So, this transponder is 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch? If so, then our would fit as well length wise, it is 1 inch by 1/2inch. We plan to cooperate with a mini club, where they race with 1/28 cars, and I'll report back with the results, and the pictures of the installation.

this is the EasyLaps transponder that becoming the standard here in States. We had been using a different system. But changed last summer has many were finding needing multiple transponders fustrating. I’m unable to travel to the other groups in my part of Midwest, closest two are 5 and 7 hours away.

Interesting
As a racer-

1. Its not really cheaper than standard transponders.
2. It has a monthly fee past one year. (ick)
3. Segment times are great!
4. The pickup distance is worrying for thinner magnetic strips. You bounce wrong and you could lose a lap from the description
5. If it skips a segment, is it smart enough to know where on the track it is vs just not many segments got counted?
6. Internet might be a problem
7. This won't work most places you race, so maybe good for practice or smaller clubs?

As a track-

1. No decoder box to buy is great
2. Internet is a hard sell for a lot of locations, not everyone has tethering on their mobile and hooking that up in some instances can be challenging. (Cell companies are a real PITA about tethering in the US)
3. More reliable pickups really will still require bridges or bumps.
4. Does it work with all the common timing software?
5. How does the process of logging racer transponders for heats, etc work? The manual makes it sound like registering everything might be a bit of a chore.

I could see a new group, especially a smaller club going for this. I feel like it'd be a hard sell to established users. OTOH I'd feel better giving money to people who don't intentionally brick transponders.

It won't work with common race timing packages, they need a decoder or something pretending to be a decoder to talk to. Perhaps they could create a decoder emulation software package to do this.

Regarding intentionally bricking transponders... Since these are cloud subscription based, they stop working when you stop paying your subscription. Not quite the same as bricking, but has a similar outcome.

Hello there TheRulesLawyer,

This solution is cheaper in the sense, that you, as a racer can log your lap times on your own, without the need of a decoder.
The monthly fee is unfortunately unavoidable, that we ourselves also has to pay for server time, and website maintenance (the time keeping application is web based), and we have in the pipeline the plan to introduce monthly, quarterly, seasonal, and yearly subscriptions ( the yearly will be half the price then what is currently indicated). Let me put it to you in another perspective. If you go out to your track to train, and setup your touring car, you use up what, 2 sets of tires on a good day? that is easily 50 euros over there. This subscription will be the in the realm of 3 euros per month, depending on what package deal you purchase ( currently this sub is 6 euros per month). If you think about it, the ( currently) 6 euros is a service fee, that you spend for the possibility to organize races, measure your own lap times, measure sector times, measure pit stop times, even calculate top speed if you're interested in it all for a small fee. If you take a look at your yearly budget of your touring car race, you can see, that this training aid is really not that much.
You can measure split times even on your race, if the race track allows you, to tape down your own magnet strips, or tuck them under the carpet, so then you can have your split times independently from the race lap timing system.
Pickup distance wise we have not experienced any issues during the testing phase. Obviously I'm not saying, that a miss can not happen, it's just the probability is quite low.
If a sector( segment, split) has been skipped, then the all up time adds to the next sector, or to the lap time, if for instance you skip the last sector tape. so, the system doesn't "know" where it is at the track, just keeps sensing the sector magnetic strips, or detects the finish magnetic strip, in which case the time counting starts from zero.
We did not realized, that internet connection would be an issue, but this is where we are We pretty much have unlimited internet on our phones, that can be tethered ( altho, the data traffic is minimal), so this is why we figured, this will not be an issue, since nowadays everyone has a smartphone, with an internet connection on it.
Most places that we race, already made the investment of purchasing expensive time keeping equipment. We do not want to contend with them, rather extending the lap timing abilities. When it comes down to add sectors to a track, with the conventional system this means adding a decoder to every sector you want, and that is an extra 3000 eur per sector. Ours is an extra 30. surely, it has it's limitations, but price/value ratio is pretty top notch if you ask me .

Club wise if you can organize to have one working internet cable, then you are golden ( our local track also has wifi). you can bring your laptop, and Wifi router, and can setup the hotspot, and work the web app on the laptop. I know, this is the ideal case, and this is a limiting factor.
The software and the hardware is one complete package, they work as one. We do have plans on making it compatible with other lap timing software, but that requires some further discussion with the other software's developers, but we certainly have this in our minds.

Logging the racers into heats currently works by manually create sessions for each heat, and name it accordingly ( ie 17.5 touring A heat 02.13.2020), and you start that session, that"s turn is up next. Regarding the manual registering everything, you are correct, This is currently under development, the next iteration of the software can be expected to come out mid summer, where among others we add the possibility, to upload racers' data to a session via copy-paste from an excel sheet ( a report that you can extract from most online websites, where you have to register for the race).

We are fully committed towards our customers, and we DO plan to introduce hardware iterations as well, making the hardware smaller, watertight etc, in the future, but the base technology, and the usability will stay the same. Our business plan does not rely on jumping the technology from time to time, so the users have to change the hardware, but instead we introduced the subscriptions, so that our expenses can be covered( rest assured, we'll not going to have holidays in the Bahamas out of this project, we do this for the love of the hobby).

This occurred to us as well to create an emulator, with what we can tie in to under a common race timing software, the details are currently under development, but this will not be a short project.

Bricking transponders: correct, not quite the same. If your subscription expires ( expiration date is always visible on the website, when you add a racer to a session), you don't have to buy the new technology hardware all over again, but you can go ahead, and purchase the license, even on the track, under 5 minutes, and your transponder is back to work again. This is not the case with the technology change you see.
Some lap timing software are subscription based( yes, this is only a headache to the club officials), same as the larger, motorsport transponders ( altho, they are GSM based), so subscription based finances are not alien from lap timing.

