Timing company vs. manual timing for head races

[Kellene Stets]

Hi all
My club has a long-running debate about the value of using a timing
company for our fall head race instead of using manual timing. We have
been using a timing company for several years with relatively
successful results, but many members object to the cost.

For those of you doing manual timing for head races, how are you doing
it? Is there is a number-of-entries-per-day limit where manual timing
is impractical? If a race uses a timing compnay, does it impact
whether or not you would attend the race?

thanks,
K-

[Stelph]

I assume you are from the US so it may be different over there than on
this side of the pond but in the UK the majhority of races are run
using volunteers rather than professional timers (there are some
exceptions, UTRC head for example uses Mikrotime http://www.mikrotime.com/
)

Have never actually done it myself but I believe it is done using
syncronised stopwatches and having pairs of timers who take times at
the start and the finish manually and then ccheck and compare the
times, some of the larger events like the 4s head and 8s head using
video cameras as a back up as well for any questions/complaints/
situations where more than one boat crosses the line together.

As mentioned it may be different over here but using volunteers as
timers doesnt seem to have any affect on whether or not people enter
an event, in fact the only time it is ever questioned really is when
you start getting results that go down to 0.1 of a second (and less
sometimes) since I would say that is well within the boundaries of
human error, but again it doesnt stop me or anyone I know entering an
event

[Tink]

On Oct 24, 10:25 am, Stelph <thomas.k.car...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 21, 5:15 pm, Kellene Stets <kellenest...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all
> > My club has a long-running debate about the value of using a timing
> > company for our fall head race instead of using manual timing. We have
> > been using a timing company for several years with relatively
> > successful results, but many members object to the cost.
>
> > For those of you doing manual timing for head races, how are you doing
> > it? Is there is a number-of-entries-per-day limit where manual timing
> > is impractical? If a race uses a timing compnay, does it impact
> > whether or not you would attend the race?
>
> > thanks,
> > K-
>
> I assume you are from the US so it may be different over there than on
> this side of the pond but in the UK the majhority of races are run
> using volunteers rather than professional timers (there are some

> exceptions, UTRC head for example uses Mikrotimehttp://www.mikrotime.com/

> )
>
> Have never actually done it myself but I believe it is done using
> syncronised stopwatches and having pairs of timers who take times at
> the start and the finish manually and then ccheck and compare the
> times, some of the larger events like the 4s head and 8s head using
> video cameras as a back up as well for any questions/complaints/
> situations where more than one boat crosses the line together.
>
> As mentioned it may be different over here but using volunteers as
> timers doesnt seem to have any affect on whether or not people enter
> an event, in fact the only time it is ever questioned really is when
> you start getting results that go down to 0.1 of a second (and less
> sometimes) since I would say that is well within the boundaries of
> human error, but again it doesnt stop me or anyone I know entering an
> event

When I rowed in the North-East (England) 5 or so years ago, they used
to have a bit of software on laptops, which I think they used for most
races. So would click/type in the crew number as it passed (with a
few stop watches as back up). Collating results was easy as would
merge the two files and the results would pop out.

No-one had a problem with it. I wouldn't imagine you would have a
much higher percentage of errors using a well drilled team of
volunteers as you would with a timing company. I would imagine timing
companies would use a very similar method (although much slicker)
anyway (don't think they use things like GPS timing chips).

I did wonder once whether you would be able to take advantage of the
cheap mass market timing chips used in running for a rowing race, but
I suspect the range of the chips would not be enough to register on a
sensor hanging across the river.

[Kellene Stets]

> I did wonder once whether you would be able to take advantage of the
> cheap mass market timing chips used in running for a rowing race, but
> I suspect the range of the chips would not be enough to register on a

> sensor hanging across the river.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

We looked into them. The problem is that they have to pass within a
couple of feet over a magnetic strip to turn them on. That's not an
option on the river, and there isn't a distance option for shore.

We also looked to see if there might be a way to alter an iPhone app
like RunKeeper to time the course, but there doesn't seem to be
anything out there that did what we need it to. We considering trying
to hire an iPhone developer to create something based off a ping tower
for signaling, but there wasn't time.

FYI - most races over here seem to use manual timers as well, but ours
is one of the biggest fall races.

My concern with manual timing is that we usually have 500-600 entries
in a day. That often leads to 3 boat in the finish chute at the same
time, and we've occasionally had more. The timing company uses video
software that integrates into Regatta Central's Regatta Manager, so
they can clear up the conflicts. They can also get very precise. For
example, we had 2 boats in a head race separated by .033 seconds, and
they were able to document it clearly using the video. Even well-
trained manual timers couldn't do that.


Kellene

[Tinus]

Timing isn't the biggest cost of the entire race, right? It can be
considerable but that would be the case for very good highly
professional timing companies. They are not just a cost, they also
provide good work (e.g. high precision which seems to have proven to be
an added value).

Take into consideration the amount of volunteers you would need in order
to do the same job and the reduction in quality which you would have.
Those volunteers could have been used for other work generating income
or reducing costs. If you look at it in this way the money may not be
that big of an issue while the quality of the contest improves.

Converted into fees for participants how much extra do they pay for the
electronic timing? I know that 15 years ago in local athletic games we
payed only a little extra for electronic timing (It was explicitly
mentioned. Most games were priced the same except the ones which used
electronic timing. Also, only the running events which made use of this
timing were higher priced).

[usbrit]

> sensor hanging across the river.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Head of the Housatonic did exactly that earlier this month. They had
timing chips on the bows of all the crews racing and a timing beam at
the start and finish. Apparently it worked very well (they were
running 2 manual timing systems as a back up)

[Richard]

Got any more details? This sounds very interesting.

