Online Radio Controls with SportIdent

In England, the South London Orienteering and Wayfaring club SLOW, recently used a new type of radio control at their local night event (see results). 

The controls developed by club member, Gavin Andrews, are low cost units, constructed from an existing PICPAC design with custom software to translate from SportIdent master controls into Radio. 

At the event three radio controls, one at the start, one on a mid-control, and one at the Finish sent radio notifications back to a real-time display at the download area.  The Start and Finish were used by all courses and the mid-Control was on the longer courses allowing radio results for all courses and additional intermediate for the longer ones.  Real-time displays were show in the download area, a sample of one window is shown below.

The constantly updated online displays show each runner that has started with their running time and with all finishers ranked in order.  The best time so far is show in blue with runners who can potentially beat the best show in green and overtime runners in red.  So below if Simon finishes within the next five seconds he can take the lead.

Interestingly the displays proved of interest to two major groups; firstly the leaders were interested in whether their results would be maintained or their times would be beaten (especially when looking at the results of people passing the mid-control). secondly, friends and relatives could check on the progress of their colleagues to see how long it would be before they got back to unlock the car!

For more information see Gavin's site www.radiotiming.com.