Apart from Jaguar and SportIdent, are there any better and or cheaper alternatives for enduro timing?

Looking at the technology used and the number of IT and electronic boffs on STW I reckon there must be a cheaper and better way of doing it?

stopwatch and homemade web based timing software.

Was thinking more along the lines of tag/scanning based systems as I dont want the hassle of manual timings….been there done that in the past.

you can get usb barcode readers ( these just behave like a keyboard – just another way of entering a number and hitting enter ) and it’s pretty easy to print your own barcodes. make these in to, or stick them to bracelets? laptop top and bottom, if the clocks are a bit out who cares? it’ll be the same for everyone.

May not be relevant to what you want but I rode my first timed sportive yesterday, and we all had barcodes stickers attached to our cycle helmets, with what seemed to be some sort of scanner at head height by the start finish gate?

However, someone also took our numbers manually at the start and finish line, which made me wonder if the helmet sticker was just a clever ruse to make us all wear helmets

you can get usb barcode readers ( these just behave like a keyboard – just another way of entering a number and hitting enter ) and it’s pretty easy to print your own barcodes. make these in to, or stick them to bracelets? laptop top and bottom, if the clocks are a bit out who cares? it’ll be the same for everyone.

I think the barcode is what they use for some Motocross enduros? Or at least the Red Bull one this weekend.
The problem is that you are relying on a 3rd person to scan the barcode, which might take them 1 second for one person and 5 seconds for another.

If the winning margins were big, then its not a problem, but some enduros are won by a couple of seconds.

RFID technology seems to be the most common and/or best fit. Nothing that special TBH, lots of stuff out there on it by the looks of it…quite interesting.

RFID also seems to be the most problematic? Struggles with rider speed.

with regard to timing, how come on the ews races over the weekend there were riders with no timings for certain stages. was it failing to “check in” or equipment malfunction?

genuine question, dont know how its done in bike racing, have seen videos where they have a device on their wrist that they have scanned/read when they start or finish a stage. i have done a half marathon before and the timing was done by a chip on either your laces or round your ankle, would that have been the rfid device?

For cheap / cheerful you could try the parkrun idea – each person gets a barcode – at the end, someone has a stopwatch with a timer that records times from start (1st, 20:30; 2nd, 20:37; 3rd 20:44 etc) the you get given a number tag (1 to n) where the first person across the line gets No.1 and someone scans your barcode and tag – this can then be matched up against your time after they’ve loaded it into a simple computer program.

mtbmatt – Member
RFID also seems to be the most problematic? Struggles with rider speed.

If RFID is what the UKGE series used to use then yes, absolutely shite.

Personally I’d put the onus on the rider to scan it – again, it’s the same for everyone. Some setups require ‘dobber’s’ or whatever – same deal. that’s racing. 😉

Personally I’d put the onus on the rider to scan it

the issue with that is if you get 4 riders all turn up at the same time and there is a queue to scan.

if it’s an enduro you can space riders out.

with regard to timing, how come on the ews races over the weekend there were riders with no timings for certain stages. was it failing to “check in” or equipment malfunction?genuine question, dont know how its done in bike racing, have seen videos where they have a device on their wrist that they have scanned/read when they start or finish a stage. i have done a half marathon before and the timing was done by a chip on either your laces or round your ankle, would that have been the rfid device?

I’ve been at races with both the old sportident and sportident air. Old sportident is pretty idiotproof: as long as your stick is zeroed from the start the onus is on the rider to stick it in the boxes at start and end until it beeps. Sportident air seems to have been a bit more trouble. It’s nice not to waste precious seconds trying to stick a pin in a tiny hole when you’re coughing your guts out but one race I was at had problems with the auto-shutoff between the pros passing through and us mere mortals trailing behind and taking it easy.

@keefmac- There’d be quite a lot of DNSs for individual stages at the EWS especially on the saturday, people were dropping like flies, or bypassing stages. (also none of the E2 riders have a stage 3 time as we didn’t do that one). I didn’t hear any timing grumbles other than a hiccup with stage 4 which was fixed. MC’d know though…

(this despite me punching one of the timing beacons right off a tree on stage 1! Good strong kit that)

StuF – Member

For cheap / cheerful you could try the parkrun idea – each person gets a barcode – at the end, someone has a stopwatch with a timer that records times from start (1st, 20:30; 2nd, 20:37; 3rd 20:44 etc) the you get given a number tag (1 to n) where the first person across the line gets No.1 and someone scans your barcode and tag – this can then be matched up against your time after they’ve loaded it into a simple computer program. Have wondered if this would work – the timing would be v accurate and it’s v simple. Think you also need to have some sort of tagging process at the beginning as people start at different times.

Parkrun is 20-30 mins though. Would there not be a fair chance of bolloxing up the stopwatch on an enduro as they go on for hours? Maybe there are ways of protecting against this happening.

Del – Member

if it’s an enduro you can space riders out.

I think you mis-understand, even with 20/30s spacing every so often you end up with riders arriving at the finish at the same time

I think you mis-understand, even with 20/30s spacing every so often you end up with riders arriving at the finish at the same time

The way we counteract that is to take the finish time for the first riders for all 2,3,4,etc.. of them. You can’t do that if it self scan, you have to queue.

If you have start and finish at the same point then you can run a timer on a PC – easy to do in a “web page” then have a start button which is pressed once when the first rider sets off and a “log finisher” button which you press as each finisher crosses the line. Independently you log the number of the rider finishing, then you match the two lists up. The software takes account of the delay between each rider starting, i.e. rider #5 starts four minutes after rider #1.

