Information for users of foldable Race Result ground antennas

[Springer Sport]

Last Friday, Race Result presented its latest development:

➔ The new timing system (Ubidium)

➔ https://www.raceresult.com/en-us/systems/ubidium.php

The special thing about the new timing system is that the UHF readers are installed directly in the antenna segments of the foldable ground mat. The timing case therefore only contains the power supply and processing unit (computer).

I was really impressed by the presentation, but unfortunately Race Result continues to isolate itself from standards and increasingly resembles Apple's ecosystem.

On the other hand, the numerous advantages of this new development justify this step, because multiplexing is a thing of the past and the new ground antennas can be made very wide (over 20 metres) with just one timing case.

Conversely, this means that the new foldable ground antennas cannot be connected to readers from other manufacturers (e.g. Impinj or Zebra).

Race Result writes under FAQ:
How long will the Decoder 5000s & the old Foldable Ground Antenna still be available?

We expect it to phase out by the end of the year, but in general we can build it as long as we have the components to build them.

Since the classic foldable ground antennas from Race Result will no longer be available in the foreseeable future, investing in these antennas makes little sense (...because at some point there will be no more spare parts, unless you buy enough antennas and/or spare parts in advance).

I am only aware of BlackBoxTiming and Trident as sellers of licensed foldable ground antennas. However, Race Result ground antennas and Trident/BlackBoxTiming ground antennas cannot be together mixed used because the polarization differs. With the Race Result antennas, the transponders must be attached vertically to the bibs, but horizontally with BlackBoxTiming/Trident ground antennas.

[rtspt.usa]

so let me get this straight.

RR threatens legal action against timers who bought feibot and then less than a year later abandons their current foldable mat desgin?

...well aint that grand...

[Patrick W]

no they're doubling down on it with each mat segment containing both the reader and the antenna.  It's basically what would happen if you were bored, had rf and manufacturing capabilities, and stared at an Alien ALR-9650 reader long enough.  Also means that when water gets into the mat it destroys the reader and costs a lot more to repair/replace.

[rtspt.usa]

but new design is forcing users to use their (locked) system now it appears.

are they trying to gain or lose customers?

[Springer Sport]

@rtspt.usa
I also deeply regret that Race Result are abandoning their current mat design completely. I own five Race Result Ground Antennas. I have tried to formulate my information for you as objectively and neutrally as possible. I understand Race Result that they get angry when their developments are copied and their patents are infringed. But I am also disappointed that as an honest buyer of the original Race Result antennas I am now at a disadvantage. Development costs money and Race Result is largely financed by consumables (i.e. transponders). This is the only way Race Result can be so innovative and develop cool devices.

@Patrick W
The purchase price for UHF readers has increased significantly in recent years. At the Race Result Event, it was presented in such a way that it would save costs by producing the antenna/reader-elements yourself. The conventional use of an industrial UHF reader with multiplexer leads to limitations in timekeeping (limited number of ports, long cable runs, longer boot time). The extent to which water can penetrate and damage antenna elements remains to be seen. I share your opinion that the risk of water damage is possibly higher. However, if the cost of replacement parts is similar to the current antenna elements, this would be negligible.

[JK Race Timing Systems]

Hi

I dont understand the statement of multiplexing being a thing of the past with this new system, If each reader is its own entity then it becomes more important to multiplex to avoid contention or are they so confident that each reader cannot interfere with its fellow neighbour, Interesting if this is the case , Id love to see the antenna RF pattern

They do seem to target the non cost cocious customers...look at their active tag, 60 euro a pop any you are expected to replace all of them after their expected 5 year lifespan... go figure 

[rtspt.usa]

ya i have 9 RR mats...and i normally buy a new one each year... oh well..

this locked down business model sounds vaguely familiar with the early days of rfid with Championchip and AMB..

and of course being locked down you  can only use their tag which they have full control over you..

add to the fact that "global supply shortages" have made even generic tags harder to get --

Feibot stock just shot up i guess : )

[Springer Sport]

@JK Race Timing Systems
Unfortunately, I cannot explain to you exactly how Race Result solved this problem.

