Race Track Signal Lights

 I know this is a fair bit off topic but in the interest of safety, I've decided to post these comments.

There always seems to be a shortage of volunteers to work track-side as marshals at events. In some instances there have been some desperate measures employed, including pulling spectators out of the stands in order the meet the requisite number of workers the sanctioning body requires for the event.

To augment existing flagging stations (or in lieu of unmanned flagging stations), there are a couple solutions I have uncovered. In keeping with my Volkswagen and Cadillac comparison paradigm, I'm going to discuss 2 different offerings. I have no doubt there are more on the market, but these are the two that I've found and studied.

Clearwater Lights appears to be primarily an aftermarket motorcycle light manufacturer and the race track warning light system they offer is somewhat of a side business, albeit a very important one from our perspective. I categorize them as the Volkswagen solution. I'll cover them in more detail next.

RaceAmerica offers a more intelligent (and expensive) solution. Their track safety lights are part of a comprehensive range of products for motorsport and competitive racing applications. I categorize them as the Cadillac solution. They'll be covered in more detail soon but in the time since I initially looked into them, they've upped their product offering to perhaps be more competitive with the Clearwater Lights solutions.

I had seen the Clearwater light system in use at AMA Pro racing events several years ago and they seemed to work well. I have never seen the RaceAmerica system in use.

The nice thing (from my point of view) was how the RaceAmerica software integrated with the MyLaps Orbits software so that when we change the flag status in Orbits, the electronic flags track-side would also display the same flag (red, green, yellow, checkered). This 'magic' is all accomplished through the RMonitor protocol that Orbits uses. The Rmonitor protocol is quite extensive and I've studied it in depth. At one point I wanted to write an application that utilized the data provided by Rmonitor so I actually created Regular Expression (RegEx) statements to parse the Rmonitor data but I abandoned the project. It was still a useful exercise from a developer's perspective, though. I became intimately familiar with creating Regular Expressions. Enough of that.

When I contacted Clearwater Lights and mentioned to them how integration with Orbits (IMHO) would be a significant improvement to their product offering I was met with, how shall I put it, reluctance. They thought it would require an inordinate investment for a limited return. I understand their business perspective and I even sent them a copy of the Rmonitor protocol to pass along to their developer but the idea fell flat with them. Quite disappointing.

Orbits 5.x Tech Note

The Epiphany

While I was mucking around with my new copy of Orbits 5 that came with the X2 system, I stumbled across a neat new feature in Orbits Remote: App Feed.

App Feed allows you to broadcast live timing to your local network (wired or Wi-fi) for users with the Speedhive app from MyLaps. My initial reaction was I would need another computer to run yet another instance of Orbits Remote to activate the App Feed,

That's fine. You can do that. But I have a cheaper way to do it.

I'm running 2 computers; one is dedicated to timing only (Timing-1), the other is for Administrative activities related to Timing and Scoring (Timing-2). That's where Orbits Remote resides. Timing-2 is also a backup computer in case Timing-1 blows up.

The magic phrase is Virtual Machines.

So the trick is to run Windows 10 Pro on Timing-2. Enable Hyper-V to allow you to create Virtual Machines. I've embedded a hyperlink above to take you to the Micro$oft web site for that topic. You should probably have 12-16GB of RAM in Timing-2 to run VM's, but RAM is cheap.  There are pre-requisites mentioned there that you will have to research.

In a nut shell:

1. Windows 10 Pro (or Enterprise or Education)
2. 64-bit Processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
3. CPU support for VM Monitor Mode Extension (VT-c on Intel CPU's).
4. Minimum of 4 GB memory (not even close to enough IMHO)
5. Enable Hyper-V
6. Create a VM with Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10
7. Install Orbits Remote
8. Run the App Feed in Orbits Remote.

I know all this is pretty high up on the Geek Scale, but it is possible for those that want to give it a go.

If anyone tries this, let me know how it works out.

TrackIntel Ups and Downs

I'm going to back up a little and go a little deeper into TrackIntel's history and my experiences with it.

A History

TrackIntel first came to my attention many years ago in the incarnation of Zoomius. It was based on the premise of using RFID tags (inexpensive as all get-out) over the pricier transponders used by AMB and dBcom. If memory serves, the Edmonton Motorcycle Racing Association  (EMRA - Edmonton, Alberta) was the first organization I knew of that was using it. I do know that they had teething issues and the technical support from Zoomius was nothing short of spectacular.

