Originally Posted by
DirkW
And again, even at current prices, these transponders are IMHO only a rather minor cost compared to the rest of the equipment you need to race (and to keep racing!)
Agreed, a transponder will easily outlast 3 sets of tyres.
Originally Posted by
DirkW
But for some reason, all that has happened so far, was to rip off the cheap and simple part, the transponders. Apparently it's much harder to build a decoder, right? Or is it too expensive to do? For whatever reason, to my knowledge nobody else has successfully built and properly marketed a complete working decoder / timing system so far.
I've seen others come and go but there's several issues that always crop up. First, if they're a legal entity then they're open to lawsuits for patent infringement if their decoder supports RC4, so invariably they're not compatible. That then leads to the majority of racers not attending tracks that use the alternate systems because their existing transponders don't work there. And many of the alternatives use IR line of sight instead of an RF loop which is far more sensitive to mounting location.
If it's a dodgy knock off that does maintain compatibility and flies under the lawsuit radar, there's an issue with target audience. Membership numbers are vastly different all over the place but let's assume an average club has 100 members and 1 decoder. The decoder audience is approximately 2 orders of magnitude smaller. Not as much money to be made. Plus that company probably won't support the product with warranties and firmware updates. A functional decoder is the lifeblood of a track, so they're far less willing to risk it to save a few bucks.