Chip Timing - ID Chronos

Race Partner was written to work with chip timing equipment supplied by ID Chronos.

The equipment is reasonably priced and has given years of excellent service. We use disposable chips that cost about 40p each. We have 4 ground mats that provide a 4 metre finishing line. These connect to the main control box which records the time a chip crosses the mats. ID Chronos have their own software that you can use but we decided to produce our own to give us maximum flexibility for the types of races we organise.

ID Chronos is based in Italy but we have found them very easy to get in contact with. They respond same day to queries (often within an hour) and goods are delivered promptly. On occasions they have taken control of a connected computer remotely from Italy to change the configuration of the control box.

With both Race Partner and the ID Chronos chip timing equipment you can time a race 'chip to chip' or 'gun to chip'.

There are a number of ways we organise the chip timing setup at events, depending on the layout of the race HQ and finish area:

When the finish line is close to the race HQ (where we wish to display the live results on the TV screen):

We use two laptops. A results laptop situated in the HQ and attached to a large TV with an HDMI cable, and a timing laptop attached by ethernet cable to the chip timing control box on the finish line. We use a 'router' in order to get both laptops to communicate via wifi on a network. The timing laptop and chip timing control box outside, need to be kept under cover so we generally have a car placed right next to the finish mats. The timing laptop communicates with the chip timing control box via an ethernet cable and by opening up a browser (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome... etc) with the IP address of the control box (Eg: 192.168.1.101).

The IDChronos control box software then opens up on your browser and you can action various changes to the way the control box works and in particular download the current times recorded by the timing mats. Each time a runner crosses the line the timing file is appended with the new time.

We use an automatic mouse clicker application (free from the internet) to automate the process of continually downloading the appended file.

Race Partner, running on the results computer in HQ, is set to find the file on the finish line timing computer (via the wifi network) and automatically updates the results display with the runners that have crossed the line since the last download.

This way, every time a runner or group of runners crosses the line, their results appear on the TV screen. Friends inside can see the results develop throughout the race and the runners once they have composed themselves and walked to race HQ, can immediately see their position, time, age category position etc.

When the finish line is distant from the race HQ

In some races it is not possible to place the chip timing equipment close enough to the race HQ to allow 'live' results to be displayed inside, because the range of the wifi router exceeds say 100m, or there are a number of building blocking the signal. There are two things you could do:

  1. You can show live results on the finish line (under a van tailgate or small gazebo) - in this case you can run Race Partner on the same computer as the one connected to the chip timing control box and connect it to a TV in the gazebo/

  2. Abandon having live results and simply show results on the TV screen in HQ (or simply print them off) when the race has finished. You can download the time file from the control box when the last runner has crossed the line in the way detailed above or more simply just insert a USB pen into the control box (it has two ports). The time file is automatically saved onto the USB pen. Just use this to upload the time file directly to Race Partner.

  3. If there is a good 4g signal at the finish and either 4g or WIFI at the event HQ you can use the internet and mobile phone technology to communicate between the timing computer and results computer inside. In this set up there is no limit to how far apart the finish line and race HQ are.