Yacht & dinghy race timing app

[sighmoon]

After a long absence from racing I joined the local dinghy club. On duty with the OOD , I was surprised to discover that the smartphone era has bypassed sailing clubs and race timing still involves hurried scrawls on soggy paper and trying to read illegible writing from the sign up sheet.

If anyone's interested, I've developed an app to make things easier:

https://sailracetimer.com/

It runs from a browser so there's no need for clubs to ask the OOD to install anything.

If anybody has time to look at it and give me any feedback I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[Cardinal]

That looks like a very useful app. I shall pass the link on to some who may like to try it. Thanks for your efforts and for sharing freely.

 

[sighmoon]

Thanks Cardinal.

I couldn't work out how to edit a post, but I've changed the URL. It is now:

https://ood2.net

No worries if you've sent the old one to anyone - it will forward to the new one.

 

[lw395]

That is quite neat.

When mistakes happen, which I think will be clicking on the wrong boat as it goes through the line, it would be nice to have a simpler way of correcting. E.g. you click on Laser 123456 and then notice it should have been 123546, how can you correct that mid race, before the next boat comes through?
I would think in a big fleet, finding the right boat to click on in the heat of the moment won't be trivial?
Will it actually be quicker than writing down a sail number and time?
I have done a fair few OD events where only the order matters, but also fair sized PY races where boats finish within seconds of one another.
Sometimes you need to resort to incomplete info.
E.g. you take a time for GP14, blue hull, and fill in the gaps before putting it into Sailwave.

You will of course be up against sailwave, your choice is either to make the timing app a separate function and export to sailwave, or to take over that functionality. At the moment we share sailwave files with entry details so would not want to change if it meant manually re-entering all that.

Typically for a club race there are two people in the race hut.
For something important, we're looking at multiple 'scribes', a caller spotting the line with a dictaphone and maybe a video.
For sure, the manual entry of times into Sailwave is a chore, but it does not take long in reality, and it is part of our process of checking between the various people recording.
You need several people for a respectable size fleet anyway, to manage flags, timing and watch for OCS.

I have seen a few automated race timers, mostly hardware, some including sounding the horn.
Not sure what the optimum is.
There is a fine line between automating the dull bits and allowing flexibility to get things into shape when it all gets a bit hectic.
It's easy to mock scribbled bits of paper, but they are very flexible!

The smartphone era hasn't so much passed us by as the novelty has worn off. Couple of years ago, loads of us were tracking ourselves around the course and comparing in the bar after, it was pointless and I've not seen anyone do that this season.

 

[Muddy32]

Or Halsail just as good, but manual entry with instant results.

 

[lw395]

Or Halsail just as good, but manual entry with instant results.

What's that like to use when you have a bunch of boats finishing very close together?

It's easy to record the times, but allocating the times to boats in real time is the problem,
You see a group of six dinghies approaching the line together, you identify them, it's not clear exactly what their order will be.
Let's say they are a mixture of classes, so as well as getting the order right, the times must be within a second or so.
But if two boats of the same class are within a foot of each other, the order must be right.

We can do that pretty well with our soggy bits of paper.
I can see it getting into a right pickle with all this pointy-clicky and typing.

 

[sighmoon]

That is quite neat.

When mistakes happen, which I think will be clicking on the wrong boat as it goes through the line, it would be nice to have a simpler way of correcting. E.g. you click on Laser 123456 and then notice it should have been 123546, how can you correct that mid race, before the next boat comes through?
I would think in a big fleet, finding the right boat to click on in the heat of the moment won't be trivial?

Thanks lw395.
So firstly- mistakes: you can amend results by clicking the pen icon (most phones) next to an entrant. You can then either manually change a recorded time or delete a lap entirely. Do you think it needs something more accessible - a delete button (followed by are you sure?) next to a lap time, for instance?

And finishing large fleets:
The way to do it would be to put them in finish order as they approach the line. You can do this either by clicking the up arrow next to each boat, or by entering a sail number (or sail number fragment) into the search box (top right when a race is in progress.)

The multiple scribes option is there - multiple devices can record start times together.

It does the series calculating in the same way as sailwave / Halsail and makes series results available both on the ood2.net site and on club websites.

 

[sighmoon]

I can see it getting into a right pickle with all this pointy-clicky and typing.

Yes, a mouse makes it awkward - more so a trackpad on a laptop - but from a touch screen tablet / phone it's a cinch.

 

[lw395]

I'm fairly familiar with e.g. Sailwave's sailnumber wizard for entering finishers in order.
It's a pretty quick way of searching for the right boat. Provided you've got a proper keyboard. On a tablet it's going to be slow.