Watch the following YouTube-video from the presentation from 14:57 until 16:36, because there the omitted multiplexing was presented as an big advantage of the new timing system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e2AAMOXY7U&t=897s

[Brian Agee]

I think they said it'll be at least 9 months before it's ready.  Just like with anything new, I wouldn't want to be the first in line to buy it, but I expect RaceResult will work out any kinks and it'll end up being a nice product for their customers to consider around mid to later part of 2024 (after reviews have come in and they've had time to make adjustments based on user feedback). Like was stated before, they have the resources and 'know-how' to do a project like this, and with their reputation on the line they're probably not going to release a product to the masses unless they know it's at least as good as their previous product. So we'll see if it's actually ready by later this year, but when it is, I suspect it'll work well.  I like that each segment of the mat is longer, that there are no long antenna cables running through every segment, and that only one connector to the mat is needed. I'm glad companies like this are pushing the envelope and trying something new, whether it's a success or not, we all benefit in the long run.

It does look like the mat uses a proprietary connection to their reader. I hope I'm wrong on that and that they will allow third party applications (like ART) to connect to the new mat. My desire is to have a very friendly relationship with everyone of course. If nothing else, maybe many RaceResult customers will be trying to sell their mats to get the new one and we (ART Users) can pick up used mat at a good price (a win-win for both of us). The most likely thing to need to be replaced is the cables, and I suspect those can be purchased from anywhere and they're pretty easy to replace with the RaceResult mat.

If I remember correctly I think third party applications could connect to their 'track box' - which is the predecessor to the mat (I believe they said it uses the same homegrown reader in it). Hopefully the in-mat readers are not preconfigured to read only their tags and ignore all other, I doubt that's the case, but it is something that would be good to get confirmation on. If the new mat is available only for their customers that's perfectly fine of course, the ART system is primarily designed for those timing small-medium sized races (typically 3,000 or less) and for these events inexpensive UHF hardware works very well as we all know. I don't buy new hardware because I need better performance, I buy new hardware now because I'm looking for more convenience.

With RaceResult no longer buying Zebra readers in the near future, maybe this means that the availability Zebra readers will increase and therefore (wishful thinking) maybe the cost of them will come down. I think we would all love to see used Zebra readers selling again on Ebay for around $100 each like it was just a few years ago. :)

When I watched their video I did have some thoughts/questions that I would love to get their feedback on:

1. With the reader in the mat, and the mat potentially laying on burning off asphalt during the hot months, is there a concern about the reader in the mats overheating?
2. If I understand the "2 chain" setup, this means that if antenna #1 or 2 go down, then essentially 50% goes down at the same time. For small-medium sized races read rates will probably still be good, but I'd definitely be stopping even small vehicles from driving over the mat (even if it's rated to handle larger vehicles) if that was a concern... I think having a reader in every segment has more pros than cons, but it's worth noting this as a valid concern (which they did in their presentation). Obviously with a centralized reader the concern is the same, but I'm not keeping my centralized reader out in the elements and risking vehicles driving over it when I'm not watching.
3. One thing I want to point out is that even though every segment will have a reader in it, I don't think every segment will be "reading" 100% of the time. For example he said "we can turn on multiple readers at he same time" and "we can switch on more antennas at the same time", he never said all readers will be on all the time. The example mat he showed had 6 segments, so I suspect the reader elements will have to be configured to work together so that maybe two (not close) segments will be listening for tags at the same time and then those would stop reading while other segments are listening for tags. In fact as I'm typing this I heard him say "those antennas will be synchronized so that they don't interfere". Even if it's only turning on 2 antennas a the same time instead of 1, this is a big benefit (assuming the switching rate is just as fast as a monostatic system can achieve). However if I had a race where I was concerned about not getting 100% reads like normal (like a very large race with a chip start), then I would simply set up a second reader and second read zone - both readers feeding data back to my main timing system.

[JK Race Timing Systems]

Snap Brian

I also just picked up on the exact same lines

1 The segments are wider with the antenna further from each other

2 The antennae will be synchronised to work with each other

What I am hearing is that they will probably " Multiplex" the readers , meaning that they will indeed get very fast switching between readers ( not an issue as 1 reader , 1 antenna on 100% of the time (disregarding the fact that that 1 reader still needs to switch from tx to RX mode)

hmmm, clever stuff but the cost is going to be maaaaaddd

[Brian Agee]

In the video he said that they can make "6-8" of their readers for the cost of one Zebra reader. So that puts the cost of their reader between $200 and $300 I believe. Impressive! I wonder how many antennas it can support, looks like it's connected to only one in the mat and the track box.