Then I heard stories about Zoomius in Calgary (Alberta) with the CMRA (Calgary Motorcycle Racing Association). What I heard from that installation was there were issues getting signal from the RFID tags to the antenna. I think they were even resorting to suspending antennae over the track to pick up the signal. But the track closed down and CMRA effectively ceased to operate. But again, the technical support to get it running was over the top.

So time moves on and I notice Zoomius is re-branding itself as TrackIntel and is partnering with Tag Heuer. That's pretty cool, I think, they're moving forward. They will have compatibility with AMB, Tag Heuer and (I think - correct me if I'm wrong) dBcom hardware in addition to sticking with their own RFID solution. That makes it a pretty compelling product.

The problem for me was I had still to actually see the product first hand, with my own eyes. See it in action and going through it's paces.

dBcom Gets Retired

In 2012 (maybe it was 2013) the track where EMRA held their events closed. The facility was called Stratotech and the land became so valuable the owner got an offer for the land he just could not refuse. So Stratotech closed and the timing equipment (AMB) Stratotech used was bought by the WMRC. It included an older model single loop AMB decoder an old computer, some printers, transponders, etc. It all came with an old version of AMB Orbits so I thought it would be a simple matter to transfer the license from Stratotech to the WMRC and upgrade.

Not so fast, buddy boy.

The Orbits software license is non-transferable, I'm told. But they offered me a hefty discount and soon after the WMRC had their own license for Orbits.

But our Orbits license would languish for 3 long years while we gave TrackIntel a run for it's money with our new (old) AMB decoder.

TrackIntel In a Nut Shell

Think cloud computing. It works. Think HTML as the front end for a cloud computing product. Maybe not so much, unfortunately.

Don't get me wrong on this. I really, really wanted TrackIntel to work. And it did. To a certain extent. I'm not out to slag or denigrate a product, people or a company that made a valiant effort to produce a product that was innovative and forward-thinking.

Sadly, there were just too many small issues that added up to headaches and just being a pain in the butt. I don't know for sure, but I suspect some of it can be attributed to the Ubuntu OS on the laptop we were supplied with to act as our Event Control Server (ECS). Other issues I can only conclude were indicative of a project that needed time for fixing whatever it was that I ran up against.

Let's see if I can remember most of the little things that got under my skin:

1. Ubuntu didn't seem to like a Microsoft USB mouse
2. Formatting issues with printer output
3. A bar graph to show lap progress for each racer became a light show (apparently this was because it didn't yet know how long the lap was going to take. Please explain why it would start doing it part way through a race?)
4. The same bar graph would suddenly (seemingly randomly) show "0%" after the bar graph which forced the single line to wrap around and force a 2nd line, which kind of messed up the whole information display

   

   Just add 0%

5. The back end seemed to be hard wired to expect events to only be held on a Saturday or Sunday. That made it interesting to trick it into cooperating on a Monday event
6. Layout issues with column widths when registering racers for events
7. Want to add an ad hoc race to the day's schedule and quickly populate it with racers? I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I'll say it again. The technical support from TrackIntel was beyond superb. What scared the bejesus out of the club's President was an email informing us the entire TrackIntel Tech Support staff would not be available for one of our races. I settled him down when I promised him I was going to run Orbits in parallel with TrackIntel that day. If we got stuck, Orbits would get us through the day. It wouldn't be pretty and it would be a helluva lot of work for me to clean it up, but at least we'd have some scoring data. But that email was pretty much the nail in the coffin for TrackIntel.

Then, there was my wish-list of features I'd become used to while I was using Orbits; like highlighting personal best lap times and the fastest lap of the race, for example. Orbits has an almost uncanny way of offering multiple little visual cues that TrackIntel wasn't. Granted, Orbits had a jump start on TrackIntel by many, many years so those features were likely the product of years of requests by customers and refinement after refinement. Maybe once TrackIntel has had time to mature, it too will be as feature rich as Orbits.

But maybe not. Perhaps the developers want to differentiate their product from the competition. That strategy is up to them to pursue but it may also be what drives customers away.

Oh! One feature in TrackIntel that was both innovative and cool from my perspective was the ability to have TrackIntel re-run a session based on the data already collected and stored on the ECS. From the perspective of a nerd, that was really neat to have available. We used it several times to fix issues we encountered during our time with TrackIntel.

Boy, How Things Change

Well, it's been a while and a lot has happened (which partially explains the long gap between posts). Dbcom still has no web presence that I'm aware of other than selling transmitters on eBay. AMB (Mylaps) continues to dominate technologically yet insists on obfuscating and making their web site as useless as possible to those looking for hard information. I know, it's a peeve of mine that I had to vent on.

