Many running races use Champion Chip as opposed to AMB chips. There may
also be other chip systems out there that use less expensive chips. The
word that I get is that only the AMB is dependable for cycling races. There
are some technical reasons for this that I could guess at but I don't have
the real details, just the word that the others don't work.
Actually the chip costs don't really need to be high. RFID chips can be
real cheap. The problem is that AMB quite rightly realizes that they will
make more money selling chips than they will selling systems since the
market is much bigger. (Just like how printers are chip but cartridges cost
lots.) For this reason they use proprietary chips. If someone made a system
using off-the-shelf RFID chips the cost would go down and we would be using
them all the time.
By the way, I agree with everything that Serge said in his note below. Chip
timing is useful but costly as Serge listed below. OBRA is currently using
photo, either regular video or line scanner. This works great for road and
track events but for cross there are problems. The biggest one is that in
cross you need to account for every single time that a rider crosses the
finish line. For the 794 riders at Alpenrose averaging 5-10 laps/ race this
meant looking at 4,500 - 5,000 + images. At 5 second per image this is 7 +
hours to just list the order across the finish line and then MANY hours more
to tabulate, correct errors, re-tabulate, review images, etc. That is the
reason why for the first results we are using manual results gathered by 4
separate officials. These results are gathered by Candi and she does data
entry. This manual system has the most errors but allows production of
results which can occur at the race and will nearly always be available
later that day. After these are posted we get notes regarding errors,
evaluate the recorded images, etc. This process takes a couple days. This
past week there were problems with how the officials recorded their manual
results which greatly increased the amount of time it took to deal with
those results and also decreased their accuracy. We will be addressing
those issues for the next race. We were also inhibited by poor number
placement or positions at the finish line (sometimes by people that should
know better) as shown in the pictures below. (PLEASE be more attentive to
number placement and your position at the finish.)
All results systems have costs and benefits in terms of personnel,
equipment, time required, accuracy, etc. All systems have potential error
points some of which will turn into actual errors. As with most decisions
there is a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done. This year that came
down against use of chips.
Mike Murray
-----Original Message-----
From: obra-bounces@list.obra.org [mailto:obra-bounces@list.obra.org] On
Behalf Of Ty Lambert
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 18:29 PM
To: Serge Domkowski; obra@list.obra.org
Subject: Re: [OBRA Chat] timing chips
Question: Why can't we use the same system the Portland Marathon uses? It
certainly doesn't cost $80 a chip.
----- Original Message -----
From: Serge Domkowski
To: obra@list.obra.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: [OBRA Chat] timing chips
Mike's answer to this question was prior to last year's cross season as well
as to last year's Tour where the AMB timing system used during last year's
Cross Crusade was also used. During last year's as well as this year's Tour
it has been extremely reliable. We talked to Mike at the end of the last
year's cross season, and I don't believe that all he still holds to all that
he wrote in that post. While I believe he still believes that chip timing is
too costly for most cycling events in Oregon, he did seem to find the
technology to be more than adequate for timing cycling races.
In any timing system, manual, chip, or photo, human error as well as
equipment error are issues. Below I've tried to break down the failure
points during a race.
Registration (Chip Assignment,Bib Assignment,Participant Info,Category)
Participant (Chip Placement, Bib Placement)
Timing (Lap Reading)
Timing (Backup Lap Reading)
Scoring (Times, Places, DQ, DNF, Penalties, Exceptions)
Photo as well as manual timing rely on a human eye being able to see and
read a bib number on a participant. The environment can have a huge impact
on this being possible. Chip timing is virtually unphased by the
environment. In Cross like a few other sports, the environmental conditions
can vary significantly and have a huge impact on manual and photo timing.
While Chip timing has the most Equipment on the course by a huge margin, it
costs relatively little to have a 2nd read point as a backup to account for
catastrophic equipment failure at the finish line thus limiting it's
equipment issues to a few people. The costs are much higher for photo for a
backup. Human error on manual timing is huge and increases significantly
when the number of participants increases, as such it is best suited for
races with a small number of participants. All of this must be weighed when
considering the reliability of the timing system used.
As to why we are not doing chip timing this year, I can not say. I will
however be glad to list many of the issues there were last year with the
chip timing.
1. Cost. Each chip costs us $80. We are currently missing 30 or so from last
year's cross series at a total of roughly $2400.
2. Many people failed to wear their chips. In triathlon and running where
chip timing is used a lot, failure to wear a chip often results in a DQ.
Because chip timing is new to cycling, we manually added everyone who failed
to wear a chip to the results. Other than people not wearing chips, we found
we missed very few people. A little under 1 a race which I think comes out
to 0.5%
3. Registration issues. Just as manually timing runs into difficulty when
you don't know who belongs to what number, so does chip timing. For the
first race we didn't have registration information until close to a week
after the race. After that we got the registration list in the form of
manual results either the night of the race (sometime after 8PM usually) or
the next morning. This list was occasionally missing participants who we
knew from our data as being in a race. If you look over last year's race
results on Athleteslounge.com you will find at least a few 'unknown' in
there.
4. Cost. Our timing staff had to be on site at 6:00am on race morning and
didn't get to leave until around 4:00pm. Add to this time spent assigning
chips, the need for 3+ people for the day, 3+ hours of adding manuals and
registrant information, Equipment costs, travel, etc. All these costs are
paid for by the race director or more accurately the participant. In the
case of the Cross Crusade, we charged our minimum of $2500 and at the losses
hoping the timing would help us advertise AthletesLounge.
I hope this helps shed some light on chip timing.
Serge Domkowski
Athleteslounge.com
Rick Johnson wrote:
Paul,
See Mike's answer to this question from last season:
http://list.obra.org/posts/obra/show/19655
There was quite a lengthy discussion on this topic.
http://list.obra.org/posts/obra/2005/6
Rick
paul formiller wrote:
Just curious, how come no timing chips during the Alpenrose Cross race
(expense, reliability, other)?
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