Orienteering electronics big market?

[Big Jon]

Orienteering might be able to take advantage of a new government initiative:

"Among other specific interventions, the government will get behind schemes to encourage children to walk to school. The white paper will flag one that rewards schoolchildren with points that can be exchanged for shopping tokens or cinema tickets. Each child will have a plastic card that they must swipe on each of a series of card-readers on their way to school, attached to lamp-posts or other fixed points."


Emit or SI units being permanently positioned on street furniture? - local clubs could use them for training events.

[Scott]

This was the system used in the trial scheme that I think they are talking about (in Merton). If it is going to be springing up all over the country I don't see why it couldn't be used for "permanent urban orienteering courses" as well...

[Big Jon]

Why not offer Emit or SI at a much cheaper rate than this system is be offered at - unless the whole job is a stitch up between government and some big business?

[ifor]

The power consumption is appaling must be getting on for 1000 times worse than SI. Maintaining any system with a good number of units will be a real chore with a batter charge needed every 7 days.

[Scott]

I'm not sure a direct comparison of battery life with SI is fair, as SI units don't usually feature a built-in mobile phone.

[EddieH]

It seems massively open to cheating and even bullying to me. Force Pipsqueak to carry your card and rack up points for you

[Scott]

Their long-term plans sound interesting, though: they reckon eventually everyone will have their own NFC-enabled mobile phones, at which point you get rid of these battery-hungry units and instead just attach dirt-cheap RFID chips to lampposts.

[SeanC]

Someone from one of our local councils contacted us asking us to organise a midweek orienteering event in a local park to help encourage children to walk to school. The local Schools Sports Partnership * have been liasing to set up something suitable. I think the aim is first to encourage the children to walk and jog by doing something fun. Then that might convince them that they can walk more than the 100m from the car to the school, but I am speculating.

Maybe there is a market for an Orienteering garden game using SI/emit type electronics if someone can manufacture something cheap enough without electricuting children. **

* Quango who aim is to improve school sport, to be abolished next year.

** Dragons Den anyone?

[mharky]

Why don't they just go the whole hog and give us all GPS chips in our shoulders, that way the government will know where we are the whole time.

[seabird]

Orienteering might be able to take advantage of a new government initiative:

"Among other specific interventions, the government will get behind schemes to encourage children to walk to school. The white paper will flag one that rewards schoolchildren with points that can be exchanged for shopping tokens or cinema tickets. Each child will have a plastic card that they must swipe on each of a series of card-readers on their way to school, attached to lamp-posts or other fixed points."

In the light of other threads currently running, one can only hope that the government have carried out a thorough risk assessment before exposing these children to the risk of coming into contact with traffic.

[SeanC]

You can be sure that this is the case for the walking bus schemes. Also plenty of flouresent jackets and probably training courses.

[Big Jon]

"they reckon eventually everyone will have their own NFC-enabled mobile phones:"

last thing I'd use a mobile phone for - why would I want anyone to know where I was at all times?

[AndyO]

Why don't they just go the whole hog and give us all GPS chips in our shoulders, that way the government will know where we are the whole time.

of course some of us already have chips in our shoulders

(couldn't resist it)

[andy]

http://www.sportident.co.uk/si365.php
?

[Scott]

I think main the problem with SI (and EMIT) for this sort of scheme would be that, relative to the cost of a basic r/o RFID chip, it would be very expensive to give a whole school full of kids SI or EMIT cards that lots of them may then not make use of and/or lose. Plus you would have to get them to download, which would be a bit of extra hassle, but should be manageable (just stick some kind of automated download machine in the school foyer).