Race Results System

Someone at our club remembers talking to another club which had something a bit like the Sailracer system where, when  you sign on, you sign out a GPS beacon which then becomes associated with your boat for the day.  Apparently it facilitated doing results and worked well.  Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Hi Sam - I wrote an intro to Boat Timer (here) that talks about different devices. Apples support for modern web standards is a long way behind Googles, and although you may get it to work on an iPad certain parts won't work (eg export to file), though I have used it for a race and it worked well enough. I am not sure how old your Android tablet is but you will need an up-to-date version of Chrome for it to work well. I tend to use a newish Samsung tablet or a Windows 10 laptop. The Samsung was used for a 2.4mR open a few months ago as we were recording finishes from the committee boat (all touchscreen stuff). To get perfect support for iPads would require writing a native app in Swift (very time-consuming) and paying the good people at Apple about £100/year which for a free app is a bit painful - I have a Solo I bought a few weeks ago that I need to spend money on 

Thanks Sam - the original Timer had the Signals app as part of it, so I understand why that could be useful. However the newest Signals app controls a relay via USB, so that requires a native Android app and a web app (for laptops) to work correctly. So I am glad the Timer and Signals apps are separate now otherwise the technical side would get tricky. Plus most clubs need a way to automate race signals, but not all want to record finishes on a computer. Anyway, hope you get to try Timer when you upgrade - always interested to hear how it goes.

Edited by IanCherrill - 08 Dec 21 at 11:06am

Hi Sam - Timer records finish times (and optionally lap times). You can specify a start time (and change it after the race if needed) and those things are used to calculate the results. So you don't need to start the timing as such, just press a button for each boat as they cross the finish line. The intro video on the Rotor-Rig page probably explains it better.

I have not tried a Pi with Signals yet, but as Raspbian can run the Chromium browser it stands a good chance or working. It certainly works on Ubuntu and Chrome on a laptop, which is similar tech. Let me know how it goes. If I get some time I have a Pi3 somewhere and might give that a go myself.

Sadly the original Boat Timer that had Signals integrated is not available - it was long ago and would not work on a modern system, plus the option to connect a proper hooter system up via USB cable and a relay didn't exist then.

Edited by IanCherrill - 08 Dec 21 at 5:26pm

Originally posted by Sam.Spoons Shame I can live without the automated hooter but getting the 'RO' to synchronise the start sequence to a fixed starting time sounds like a real nightmare scenario. A manual start button in Timer would remove the problem of getting them to either start the countdown exactly 3 mins before the scheduled start or remember the exact, actual, start time after the race