Goodbye TrackIntel

Three years down the road and I've had enough of TrackIntel. The basic premise of cloud-based timing and scoring has it's merits but the implementation has to be compelling. Frankly, what I saw and experienced wasn't. Compelling, that is. My first exposure to TrackIntel was from a distant organization and it revolved around using cheap as dirt RFID tags and a track-side antenna instead of the pricier transponder/transmitter/timing loop paradigm.

The motorcycle racing club I volunteer with made a decision to move from dBcom to TrackIntel based on the glowing comments of a member well versed in matters of Information Technology but evidently not well versed in the Timing and Scoring world. I'll leave it at that and offer up the explanation that the fit and finish of the TrackIntel product just wasn't there. On the positive side the technical support received from TrackIntel was nothing short of excellent. I just wish we never had a need for technical support. End of story.

Hello AMB (MyLaps Orbits) and MotorsportReg.com

Yep, I suppose you could accuse me of blatant commercialism, but I don't know of any other way of telling you where I am going next.

The Setup

Last season I was reaching the end of my patience with TrackIntel and my time with the local sports car club and their systems had me convinced it was time for me to show the powers-that-be the difference between TrackIntel and the MyLaps Orbits/MSR (MotorsportReg.com) solution. I set up another laptop with Orbits on it and ran it in parallel with the TrackIntel rig. I showed both systems in action side by side and let them reach their own conclusion.

dBcom and AMB Software Solutions

I'll start with AMB's software offering first because it's the easiest. It's easiest because there's only one to choose from; Orbits. With dBcom there's 2 current offerings that I know of and there may still be a DOS (?!?) version out in the wild.

AMB Orbits

At the time of writing this, the current version of Orbits is 4, Service Pack 4. Their web site has links to their YouTube site where you can view video tutorials on using Orbits and you can even download a demo copy of Orbits 4 SP1. It's a pretty astute decision on their part to create the YouTube site to help bolster their online presence.

As a side note, over the years that I have been paying attention to AMB and their web site, they seem to have developed a peculiar inclination to make their web site less and less informative. I know that may come across as strange but for me, it's my honest assessment. It seems to have been accelerated after their merger with ChampionChip. The whole story of AMB is available here.

AMB Orbits 4 SP1 Demo

This is what you will see when you start the Orbits Demo.
There's not much to it on the surface but believe me, it is just packed with capabilities and features. This is one of the reasons AMB is considered the Cadillac or the creme de la creme of timing systems. I started using Orbits in a production environment just a year ago and I've been using Kronos2 on a dBcom system for 10 years and the difference is huge. Orbits has been undergoing continuous refinement and feature enhancements for years. Unfortunately, Kronos2 has languished purely because the developer wasn't selling enough copies to make it worth his while to continue investing resources into a product that just wasn't making him any money. It's a sad statement to make but it's true.

Kronos 2

Blind Apex Kronos 2

Kronos 2 is a great basic software package that works with both dBcom and AMB hardware (amongst others). When I had decided that dBcom was the way to go for the Westwood Motorcycle Racing Club I had a choice between a DOS based program or Kronos 2 from Blind Apex. Kronos 2 is a Windows application and any sane IT person will tell you you want to run a Windows application under Windows, not a DOS application. The reason why is that DOS applications expect to have full access to all the resources in the computer. That includes CPU cycles, RAM, mass storage read/write (i.e. hard drive), sound and video. Windows, being what is called a Virtual Memory Operating System, takes care of sharing and managing those resources amongst all the applications that are running on the computer. DOS applications don't take kindly to having to share. They simply don't play well with others. A great deal of effort and thought went into Kronos 2; the developer is a racer himself and he knew what was needed. Time and money limited him in what he could initially offer in the feature set and as I said above, he didn't see the sales volume justify additional effort.

Tempo

A few years back dBcom decided it was time to come up with their own Windows based software. They call it Tempo. I was asked to preview the pre-production versions of Tempo and provide feedback to the developer and dBcom. Tempo provided basic functionality with the dBcom hardware and seemed to work. I never had the chance to spend a great deal of time using it in a production environment and honestly never got the hang of the interface. To me it just didn't work in an intuitive manner. That could just be me, though. Your mileage may vary.

dBcom and AMB, side-by-side

In a nut shell, dBcom is the Volkswagon and AMB is the Cadillac in this comparison.

