Originally Posted by
mushroomed
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
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