Switching to ART?

[Rod Simpson]

Another timer (Dave) contacted me to ask about ART.

Dave currently uses Jaguar and says Jaguar wants him to update his all his equipment so he is current. Dave was wondering about switching to ART.  

A few questions you might know:

1) Will ART work with Dave's Jaguar equipment? i.e. Antennas, readers. 

2) If Dave switches to the ART software is it as simple as plugging in his current equipment to his main computer and just running things through ART?

3) The Jaguar people are saying the readers are going to no longer be supported.  No longer guaranteed to work with new Windows updates.  This sounds funky to me.  Your thoughts?

4) Dave has invested in some ankle chips as he times swim and triathlons.  I will test out the chips to make sure they are readable and programmable with ART.  Dave says the ankle chips are Jaguar T chips.

5) Dave normally runs a 100m ethernet cable to a split for the swim portions of his tri events. He runs it into a splitter and then to his computer. (I think I got that right). I've not done this, but know others in the ART chat form talk about doing this or a version of it.  Is Dave still good to go with this set up in ART?

Dave asked me my feelings on ART.  It works great for me and does what I need it to do.  I particularly like that you pay once for the software.

Looking forward to hearing the group's thoughts.

Thanks,

Rod

[Brian Agee]

Many years ago I had a user send me two Jaguar readers that he wanted me to get working with my software. Here is a video I created that show the process:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAOWCDBeB3E

After the reader has a factory reset on it and my software can connect to the reader, then everything should work just fine. Of course I'm happy to remote in and help if he gets stuck and can't get the reader to work with the software.

I haven't heard that Alien 9900+ readers wouldn't work anymore after a Windows update, but of course very few of my users are probably using those readers so I'm not as familiar with them. Not sure how a windows update would prevent the computer from being able to talk to the reader since that's basic network communication stuff.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect Jaguar password protects the ankle tags so that only the Jaguar software/reader can reprogram them.

As for the 100m Ethernet cable back to the main finish line PC. Yeah, as long as the software can see the reader then it can accept reads from it and a reader at the finish line at the same time. I personally prefer to have the split/transition station totally separate from my finish line so that no matter what happens at the split/transition area it does not affect my ability to print results quickly from the finish line, but what you're describing is doable with ART.