ART worked great

[Brian Sponseller]

On Friday we held our annual Oiler Invite Cross Country meet.  We had a total of 8 races 2 of which were combined so 6 total different starts.  We had a total of 647 finishers between High School and Middle School runners. I used 1 mat antenna and two side panel antennas.  No missed reads but I did forget to start the antennas listening for the boys Varsity race.  I realized 30 second into the finish and had to go to the back up camera to hand enter the first 13 finishers.  I only time 3- 6 races a year so I learned a lot Friday about how flexible the system is.  I also learned to not end the JV races too quickly.  I stopped listening and missed a few stragglers in the JV race and had to add them manually also.  All missed athletes were my error.  I am timing two more meets this year both smaller in size but the last is our Regional meet so the pressure will be on to get it right.

I do need to purchase new laptops with the following specs (for our new FlashTiming front facing camera) so any advice would be great.  One question I have is about a Ethernet adapter to USB?  Most of the laptops I am finding don't have a 1 GB ethernet port but do have USB4 port and I would have to buy an adapter.  My questions is will slow down the performance of ART or not?

Minimum system requirements Specs:

CPU with a benchmark value of 10000

16 GB of RAM

200 GB Hard Drive

1980x1080 resolution

WIndows 10, 64bit

USB 2.0 port

1 Gigabit Network Adapter (Ethernet)

Thanks for your feedback and any advice you have.

[Brandon Daniels]

There are actually tons of computers out there that still have 1Gig Ethernet:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/products/Notebooks/ci/6782?filters=fct_external-ports_2740%3A1gb-gigabit-ethernet

I would definitely stay away from USB to Ethernet adapters for mission critical events. Disconnection or any issues with the USB adapter at a can't miss Regional XC meet will be unforgivable. 

I've used USB-Ethernet a few times on backup computers, and they worked fine. But I'd never risk my whole business's reputation on them. 

I work in a very unforgiving race timing market, even for fun run 5K's (e.g., some are almost treated like the Olympics, haha).

So you'll definitely want to stick to laptops with ethernet cards that are soldered into laptops especially with high speed timing cameras like FlashTiming or Finish Lynx.

It's not that you'll see native performance issues. But if that USB cable so much as wiggles and disconnects at a critical moment (or if the USB ports on the laptop itself weaken over time), you're screwed.

[David Lustig]

Great job with that event Brian! I think there are many ways to skin a cat because I have solely used an ethernet to usb-c adapter for the past 3 years. My ethernet port was extremely unreliable and lost connections to my finishlynx cameras during track on numerous occasions. I have yet to lose a connection with to this adapter type and I don't think I'll ever look back.

I'm timing about 30 track meets each spring and most of my xc races range from 75 to 500 finishers in a race without ethernet issues.

I've found that not all ethernet cables are built the same and my troubles usually stem from that.

Dave

[Brandon Daniels]

Dave,

That's why I build all of my own ethernet cables. Not only can I guarantee their quality, I can repair them if need be, and I can customize them to any length I want.

Btw you can always take your computer into most computer repair shops, and they can check/repair the solder connection from your ethernet card to your motherboard.

Technically speaking, a USB port is just as susceptible to damage as an ethernet port. Having owned dozens and dozens of timing laptops, I've had more USB ports go bad 

on computers, and 0 bad ethernet ports. 

For me, it's about minimizing risk.  One can take hundreds, if not thousands, of trips in their car without wearing a seatbelt and not get into a wreck. 

Doesn't mean that it's best practices tho.