Even if the start and finish are in different locations you can sync the start time by phone/radio.

This is a slightly automated version of the park-run method mentioned above.

Since Northwind mentioned me, I figured I better post, given I’ve timed a good few enduros.

The issue with Enduro timing, is the sheer amount of data involved. I don’t think there is a single series or system that has not had issues, and why, especially at high level races, that some form of back up system is essential.

Sportident uses RFID.
I’ve always used sportident kit, and like the original card (that’s the official name for the ‘dibbers’) system for it’s pretty foolproof operation, and that it provides a backup if something does happen to the dibber. You simply give stations out to start and finish marshalls, and all they have to do is ensure riders dib correctly.
However it’s not the most accurate of systems as it’s only good to the nearest second, and is why the newer Air system was chosen for the EWS, as it’s a far more accurate system (temperature corrected timing crystals, and accuracy of 4ms in gate timing mode. It’s big downfall is it has no backup memory, so if something goes wrong with the card, the time is lost, at which point the only option is an old fashioned manual backup.

I won’t go into the details of what the issue was at stage 4 during Saturdays EWS, but it proved why you should always have some kind of backup.

As for the jaguar system, I’ve stood and watched it fail to time riders, at which point somebody quickly entered a manual time.

UKGE currently uses what I refer to as a DH system i.e. a gated start where the rider No. is entered, and a light beam finish where again the rider number is entered. Highly accurate, any issues with kit are identified immediately, however it requires skilled operators to ensure it is set-up and used correctly, which adds even more to the cost of using such a system.

The previous system UKGE used was a joke. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that if you need three tag readers on the finish line, then you have reliability issues. I know somebody who developed a system using a similar tag system, and even under optimal conditions it was never 100% reliable, however for it’s particular use, the discrepencies were easily noticed and fixed. For race formats where you can have a mass of competitors cross the finish line at one time, it is the best option, however it’s not ideal.

I have prototyped an RFID system using MIFARE, but quite simply don’t have the time to get it fully functioning.

As for the ideal enduro solution. It’s yet to be found. For reasonably accurate timing, the SportIdent Air system is probably the best compromise.
For a cheaper option but less accurate option, the basic SportIdent kit is probably about the cheapest you can get, before you’re into the realm of stop watches, and manually dealing with times.

Getting into the software side, the big issue is the volume of data. During my time doing the timing for InnerMTB, I wrote my own software to handle the Alistair lees (single lap with split time for the final DH section), and the MiniDHs (multiple runs over the one track), using stop watch time entries, and finally last month added dual slalom functionality to it to handle startgate/lightbeam times accurate to a millisecond. Even for those apparently simple single track races, you end up with a fair amount of data, which if everything goes to plan is simple to deal with, but when things go wrong, you need to pinpoint the problem time in amongst several hundred others. I’m almost at the point of having all the required functionality to locate the problem times, however it’s only in a format that I can understand!
To write the software commercially, is pretty uneconomical, given the small target market, and is why the available options are priced the way they are.

To get what race organisers would really like, which is a fully live system with all times relayed back to the arena/uploaded online, somebody with far more experience than me estimated the cost at around £30k per race. Which by the time you factor in getting some form of communication link to all timing points, is where a vast chunk of that money would go.
Take this weekends EWS for example. I’m pretty sure all start points would have mobile phone coverage, however there were at least 3 finishes in reception black holes, and most stages had no direct radio link between the starts and finishes, with marshalls relying on relaying messages between each other.

As with petty much all things, it’s all a case of how much you want to spend?

o/

The best thing about the EWS gates is that they’re not that easy to see, so people don’t always realise they’re finished, and keep pedalling away like madmen. One dude looked like he was going to ride the whole stage 6-7 transition at race pace 😆

(no I’m not going to tell you how long I spent trying to get my broken bike back into gear, and standing perfectly still while pedalling like a mofo, even though I’d already crossed the line. Never happened)

Just how exactly did riders manage to crash into things spaced 2m apart?

I built my own RFID system for low key local club rides!

Uses alien technology reader and antennas and CrossMgr software (free download online, also has manual entry). Think it’s pretty much the same as jaguar but no where near the price, my full build came in at about £230!!

Tags are disposable, simple to set up and use, Infact CrossMgr has an idiots guide to creating a system!!

I think you mis-understand, even with 20/30s spacing every so often you end up with riders arriving at the finish at the same time

no, i understand completely, both from an electronics/comms POV, and as someone who has taken part in and marshalled enduros. you can try to make it foolproof and end up throwing a lot of money at it, or you can minimise the chances of things going wrong on a budget, but either way, a lot of things have to go right for it all to work seamlessly for a large number of riders. when it does go wrong ‘that’s racing’.
might have a look at smurfly’s stuff though!

mc – Member

Just how exactly did riders manage to crash into things spaced 2m apart?

I can’t speak for my fellow incompetents but personally, I hit a pretty decent percentage of all the trees in the tweed valley, statistically one of them was bound to have a timer on it.

thanks everyone, sounds like early days as all systems have their limitations. I guess an improved or alternative technology may be needed. Rubee technology from visible assets looks interesting in that all the data can be stored on the tags with very good bandwidth. again it all comes down to price point but I am sure we will see improvements now that such multistage sports are getting more and more popular