Electronic punching

[Big Jon]

Not 100% failsafe - sods law states that after your brikke has failed, you cross the finish line just as a large person crosses right in front of the video camera and blocks any view of you........and you'd even punched all controls properly to register the pin mark......

ps you've also just done a class winning time.... for your first ever BOC victory in 20 attempts.....

[Klebe]

Whatever you carry to record the 'punches' mustn't mess with your compass

[Kitch]

a card that tells you

"this card has registered your visit to this specific control"
information to be displayed from memeory - i.e. after the card has captured it.
if not captured then display an error so a backup punch can be taken.


Eddie:
Failsafe literally something that fails to a safe status and or tells you it has failed
a valve that shuts (or opens depending which represents safe) if its power supply fails
a fire alarm that sounds when the battery runs low
these are failsafe

you are talking failure proof

[distracted]

a card that tells you

"this card has registered your visit to this specific control"
information to be displayed from memory - i.e. after the card has captured it.
if not captured then display an error so a backup punch can be taken.

Why not have the backup punch system, whatever it may be, integrated anyway? If the "punch, check it's recorded, oh it hasn't, backup punch" happened midway during a major race, affected you but not your main competitor, and you were <5 secs down on first place, then you'd be slightly aggrieved that the unit failed...

Integrating the backup and making the system easy to use should mean one punching action, irrespective of what's going on with the electronics...

[EddieH]

Pongo you sound seious . Virtually no-one wants to go back to pin punching.

Whatever the problems with either electronic system they are well worth having in comparison to what we had before.

[Mrs H]

No eddie - think about it Pongo is getting somewhere near it now An electronic control card rather than a SI Card or brick. i think that is what emit has tried to be even if not to everyone's satisfaction and it all seems to come back to battery power and reliability - even if the electrical burden was greater would it still be such a problem if we had to recharge our control card every 20 races or so?( like we have to recharge our head torch battery - mobile phone or camera batteries)

You would punch the card at the control rather than the control with the card - get a light on the card to show the correct control was punched (so the card would need programming with the control numbers before hand). that way you could even have a paper back up if you liked and there would be a battery level indicator too. If the battery ran low during the race the card could always be programmed to shut down with enough power left to recognise and record the (distinctive) finish control - so you always get a time to go with you paper back up

[roadrunner]

One thing that no-one's said about the Emit backup system is that it can prove you visited all the controls, but not what order you visited them in. Of course, the same was true of old-fashioned control cards, but when we used those courses didn't cross over themselves as much as they do now, and if there was a scope for cheating by taking controls out of order, there'd be a manned control somewhere to check. So, on a modern-style course, what's to stop me using my Emit card with a battery that I know is flat, and collecting all the backup punches, by the shortest route?

[distracted]

So, on a modern-style course, what's to stop me using my Emit card with a battery that I know is flat, and collecting all the backup punches, by the shortest route?

1) If it's a decent sized event there'll be a 'check' box (MTR reader) in use and your card won't work/wake up.
2) No-one's there to time you at the finish

[graeme]

So, on a modern-style course, what's to stop me using my Emit card with a battery that I know is flat, and collecting all the backup punches, by the shortest route?

If you want to cheat, you can just use a safety pin - the Emit backup pattern isn't exactly secret.

I know you're joking, but I think orienteering has an obsession with preventing possible esoteric means of cheating. Really, who are you cheating? Who else really cares if you have a somewhat better time?

[Scott]

Or, of course, you could just sit in your car with a set of control descriptions, your brikke and a laptop...

If a mechanical backup is going to be an essential part of our new system, does this mean that we're writing off contact-free punching completely? It would seem a bit of a pity, but I can't think of any way to guarantee the fabled "100% reliability" with it.

[Neil M40]

It makes sense to have an independent system for overall timing. The video system sounds fine but there are possible situations where it might fail as Jon says. What about the chip systems used by road races eg London Marathon? These seem to be pretty reliable (if they work for 30000+ runners) although I have to confess I don't know anything about them. Are they prohibitively expensive? Would they stand up to the tougher conditions in orienteering?

[Nails]

Video evidence -team was dsqed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghb7dOq8sTQ

[martin]

The control units (forest, clear, start and finish) contain valuable information hidden from download. For example competitors who fail to download, where competitors who are lost last punched, and the punches of chips which subsequently fail. Ideally this information would be broadcast to download. However, if each time a competitor punched, the control also stored the chip number of the previous competor who punched in the current competitor's chip, then most of the relevant information would reach download quite quickly.

Also the clear station could have a button to select whether the user wanted controls to flash or beep. The 2 bits of info would be stored in the competitor's chip, and read by the control, which would give the requested feedback.

[andy]

However, if each time a competitor punched, the control also stored the chip number of the previous competor who punched in the current competitor's chip, then most of the relevant information would reach download quite quickly.

SI cards are quite severely limited by space (hence their size), this certainly wouldn't be feasible with an older SI card (5).
Problem with this is that it wouldn't only be a remake of hardware to deal with but a complete rewrite / addition to the software.
I just don't see the necessity in this idea.

Also the clear station could have a button to select whether the user wanted controls to flash or beep. The 2 bits of info would be stored in the competitor's chip, and read by the control, which would give the requested feedback.

not a bad idea, not sure I see the point though, why (as a competitor) would you not want both a beep and a flash? I've certainly never located a control by hearing it beep when someone else punches it.