[usbrit]

>
> Got any more details?  This sounds very interesting.- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

hi Richard

You are not the first to ask that
I will be emailing my contact at Head of the Housatonic later today
Once I have more details I'll let you know

Martin

[usbrit]

Following is some comment from one of the club members who ran the
head;


We worked with RaceWire (http://racewire.com/) to setup a timing
system, they are a fairly small company located near Boston Mass. In
order to read the boats from a distance Batter Assisted Passive (BAP)
Tags were placed on the bow numbers.

Because the software was setup for road races there were a few lessons
learned that wasn't caught until the day of the regatta. Of all the
boats only 8 were missed with the RFID system (still unsure why),
however this means that a backup system needs to be running for when
the technology does hiccup. Additionally there was an offset between
RFID and manual (most likely do to computer clocks being off) that
needs to be accounted for when mixing times. Lack of communication
between systems meant that people needed to comb through all the data
from RFID, manual, and registration changes. This opened up the
opportunity for human error.

We are currently working on a software solution to address all the
issues we had but only being able to work it on my spare time means
that a solution isn't going to be ready for a few months. My
recommendation is if you can find the proper equipment is to have a
club only regatta before deploying it for a full regatta.

[daviss...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Did you ever get anwywhere with the system you described?

We are trying to come up with something to time our regatta for future. In this day and age we should be able to use accurate timing systems and eliminate stopwatches.

Thanks

[cees.v...@gmail.com]

As many smaller rowing clubs are facing the same problem seeking robust, fast and affordable race timing solutions, we decided to publish the web application we developed for timing our club event into a 'do-it-yourself' application that is quite straightforward - although it does require some practice before you can apply it to a serious event.

It's an internet based application that runs in the web browser on any tablet, laptop or smartphone. you can import a start list from Excel and have start and finish at different location. The clock is synched with a time server. It's called RaceClocker (available at www.raceclocker.com) and has been used now in a few Dutch and international rowing and cycling events.

Cees

Op zaterdag 7 juni 2014 19:41:40 UTC+2 schreef daviss...@gmail.com:

[tjhco...@googlemail.com]

If you're going for an electronic system - always make sure that you have a back-up plan, and probably a back-up, back-up plan!

Imagine a few hundred people paying entry, traveling, rigging, racing, de-rigging and traveling home to find that no results are available because the iPad app crashed...

IMO electronic systems are a nice-to-have and can get results to people quickly if there are no problems, but I've had experience of them not being robust.

You'll therefore want to have a timing team backing up the system - and probably video of the start-finish lines too so you can resolve any issues that you might have.

The various Tideway heads have trialed a number of electronic systems in recent years and will be able to tell you how accurate/reliable those are if you contact their timing teams.

[Glenn Engel]

After a couple years typing times into an excel spreadsheet and trying to insure no mistakes were made along the way I wrote my own timing solution four years ago I've dubbed CrewTimer.

The free timing solution utilizes mobile devices such as phones and tablets for timing, coupled with a website powered by Google's Cloud Platform. Timing is synchronized with GPS across devices and results are instantly available on the CrewTimer.com website as races progress.

With a focus on rowing, the CrewTimer mobile solution is optimized for use in both head and sprint racing. To insure data integrity, the app utilizes mobile device storage of timing as well as automatic reporting to the CrewTimer website of start and finish times. During a regatta, referees can assess penalties or make corrections from their mobile device as well as declare races official. Start and finish events are recorded by pressing buttons on the mobile screen or using a hand held clicker.

Regattas are configured using the CrewTimer website with race details loaded from a simple spreadsheet. This includes age based handicaps applied using the USRowing formula specified in Rules of Rowing. When it comes time to post results, each race is easily printed for distribution and available instantly on the CrewTimer website. The regatta admin can mark results as either private or public depending on their need. This allows CrewTimer to be used for inhouse scrimmages with results only available to coaching staff.

In addition to use in regatta timing, the CrewTimer mobile app can be used for seat racing. In the stand-alone mode the races are configured on the mobile device itself with results easily mailed as either CSV or HTML. An internet connection is not needed for stand-alone mode.

As author of the CrewTimer solution I'm offering this solution free to other clubs with the hope that they will find it useful. It has proven itself in four years of use with improvements being made every season. You can find more information about the CrewTimer solution and how it works at www.CrewTimer.com. The Android app is available in the Google Play store by searching for CrewTimer where you can also see a number of screenshots - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.entazza.crewtimer.

For anyone giving it a try, any feedback and suggestions are welcome and appreciated. I'm hoping some of you may find it useful.

Glenn

[thomas....@googlemail.com]

Thanks for sharing, I think your app looks great and would certainly be a useful tool to every Head race timing team, especially being able to provide a live results page (even if its only provisional) is something I think all events would like to have.

I had a brainstorm about what would be useful in a timing app on a mobile device previously and one feature I thought would be quite useful would be if the app were able to use the camera as a "cheap" photofinish camera. My thinking being it would be relatively easy to set up a tripod with the phone/tablet and then have it record video at the start and finish with the time displayed. When a crew crosses the line the botton is pressed and the app records the time and ideally makes a note in the the video (or takes an image of the video with the timestamp), that way you have a backup/proof which you can refer to if the times are questioned, also if some crews are close in times you can also refer back to the video to adjust the times if necessary as no-one can be 100% accurate at getting the start line correct for every crew, this would be a very useful feature I feel