Hello programmers!

I have a request, or more like an idea and wondered if anyone in the LFS community could help.

I am currently running the LFS UK Kart Meet and there is no timing at the track. For next year, it would be great if we could have a free system to count the amount of laps each kart does, and even better if we could track the lap times (to the nearest second or two).

I thought of using bluetooth. We have bluetooth in all our phones, and also bluetooth in our laptops. I read this article - which in theory suggests it would work.

My idea is this - Before the race, we would scan each drivers mobile phone and get their bluetooth id. Then, when each driver went out on track, we would have a laptop setup as the master with an application to track when each bluetooth device came within range. As they come into range (bluetooth is about 10m), the laptop would record the time. As the kart then went out of range and came back into range, the timing would be complete for that kart for 1 lap.

Apparently the phones don't need to be in discoverable mode to do this, which would mean no problems with battery life (each driver would do 1.5 hours max). The laptop would have a problem with doing the full days racing, but we could always have the app running on a second or third laptop to take over when battery issues became an issue.

Can anyone see anything wrong with this idea, and more importantly, could anyone help with the app?

Looked at this briefly, but not sure if it does what we need?

And these apps

Another way is to use GPS Positioning, something like this - http://www.racechrono.com/
But obviously not every one has a GPS chip in their phone, as with bluetooth they have (presumably :P)

Bluetooth however the easiest way (providing a program can be made/found) to do this but IMO may not be the most accurate way, as it may record times too early/too late or even miss a lap time.. Maybe even on more than an occasional occurrence

A more accurate way (but defiantly wont be cheap) is to use a (RFID) transponder system

-Dave

Quote from DavidTiger :

A more accurate way (but defiantly wont be cheap) is to use a (RFID) transponder system

I tend to agree with the RFID system.

Using Bluetooth in such a way is very interesting, but I've never done any kind of programming like this, and it would be highly variable depending on the quality of the phones receiver / transmitter. I have some Bluetooth devices that can transmit up to 100 feet, before they fall off, other's fall off within 10, or 20 feet. So you would have to take that into consideration, and I don't think you can give an accurate depiction of how far the transmitter to give an accurate lap time across all units. You could calibrate it based on a phone by phone basis when you login the driver name, and tell the max range that the phone sends and get's information ... but I'm not sure how useful that would be in the grand calculation on distance and signal quality to them crossing the line.

I might be able to come up with an RFID system, I'll get back to you.

Responded on team forum.

Quote from DavidTiger :

Another way is to use GPS Positioning, something like this - http://www.racechrono.com/
But obviously not every one has a GPS chip in their phone, as with bluetooth they have (presumably :P)

Sounds good though.

You only need ten phones with GPS.

Just tried the RaceChrono. Amazing.

Also you can export anything to Google Earth file, Spreadsheet, VBox, Danas, GPX...