The Timing Tab is used to connect to your RACE RESULT timing systems and includes the Data Exporters for forwarding of data to third party software/systems, it also contains a group of other tools designed to make Timing a race as simple and easy as possible. It should be your go-to window when timing an event.
Chip Timing
When opening the Timing Module you will first be presented with the Chip Timing window, which gives you a brief overview of your timing systems and the first steps to timing a race.
This window can be used for most types of races if you have everything setup already, the functionality of parts of the Chip Timing window is explained in the additional sections below.
Alternatively there are advanced options on the other windows for more complex requirements such as when you have multiple Timing Systems to monitor and some additional tools which are useful during the event. Connecting to systems and the additional tools and functions are described in the sections below.
Details
Systems
This is where you connect to and monitor your RACE RESULT timing systems including Ubidium, RACE RESULT Decoders, USB Timing Box and Track Boxes.
If you are timing using RACE RESULT online and wish to connect to a locally networked decoder or USB Timing Box you will need to run the RACE RESULT Web Server on your computer as this will create the connection between the browser and your local devices.
Any connected devices (via your local network or online) are listed automatically, grouped by device type. If your locally connected system is not shown you can press Add Decoder in Network Manually in the top right corner to connect via the IP address of your decoder.
Critical information about your systems is displayed here including connection, location, device name, device time, device mode, battery remaining and information about your antennas or loop settings.
To connect to your timing system you simply need to select the timing point to send the data to, or if using Automatic Timing Point Selection then you can leave this blank, and click the green play button. To stop sending timing data you can click the red stop button. Note that these buttons are completely independent from the START button on the decoder, they are not used to activate or deactivate Timing mode on the decoder, they simply control whether you are collecting data from a timing device or not.
Clicking on a Device ID will also open the System Control window with additional control settings and functions for the system.
You can also choose additional settings by clicking on the grey icon with arrows, here you can set a time offset and choose to ignore times before or after certain limits.
If your event file is online and you are connected to decoders which are online, in the event of your laptop losing internet connectivity the timing module will remain connected to timing systems for a maximum of 30 minutes assuming your decoder is still connected to the internet. This allows the collection of timing data to continue even if your connection is interrupted.
System Errors
If the system is reporting an error then the erroneous element may be shown in red to highlight any potential errors, errors will be cleared once acknowledged or cleared on the system.
Extended Settings
The extended settings for systems and passings files allow you to enter a time offset which will automatically be applied to all times when being recorded to the event file, this can be a positive or negative value.
It is also possible to define values for Ignore Before and Ignore After, these values create a time frame for which passings should be accepted. You can enter either before or after, or both values as required, these values should be entered in the format DD:hh:mm:ss.kkk. This is often used when replaying a system and you only need to consider times after a certain point.
It is finally possible to enable a beep which will play an audible beep in the browser when a passing is received from this connection.
Chip Reads
Chip Reads
You can view all of your raw timing data from connected RACE RESULT systems under Chip Reads, by default all your raw data is sorted by the time ID (most recently receieved times at the top). You can see the connection (system name), Bib, Time (of day), Time With Difference (from gun), Contest, Result / Timing Point, Order (your order number for the chip), Hits (number of times the chip was recorded) and RSSI (strength of the chip read).
In the bottom left you can select and choose fields you want to display. When exporting, it will always export exactly those fields that are visible at the time of the export.
If you are using an Active Loop Setup then you will also see displayed the Loop ID, Channel ID, Transponder Wake Up Count, Transponder Battery and Temperature.
Clicking on a column will sort the column by that field, which will allow you to sort times by time of day, bib or even battery for active transponders. Some columns can also be filtered to specific values.
Read more about how to understand this data in Passive Detection Data / Active Detection Data
Map
Map
The Map will show your GPX course if you have uploaded one, and the location of the RACE RESULT Systems and Track Boxes which are online and sending data to your Customer ID.
