The competition gets tough because there's only so many races in a given area that are big enough to justifiy setting up a system.  Mind you some of the really big companies aren't interested in the smaller venues, so if one could come up with a good cheap and reliable way of doing it, there is a market.  However, there's lots of timing companies that use manual methods that are really good at timing small races and they can do it pretty cheap.

Here are some systems:

http://www.firsttothefinish.com/items.asp?Cc=fw_tm_TimSys

They charge 14 hundred dollars just for a camera mounting pole.