I think for most of the bigger events I've been involved with, there will always be the need to fall back on just recording whatever you can, then going back to fill in the gaps. You can do that with paper on a clip board. If I need to fall back on my clip board, I don't want to have my phone in my hands. It's got to do the whole job or it's more trouble than it's worth.
I'm interested in ways to get the results collated more quickly, but we wouldn't want to throw away the checks and balances of multiple people recording results in their slightly different ways and checking them on entry to a PC.
Don't forget that much of the time, the raw data gathering must be done from the deck of a modest launch at anchor in whatever an English Summer throws at us.

 

[sighmoon]

Thanks for all your feedback. You've been very generous with your time.

The search is something I've spent some thought on. When a race is underway, there's a search box in the top right corner of the screen:

Starting to type a number there produces a shortlist of matching boats.

Keep typing and the short list gets shorter.

You can either click a matching boat from the shortlist or, if you keep going so the typed number matches only one boat, that puts it above the pack, in the list of approaching boats, under the (previously entered) Fireball.

You can reorder the approaching boats too. The leading boats will disappear from the top once a lap is timed.

 

[lw395]

I can see it's got potential to at least capture the majority of the boats.
Probably with a club PY fleet there would be very few 'rushes' and you could get around those.

For a 100 boat open PY event, I think I'd be reluctant to rely on it. But that's not something we do every week.
I don't think an Android ap needs to be in that market to be successful.
Obviously I'm very cautious about changing the way we work and cocking up an event that people are serious about.
I don't intend that to come across as negative.

One of the things we have as a fallback is a dictaphone. I did try using my phone for that, but a single purpose device seems better.

 

[NotBirdseye]

Couple of accessibility reminders.

Please (if you haven't done so already) set tabbing and appropriate label names. Some may prefer to use the app through a screen-reader (visually impaired).

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

There is a fine line between automating the dull bits and allowing flexibility to get things into shape when it all gets a bit hectic.
It's easy to mock scribbled bits of paper, but they are very flexible!

As long as it's waterproof paper! Yesterday's Winter Series had me sat on the foredeck of a 34ft moderate displacement boat in just under 30kts with the anchored bow dipping into solid water every now and then. Race 1's ordinary paper cum papier mache ball actually smoothed out quite well in the warmth of the saloon a little later on. Race 2's was waterproof and my primary school teachers would have been quite proud.

 

[Birdseye]

What I would like is the facility to video the finishing line on my phone with the video recording the time. That way |I could sit down at the PC afterwards and get each time and each indentity spot on. As it is there is a slight time lag between spotting the finisher, putting the bins down, looking at the clock , writing down the time and then hopefully catching the next finisher

 

[lw395]

What I would like is the facility to video the finishing line on my phone with the video recording the time. That way |I could sit down at the PC afterwards and get each time and each indentity spot on. As it is there is a slight time lag between spotting the finisher, putting the bins down, looking at the clock , writing down the time and then hopefully catching the next finisher

Are you doing this as a one man band?

I think there is a big difference for what I need as a club race officer for a 15 boat handicap race vs a 70 boat dinghy nationals.
Even the little club races I don't like to work alone.
So much easier for one person to watch the line through binocs while another writes and watches the clock.

Over the years, I think there have been all sorts of attempts to make life easier. One thing I recall was a timer which simply stored the time every time you pressed the big button. you could then roll back and write down the times so long as you got the order right. I think it was based on a load of TTL logic ICs.

IMHO the best aids are:
1) the right people assisting
2) dictaphone
3) a means of excluding interruptions, including any assistants not covered by 1)
4) video is sometimes useful, but it rarely sees anything two spotters won't have seen.
5) somebody watching from t'other end of the line, with thier own soggy bit of paper.

Video is more useful for spotting OCS. But if you can't do it to Squadron Line standards I think it can cause more grief than it saves.

 

[sighmoon]

Couple of accessibility reminders.

Please (if you haven't done so already) set tabbing and appropriate label names. Some may prefer to use the app through a screen-reader (visually impaired).

Normally this would be a big factor in every project.

For this though somebody using a screen reader would struggle to work their way round the buttons quick enough. There are 3 links per boat (edit, pin & record time) and dozens of other elements on the page. I imagine it would take tens of seconds to find the button.

What I would like is the facility to video the finishing line on my phone with the video recording the time. That way |I could sit down at the PC afterwards and get each time and each indentity spot on. As it is there is a slight time lag between spotting the finisher, putting the bins down, looking at the clock , writing down the time and then hopefully catching the next finisher

That's a good idea.

