RaceClocker News #18
Easy manual sports timing
👋 Hello and welcome to our intermittently appearing newsletter with news, events, updates and other information about our race timing app. #happytiming
Move to AWS completed
Our first ‘Big Initiative’ for 2024 is down (three more to go). After several moves between hosting providers in the past years, we decided some time ago to finally migrate our back-end to Amazon Web Services. This has been a bit of a learning curve with even recently a few nasty hiccups along the way, but after several months of tweaking and testing we’re happy to be running the live production service on AWS. As a user you’ll experience faster and more responsive page loads and interactions, and reliable service for when thousands of your participants simultaneous look for results.
Random draw 🎲
The ordering of participants got once again a lot more capable in the start list editor. First of all, the list can now be sorted by all participant data (age, gender, name, age, handicap etc.) in both up and down order.
Second, ordering can not only be applied to a ‘flat’ start list but also to grouped lists (either by wave or by category). Ordering in that case only shuffles the participants within each of the groups.
Lastly, the start list can get randomly ordered, as some sports require the start list to be ‘drawn’ as in a lottery and therefore in a randomised order.
Longer notes ✏️
The start list notes were originally envisioned as short, single line text messages for short communications to either timekeepers or participants. As we noticed race managers wanting to communicate longer messages, we’re now allowing for much longer notes that also nicely wrap over multiple lines in both the published start list and results, as well as in the timekeeper app.
Inline warnings
Using the start list editor has become more convenient by including instant feedback messages in case entered data is out of range or otherwise invalid. A short descriptive hint will appear underneath the input field when this is the case.
What’s next? Offline data storage
Our next ‘Big Initiative’ aims to further improve the reliability of RaceClocker by storing time stamps offline on the timekeeper's device. Currently, RaceClocker functions seamlessly even when the timekeeper's device loses internet connectivity. All timestamps generated during offline periods are temporarily stored in memory until internet connection is restored, at which point the data synchronizes with the server. However, if the user's phone battery dies or the web browser is accidentally closed while offline, time stamps made during that period are lost.
This limitation is soon to be resolved as we plan to save time stamps directly onto the device storage when made during offline mode. Upon reopening the browser after a crash or closure, offline time stamps will be restored from 'localStorage' and promptly sent to the race server. This feature is currently under development and will soon be available for testing.
Timing the Dutch Tweehead and Skiffhead
The Dutch ‘Skiffhead’ is a traditional and iconic long-distance rowing race for singles and doubles on the river Amstel in Amsterdam. Seeking to enhance the timing experience for timekeepers, the race director, and participants alike, the organising committee turned to RaceClocker. Read more about their experience here.
And a few more smaller improvements…
All text input fields in RaceClocker now accept a much broader set of exotic characters as we’re no longer filtering things like `~%&*' et cetera.
Pop-ups with ‘Extra Info’ about a race participant can now quickly be closed by clicking anywhere on the background of the page (or by pressing the ‘Esc’ key).
All time fields on the second tab in a downloaded Excel file with results are now in the proper ‘DateTime’ format. This allows times to easily get added to or subtracted from each other.
#happytiming #raceclocker
Hi, great to hear about all the great developments with RaceClocker! Wondering if there are any plans to increase the maximum number of entrants per race over 500? For our last rowing time trial in December, we had close to 550 crew entries. An upper limit of 600 would be really useful, even if there is a premium to be paid! Perhaps a fee per extra 100 entries over 500? Hopefully the timing system can accommodate above 500?
Youi team is awesome! Thanks again for the race time toggle for mass start races. We would love to see that same option (view/toggle) to view actual race times/splits/intervals for mass start races in the following locations in order of priority:
1. Split timers
2. Finish timer
3. Dashboard
The "Results" tab already shows this information and more. In general, it's sufficient. It would be most helpful to see actual split/interval/both times instead of universal time on the split timers. Again, the universal time stamp isn't useful there. Of course the universal time is very important to the backend timing system, it's just not useful as a display for us. Thanks again!