Settings
In order to make the Timing more streamlined we moved a number of key settings to the new Timing Module so that they are just a click away.
From here you can edit: Start Times (T0) / Finish Time Limits , Chip File and Automatic Timing Point Selection
This section also includes the setup for Raw Data Exporters + Tracking Forwarding.
Analysis
Under Analysis you will find some tools which are useful for analysing your event whilst it is ongoing, these are designed you aid you with Timing the event by identifying any erroneous data, most often caused by participant error.
Contest Overview
This gives you an overview of each contest, showing the number of participants signed up, started / on-course and finished in each contest. Hovering over any of the segments gives a breakdown by gender also. You will also see a running clock next to each Contest which shows the elapsed time since T0.
Time Visualisation
Time Visualisation is a very helpful tool to check if participants miss reads and if times are realistic, or in other words to identify cheaters.
The tool shows one line for each participant. The different colors represent the section times between two split timing points. The length of the bar represents the time and the fastest athletes are at the top.
If you click a line you will see the details and can immediately disqualify the participant.
Use the settings bar on the left to select the contest(s), gender, status or apply any other filter, you should also select the splits or results that will be part of the visualisation. Sometimes you may want to exclude certain times. Usually you will want to see just the key timing data for each Timing Point, not the intermediate split times. A label can be applied to each line, this could be particularly useful when comparing multiple contests together.
If you only want to see participants who are missing data then click "Atypical Participants Only", the view also has a live update checkbox which will refresh the visualisation as new Results are calculated, this is useful for monitoring a race whilst it is in progress.
Best Practice Tip: If you have a large number of splits and the data does not make sense, try deselecting Timing Points to just keep the important Results which show where somebody is on the course as opposed to split times between 2 Results. Sometimes participants standing at the side lines can cause some erratic data as the Visualisation cannot determine the correct order of the Timing Points, it is often best to ignore this data in the participant record.
Read Rates
Read rates offers additional analysis of Splits to compare detection rates across the Primary & Backup timing points and also considering any manual raw data entries.
For each Split the expected number of participants is calculated, either based on the number of finishers (if Finishers only is ticked) or by the number of participants seen at this Split or a later one. This is then used to calculate the percentage of participants detected at the main timing point, backup timing point, a combined rate across both, the number of manual reads and the total participants detected at this point across all.
A table is generated for each Contest independently and the total read rates across all Splits is also shown at the bottom of the table.
An additional optional filter can be applied.
Leaderboard
The Leaderboard in the Overview Window shows the winners or current leaders of the event. Through the settings at the bottom of the screen, you can select a Ranking and a number x so that the first x participants in each group of the ranking will be shown.
If you would like to show different columns (or use a different format), you can also select a List from which the column settings will be taken.
Enable the Auto Update checkbox to auto refresh the page every 30 seconds.
Check Start Times vs. Contest
Check Start Times vs. Contest is a helpful tool to find particiants who started in a contest other than the one they registered for. In particular when using Raw Data Mode, these may have no times in their results at all because all raw data detections are filtered due to the wrong contest. In consequence it would be difficult without this tool to find these participants.
Preconditions
Please consider the following preconditions for the tool to work:
- Only works with advanced Results at this time
- The timing system is running on time of day
- Start times will be kept
- The result that holds the start time is selected as Start Result in the Contest Settings.
What you see
- Underneath the headline with the name of the contest, those participants are listed that are registered for that contest, but started probably in another contest.
- The area with gray background color shows the time span the majority of participants needed to complete the proposed contest.
- The red bar, on the contrary, shows the time span of the contest the participant is actually registered for.
- The vertical lines show the participants' chip reads. The legend at the bottom of the screen shows which color belongs to which timing point.
- If there are many reads of the same chip with only small gaps in between, the reads may appear like a bar.
Making changes
You can either change the contest of the participant or change the status (for example to DSQ). When clicking on the bib number, the Participants Window shows on the right side of the screen and you can check the Raw Data in detail before making any changes.