If you are serous about this you might want to revisit the whole cloud concept. Getting internet to the locations will be an issue. Tethering more than 5 or 10 devices (here in the USA) is an issue. You need to make these work without relying on the internet. Have the devices talk directly to a computer over wifi in an offline mode. When it's cloud based not only do you need to rely on the internet you also have to rely on the cloud server being up. Even Google services go down. There is no such thing as 100% uptime.

Do you mind elaborating on what do you mean about beeing an issue tethering 5-10 transponders? If it is a matter of data usage, that is a couple bytes per transponder, really, 10 transponders use less data then loading in a half of a low resolution picture in a google search. Does the statesnreally that thin lined with cell reception?

In Australia the reception is generally pretty good most of the time but you'd still get the occasional dropped packet or random periods where the whole network goes down, but in some buildings there is virtually no signal at all. It wouldn't surprise me if the USA indoor tracks have significant issues there.

Indoor tracks are expensive, the building and carpet make decoders look cheap. Outdoor asphalt tracks are cheaper but there's no carpet to tuck the magnetic tape under, so the cars will be hitting the tape. And many outdoor tracks are temporary, the kerbs/barriers won't be there if you try to practice outside a race day.

Completely agree about rethinking the cloud-only concept. Please consider gigaplex’s point above. Why not make something browser based that can work without internet connection, since the system needs a wifi network anyhow. Type in the IP address and view the timing from the local network.

Otherwise, what happens when the internet signal drops during a race? What if your servers go down?

There is some risk for customers in buying a timing product that you can’t use independently of a web based service. If you aren’t around in a year or five then customers do have expensive bricks.

I understand the business model is based on subscription, maybe you could make it so the transponders will work for 90 days without connecting to the internet, but then then users could just connect them at some point to confirm subscriptions and reactivate. Similar to the way spotify checks for subscription to maintain offline access to music files. If you ever did stop running the online services, perhaps you could remove this restriction with a final update.

There are several countries about the size of Europe but which are sparsely populated away from the major cities, and have sparse mobile data coverage too- especially in the some of the places with land available for rc tracks. USA, Australia, Canada to name a few. I really like the idea, and the clever way you differentiate between sectors and start/finish line and would use a system like this in a slightly different form.

I understand the dismay behind the internet connectivity, but frankly, this, as a drawback we'd never anticipated in mainland Europe ( just last week I was up in the French alps snowboarding above 2800m with full cell reception and 4G connectivity) I guess market research pays off if you do it in advance . At this current state of the project, there is very little that we can do about this, as it is an already 5 year long R&D project, and we felt, that the product came to a life cycle status, where we are happy to introduce it to the large audience, with it's own quirks and features. As mentioned above, we are constantly developing the technology, and adapting it to the market needs, meaning,we do have an idea about how can we tie in under an already existing lap timing software, hence no internet connection will be needed, but you have to purchase the 3.rd party lap timing software separately ( wifi connection will be still required between the transponder and hot spot capable device to communicate)

In the meanwhile, let me answer some of your questions

If the wifi network drops, then the transponder keeps registering the times, until it is powered up, and sends the time data when it is connected again.
Our server contract is a typical commercial contract, that guarantees us 99.9% up time. So far we experienced a one time 2 minute website blackout ,and that is well within our incorporated fail safe time threshold.

The concern about the bind to the software and the whole technology is understood, we do have some ideas to improve customer trust towards us, and the product, but we still have to work on that, one of the challenges of introducing a new product to a quite narrow, and closed market .

In the USA most cell phone companies only allow you to tether 5 or 10 devices at a time. In regards to reception; In real areas it can be rough. Outside should be fine but indoors it can be very bad. My local track is inside a mall and cell coverage is practically non existent.

Hello everyone,

You spoke, and we listened.
We made the device compatible with some offline software. Namingly, we tested the hardware with livetimeRC, RCM, nextleveltiming, zround, flipside racing so far. If the offline software works with P3 or I-lap protocol, then our device is compatible with it. Both lap and sector times are registered ( where software capability allows). This obviously means, that you have to have a laptop with the lap counting software, and a wifi router ( no internet connection needed)

This projects forward 2 product line:

-One is the already introduced, internet bound solution, with license fees, that as I mentioned before, will be significantly reduced( can work on smartphone, tablet et cetera)

- One new product line works in dual mode, online (web app) providing you have a valid licence (as above), or offline, without the licensing costs, or license renewal cost ( because this is an offline solution), where you receive a transponder,magnetic tape, and a software, that ties in our transponders with the existing softwares. This product line will be a bit more expensive due to additional R&D costs, but it will still be affordable.

The offline system's alpha testing is currently undergoing, hopefully we will be able to publish the advancements soon. The transfer between the two systems will be possible,further details to be followed on that.

Again, We are happy to answer any questions, concerns that you might have. This information is actually brand new and fresh ( RcTech Exclusive if you will), we didn't have time to update our website yet

Great, thanks very much for taking on this feedback. I am more interested in this system than some of the others for practice because of the ability to add in sectors. This is something extra that you don't get with mylaps/lapmonitor/rctiming (or not in an easy or cost effective way).

By the way, if you need a tester for the offline system I'm available!

This is indeed a convenient feature I agree.
It is kind of you to offer your free time, but we have an alpha, and an even larger beta tester group near by