Obviously I'm assuming that's simply the material cost, they would need to add a significant amount to pay for the R&D and supporting the business - which of course is all built into the mat. No fault in making profit of course, however it does make me wonder (for comparison purposes) how much it cost to build a Zebra reader. Obviously it's a much bigger board in that reader, it has the rugged class housing, it's not designed with just race timing in mind, and it can support up to 8 antennas. So not really apples to apples, but still makes me wonder.

[Springer Sport]

@Brian

 You wrote "Hopefully the in-mat readers are not preconfigured to read only their tags and ignore all other, I doubt that's the case, but it is something that would be good to get confirmation on."

According to the General Usage Contract, Race Result requires a contractual penalty of $50,000 if third-party transponders are read with a Race Result system.

However, until now this General Usage Contract only had to be signed if a decoder case was purchased from Race Result.

[Springer Sport]

@JK Race Timing Systems

According to the presentation, the costs of the new passiv system will hardly differ from the old passiv system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e2AAMOXY7U&t=3235s

[Patrick W]

RFID works as a bidirectional process where sometimes the antenna(s) are sending a signal which the tags pick up to charge to beacon, and sometimes they're listening to hear the beacon that is being transmitted.  The way we typically use it is monostatic which does this transmit and receive on a single antenna.  This is however not the best way to do it, as there is time where the antenna is not listening even with a single antenna setup. 

The other way of doing it (which was the only option with older hardware, but has kinda decreased in usage) is bistatic mode which uses separate antennas to transmit and receive.  This has the downside of requiring two antennas and ports per read point, but means the transmit antenna can always be sending and the receive antenna can always be receiving.  This is much better for faster moving tags at the cost of "extra" hardware.

In reviewing the internals of their "track boxes" there does look to be two antennas inside, so I'm wondering if this is what they are doing as their standard design with these new systems.  This would take your complex and multiplexed zebra reader module and replace it with much simpler single transmit and single receive module with no need to switch the operating modes, no multiplexing, etc.

With each reader being smart (from the presentation you're basically only connecting POE ethernet between each segments so it would appear they're poe, smart, and self contained) you could even do complex things where the reader modules synced to each other and controlled the transmit and receive that is happening - say for example if their testing showed the "transmit" antennas only need to be powered on every other segment to reliably cause tags to be powered with the receive on all segments always listening...  if that was the case you could timeslot the readers so that the transmit antennas pulsed on and off along the mat length so that every other one was powered using their synced clocks (since everything with them is cell network and gps linked every device has an absolute synced timebase)...  Something like that would be fun, but also drop their power usage significantly... 

[Tim Irvine]

Just a thought on the RR presentation. My first impression was they have some pretty lofty goals ahead. But being as I am not an RR timer, and do not use their gear, I could be wrong on this, but it feels like their entire customer base is about to be forced into an upgrade. 

@Springer Sport the comparison to Apple's ecosystem is spot on. Prior to 2011, Apple had positioned themselves in the Pro Video Editing market place pretty well. Avid had been the King or at least the main player for some time, but Apple was partnering with Universities and Colleges and the industry was slowly becoming all Final Cut Pro. Then in 2011, Apple had the bright idea to redesign their editing platform for Final Cut Pro 10. They boasted about it being innovative and blah, blah, blah. The end result was they completely alienated their entire customer base and a sea change happened almost overnight. Universities and Colleges and TV stations all, almost in unison switched to Adobe Premiere Pro. Before that, Premiere was struggling to get a foothold in the market. Today, Apple is an afterthought in the Video Production world outside the home editing guru. This kind of feels like that sort of a boneheaded move.

I do see this as more of an opportunity for the third party suppliers and those of us DYI Timers who like to build new things. I will still use their bibs, but this move could be huge for timers who use RR products.

P.S. The presentation would have been more impactful had they had more to show. The fact that so much of what they were talking about was left back at home leads me to believe it isn't quite figured out yet. I think 9 months is a generous estimate.

[JK Race Timing Systems]

Kudos for them for looking at the core problem associated with Multiplexing antennae and the dead spots in between where absolutely no chip is being read, It is true, No RFID reader has been designed for Race timing, It has always been a spin off usage application for units that were designed for tracking consignment across warehouses etc, places where very switch rates between Antennae are not that crucial, and where they were Bistatic systems were employed.

The fact that they are even looking at 20 meter timing mat distances  means that they must have some high level of confidence in their design.

More power to them