Exporters / Forwarding
The exporter feature built in to the Timing tab of RACE RESULT 12 can be used to trigger the sending of data to external sources, this can be used to either send E-mail / SMS templates or export timing data to other systems such as third party timing software, tracking partners, LED clocks and more.
Exporters include some built-in functionality for specific partners but it is designed to be fully flexible to support a wide range of uses.
The exporter runs on both online and offline versions of RACE RESULT 12.
Sending E-mail / SMS
Exporters can be setup to send E-mail / SMS templates, for example sending finisher e-mails or SMS when a participant finishes. This functionality has replaced that of the Instant Push tool.
E-mail and SMS exporters can be triggered by either a Timing Point or a Split. When a time is received or calculated for the selected Timing Point or Split then the exporter will be triggered (if the filter is also valid).
When sending E-mails / SMS via exporters the default filter for the template will be pre-loaded in to the exporter filter and the Set Checkbox Field will be set when the template is sent.
Setup
Setting up an Exporter to send an E-mail / SMS template requires a name for the Exporter, a selected Timing Point or Split and the template to be sent. Optionally a filter can be applied which must also be true for the participant in order to send.
Once created the Exporter will be shown in the Chip Timing and Systems tabs where the exporter can be started, paused or stopped. When starting an exporter which is sending an SMS template you will be required to enter the username and password for your account as the sending of SMS will automatically deduct the credits from your account.
When running Exporters can also be replayed, so this can be started even after the first data to be sent or replayed if an issue prevents messages from being sent. Exporters also observe the setting for Keep Timing Active, meaning that for long-running events they can be started and will remain running until the end of the event.
Filters
Particularly when using a Timing Point trigger for exporters you may wish to setup a filter to ensure the time which is received should really trigger the sending of the data. For example if using the Finish Timing Point then you may wish to filter on [Finished].
For more complex filters you may wish to use the Raw Data Data Fields.
Raw Data Exporters
Exporters trigger the sending of data to a new location upon arrival of new chip reads. The data sent is normally raw timing data but any data from RACE RESULT 12 can be sent in this way.
This may be used by users of third party timing / scoring software to receive data from race result systems, hence a quick initial event setup guide is included below.
You will need some basic knowledge of how to setup Timing Points in RACE RESULT 12, times must be assigned to a timing point and then pushed to the location. If you are identifying the detection simply by the device ID you could send all data to a single timing point and export the data with device ID.
Tracking Data Forwarding
Exporters can also be used to send Raw Timing Data from RACE RESULT decoders, USB Timing boxes or Loop Boxes to Tracking Partners for use in tracking visualisation.
- For passive timing data or active passings from the Active Extension of a decoder which has a GPS location and is synced to GPS time then the reported GPS location of the decoder will be forwarded.
- For USB Timing boxes, Loop Boxes in Store or Repeat Mode or Decoders without a GPS location then the Timing Point Position (From Main Window - Timing Points) is forwarded.
If there is no GPS location of the decoder or there is no Timing Point position setup then the data will be sent with no location, which some Tracking Visualisation setups will subsequently ignore.
Setup
The Tracking Exporters are setup via the Timing window in the main navigation bar, then by selecting Exporters+Tracking.
You can setup multiple exporters by entering a Name for each, selecting the Timing Point, applying a Filter if necessary and selecting the Destination. In most cases it will be sufficient to setup a single Tracking Exporter for "All Timing Points" to send to the tracking partner.
Some tracking partners also require a valid Customer ID to receive passings, this is your race result Customer ID and should be entered in the CustNo field.
Enabling Tracking Forwarding
Tracking data forwarding rules can be setup in advance but then must be started, you can view all the exporters in either the Chip Timing or Systems pages in the Timing Window.
To connect a tracking forwarder simply click the green play button, if you need to resend data then the blue button will resend all available data to this destination.