Are you doing this as a one man band?

I think there is a big difference for what I need as a club race officer for a 15 boat handicap race vs a 70 boat dinghy nationals.
Even the little club races I don't like to work alone.
So much easier for one person to watch the line through binocs while another writes and watches the clock.

Over the years, I think there have been all sorts of attempts to make life easier. One thing I recall was a timer which simply stored the time every time you pressed the big button. you could then roll back and write down the times so long as you got the order right. I think it was based on a load of TTL logic ICs.

IMHO the best aids are:
1) the right people assisting
2) dictaphone
3) a means of excluding interruptions, including any assistants not covered by 1)
4) video is sometimes useful, but it rarely sees anything two spotters won't have seen.
5) somebody watching from t'other end of the line, with thier own soggy bit of paper.

Video is more useful for spotting OCS. But if you can't do it to Squadron Line standards I think it can cause more grief than it saves.

Yes, I'm a one man band.

Club racing would be where I envisage it being used to begin with. Certainly anybody wanting to use anything for a big and important race would have to know it well enough to trust it and know what its limits are.

I wouldn't write it off for a 70 boat nationals though. As many devices as you like can network to record the finish together, so you can have as big a team as with a paper race. I imagine each scribe could sustain recording a boat every 5 seconds (time to type the sail number (or part thereof) to queue up finishers and then clicking the record button the instant each boat crosses the line), so significantly faster than handwriting, and certainly less error prone. When there are enough breaks in the pack to queue up a few finishers, they could time boats as fast as they can move their thumb for a while.

If all else fails, times can be entered afterwards, with the help of any other aides (i.e. video, dictaphone) to get any finishers that were missed live.

 

[lw395]

I was asking birdseye whether he was running races as a one man band, not whether you were writing this app alone.

I think I would struggle to find sufficient volunteers of the right calibre who can type quick enough on their waterproof data entry terminals.
The problem with multiplexing time recording operatives is that you'd need some means of assigning each finisher to a particular data entry person.

I'm sure the way we work is not state of the art. We do however have a hard earned reputation for coping and getting the results right.
I'd be interested to know more about what other clubs etc do, for instance Cowes seems to have a pretty comprehensive system for getting multiple sets of results published very quickly. Other clubs are pratting about with live tracking via GPS but can't even get the results on the web or notice board before tea time. No doubt people will want to use the trackers to tell the results system when a boat finishes, this is clearly do-able on a large scale yacht race, not sure it's always going to give the right answer for dinghies. It will do 90% of it but not the 10% which causes stress currently.
I'm sure some people are goingto want to at least check their results are not inconsistent with the tracker data.

 

[Muddy32]

Two sets of recorders with the RO calling and one timekeeper along with a video recoding has been necessary at larger and therefore well staffed events where handicap classes are involved. And yes waterproof paper
I have found that the video is most useful in difficult situations and is also good to be shown in the bar to all as entertainment albeit that the start video provides even better subjects to talk about!

 

[lw395]

Video is a full time job for one person.
It's also a choice between filming approaching boats and keeping a fixed view of the line. The latter might be better for resolving questions but you still get issues identifying yet another grey boat with white sails..
With a fixed line like Cowes you can have several cameras.
With a boat finish, a camera on a boat at the other end from the committee boat is good.

 

[Birdseye]

Are you doing this as a one man band?

I think there is a big difference for what I need as a club race officer for a 15 boat handicap race vs a 70 boat dinghy nationals.
Even the little club races I don't like to work alone.
So much easier for one person to watch the line through binocs while another writes and watches the clock.

Over the years, I think there have been all sorts of attempts to make life easier. One thing I recall was a timer which simply stored the time every time you pressed the big button. you could then roll back and write down the times so long as you got the order right. I think it was based on a load of TTL logic ICs.

IMHO the best aids are:
1) the right people assisting
2) dictaphone
3) a means of excluding interruptions, including any assistants not covered by 1)
4) video is sometimes useful, but it rarely sees anything two spotters won't have seen.
5) somebody watching from t'other end of the line, with thier own soggy bit of paper.

Video is more useful for spotting OCS. But if you can't do it to Squadron Line standards I think it can cause more grief than it saves.

Yes, I am often doing it as a one man band. And what makes it worse is that we "borrow" the line from a neighbour yacht club so I am stood on their balcony with lots of friendly people passing by and some stopping for a chat.

Our courses are round channel markers and the start line is between that clubs flag post and a buoy close inshore. So no person in a rib to help at the offshore end. Usually two fleets of maybe 20/25 boats combined.