emiTag practice

[Alun]

This year's JK will use emiTags, EMIT's version of touch-free punching. EmiTags are the watch-like items you strap to your wrist, and which flash when you waft over a control. They were used at, among other events, the 2015 British Middles and Sprints, and last year's Winchester Urban Race.

If you want another opportunity to practice using emiTags, and you can get to South Buckinghamshire on Sunday 17th February, then the Chiltern Challenge is for you. It's a National event, with a full range of colour courses, in very pleasant typical Chiltern mixed woodland. Pre-entries are open until Sunday 10th February. More details at http://www.tvoc.org.uk/application/documents/events/2019%20events/CC19/event_page.php.

[Alun]

Quick reminder that the published closing date for pre-entries for the Chiltern Challenge is this Sunday.

[housewife]

I had a go with the emitags at the SOUL in Cove, Aberdeen today, and had two controls not register. I didn’t check for the flashes that show that the controls had registered. I always have punch and descriptions on my right side, map and compass on my left. Control descriptions take up my full forearm, so the emitag thing was hidden by them. I could have twisted my arm around to take a look to check for the flashing each time, but I couldn’t really be bothered. It was also quite tricky to get my wrist to hit the board each time.

The answer is to have the thing in the palm of your hand, with the Velcro arranged accordingly, and check for the flashes, and you’ll have no problem!

[plain lazy]

As far as user experience on the course at Cove on Saturday is concerned I really got on well with the emiTag wrist strap, and I managed to check the flash each time... so they are easy to use as a competitor.

I then collected 13 controls from the area, bearing in mind they didn't have any stakes I was pretty surprised at how large the units were. They aren't even slightly user friendly for the planner or control collectors.

Given the large number of controls at a JK and the large area to cover I suspect the planners and their team will have a hard job lugging them about.

Why are they so huge? The standard Emit units are tiny...

[Snail]

Standard emit controls are passive. (The only battery is in the emit card itself). A major advantage is that they can be left in the forest, e.g. for permanent training courses, indefinitely.

In contrast I think the touch-free control units are powered, and continuously transmitting the relevant control code. So they need batteries (and periodic replacements).

An interesting side effect is that with emit it is the touch-free system that offers the (possible safety) backup of the control unit storing the numbers of passing tags, when the standard emit units do not. With SI it is the other way around: standard punching gives a record in the box; touch-free punching does not.

[keduro]

Standard emit controls are passive. (The only battery is in the emit card itself).

Sorry, not true Snail, standard emit controls are in fact active and have a battery contained in the body. They do wear out. During an event we know which units have low batteries as the low battery status is logged on the competitor's EMIT card and we get that flagged up to us at download.

[Snail]

Yes. Not sure what I was thinking there.

(Perhaps the original version 1 controls were passive? The current v2 ones clearly need a battery to operate the light)