THSCC Forums

With regards to timing and Axware, I ran in a race (literally jogging) earlier this year hosted at my wife's school. The timing equipment was wireless and everyone had an inexpensive unique identifier in their number tag (transponder?). Has anyone considered one of these systems for autocross? I would think their use would be more widespread thus possibly more affordable. Could the software be tweaked to handle cone penalties etc? The sports may be too dissimilar from a software side to pursue, but just a thought.

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92 Miata 1.9L naturally aspirated. SSM 21

RFID timing is accurate to about .1s, which is probably fine for a foot race, but probably not for an autocross. Photo beam timing is accurate to about .001s.

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"Every ship is a minesweeper, once."

... and is a lot more accurate than the (very precise, mind you) GPS tracking in the AIM. (~.3s apparently) When polling, you'll only be as accurate as the poll interval. With RFID, there's the added delay of the transmitter powering up.

It would be cool to have RFID for less accuracy critical information. Being able to compare sector times live at an auto-x would be awesome.

That's a shame RFID is less accurate. I was thinking how much time it would save in registration if members had their own RFID chip they could use for a season or more. Seems like it could also make life simpler in the bus during an event since each car would be uniquely identified during start and finish.

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92 Miata 1.9L naturally aspirated. SSM 21

As a means of staging, H*** YES. I've toyed with the idea of barcodes for rallyx, but the scanners I have must be within a foot of the tag. (they'd stand up just fine to dust, until they're blind, but there's an old textile engineer trick for that -- periodic blast of compressed air.)

RFID tags would be pretty cool for staging and the grid, especially if you could get it to work with a android or iphone that has a NFC chip. Just wave the handhled device and you know how many runs they've had and where they are, etc.

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2017 Autocross Chief of Tech

2000 E Street Miata
2015 Focus SE EcoBoost 6 speed
2015 Fiesta ST (Wife's ride)
2012 Yamaha FZ1 sorta crotch rocket? All I know is 150HP and 487 lbs is fun!

This has been discussed on and off for the last 10 years. I once thought it was a good idea, and maybe it is, but now? I am a firm believer in the KISS principal.

The best events I can remember? All times were written on post-it notes and stuck on a board. I even did the final data entry and indexing, and didn't mind doing it. Ahhh, the night series.

What we need are good course designs (logistics, not commenting on any actual courses). The bus needs to be in sight of the start, so numbers can be read by T&S. This eliminates 90% of radio cross talk. Courses need to penalize by encouraging poor lines, not high cone counts. Now, the 2nd major source or radio cross talk is eliminated.

I don't run many events these days, but the basics haven't changed in forever.

Hey Scott,

This last one was setup with the bus laying between start and finish so they could see both. The slalom was tough so some cones got murdered, but overall you are correct. One point to add is that a good course allows cars of nearly any size to follow basically the same line.

I had one person send me a note saying they thought the bus was close to the finish. I think it was 20 yards away from the line at least? Did anyone see a problem there? I didn't really.

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2006 Civic Si - #24 HS for 2015

2005 GMC Sierra
1991 318is Garage Ornament

I didn't see any problem with the location of the bus. If anything, people would have spun into the grass, not towards the bus, and there was plenty of run off.

Course design suggestions are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they all stink.

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2012 MX-5 Sport SUV

I wasn't at the event in question. Just talking generic event setup stuff, it was a response to all the talk of RFID, and how the greater the number of complex systems we become reliant on, the greater the likelihood of a problem with one of those systems.

Stuff like RFID and whatnot come off as high level wishlists that are difficult to implement and don't provide a good return on the time invested.

This is some cross-thread chatter stuff, but I think if Carlton does wind up writing timing software that can replace AXWare, the big items are open and closed loop timing and having segment times would be the icing on the cake. I'm not sure about you guys, but I'd be down for buying a few wireless timers and being known for the club that breaks down your autocross time into segments.