Price and features always go hand in hand and on the surface, AMB is the clear winner. But not so fast, my friend. dBcom offers up portability that AMB with their embedded timing loops just can't match. I should also mention that over the past few years AMB has been working their way through a change in identity brought about by a change in ownership. Although they are commonly known as AMB, they currently market themselves as MyLaps. I think I'll stick to referring to them as AMB for the time being.

Hardware Overview

dBcom and AMB both use electronic 'black boxes' to decode or decipher radio frequency (RF) signals received from vehicles passing by a particular point on the race track. I've never asked either organization exactly what's in the decoders but it would make sense that at the core is a digital signal processor (DSP) that examines the signal strength of the RF coming from the vehicle as it passes by the timing point and assigns a time stamp value to the identifying information received when the signal is strongest.

dBcom Hardware

dBcom transmitter

dBcom uses a small transmitter about the size of a cigarette package mounted on the vehicle that sends out a RF signal with a unique identifying number. This RF signal is received by an antenna located track-side. This received signal is then sent on to the decoder for processing. If the distance from the antenna to the decoder is 30' (feet) or less, the connection is made with a 30' length of RG-6 coaxial cable. If the distance is greater than 30' then dBcom can provide an amplifier to boost the signal strength from the antenna to the decoder and (very important) a 300' length of RG-6 coax must be used between the amplifier and the decoder. More on this later.

The transmitter is a single circuit board mounted inside a plastic case with room to connect a 9 volt battery. The transmitter operates with a 9 volt battery or can be hard wired to a 12 volt DC power source (i.e. 12 volt car or motorcycle battery). I've seen the result of one falling off a motorcycle and it wasn't pretty although I don't know if it was run over by another motorcycle while it was laying on the track.

I've been using the same decoder for 10 years now and I don't think the basic technology has been upgraded since it's inception. The output from the decoder is a RS232 DB9 serial connection which is then expected to be connected to a computer (and/or an optional serial interface printer). Computers these days just don't come with RS232 inputs so a RS232 to USB adapter must be employed to make the connection. The information from the decoder makes it's way to the computer where a software package processes the information for determining timing and scoring results. The manufacturer states accuracy to within 3/10 of a second and the receiver can handle up to 10 'simultaneous' crossings. Personal experience shows if a transmitter is missed on a pass due to a large number of vehicles passing in a short period of time (for example, a standing race start), the next time the field comes by, they will be spread far enough apart that the receiver can process all the passes as necessary. It is a simple matter for the scoring person to manually insert a passing that was missed into the software record.

The dBcom decoder offers some flexibility in that dBcom offers 2 flavors of their system; support for up to 400 unique transmitters (called RaceTime) and support for up to 1,000,000 transmitters (called RaceTime2). Apparently there is enough room inside the decoder enclosure to install circuit boards for both RaceTime and RaceTime2 capabilities. The system I have used is RaceTime2, so things may be a little different using RaceTime.

The antenna is pretty much a flat rectangle about 2 square feet in size. I use it mounted on a tripod beside the track. If it is going to rain (or heaven forbid, snow) I always drape a plastic garbage bag over it and tape the open end of the bag to the legs of the tripod so the wind can't pick it up and blow it away.

The in-line amplifier is used for long runs from the antenna to the decoder (dBcom calls theirs a receiver). The installation I use is about 50-60 feet from the antenna so I asked dBcom for some technical input as to whether I could dispense with the amplifier and/or additional 250' of coax that laid coiled up on the floor of the Race Control building. I figured I could eliminate the extra coax and use an RF attenuator to lower the signal strength to an acceptable level. Their answer was to go ahead and try it without the amplifier and extra coax. Any sensitivity setting from the 10 o'clock position to the 3 o'clock position is acceptable. It worked for me.

AMB Hardware

AMB transmitter

Similar to dBcom, AMB uses transmitters mounted on the race vehicles, a decoder and software. The major difference lies in how the signal gets from the transmitter to the decoder. AMB uses loops of wire embedded in the track surface to detect the magnetic induction coming from the vehicles and here lies the most obvious difference between AMB and dBcom. You can pick up the dBcom antenna and take it home with you. Not so much with a loop of wire embedded in the track. On a positive note, the AMB transmitters are much, much more rugged than the dBcom transmitters; they are essentially a solid block of epoxy resin with electronic components securely embedded within the epoxy. The AMB transmitters are also waterproof; the dBcom transmitters need you to put them inside a Ziplock sandwich bag to waterproof them. There are different models available for different types of vehicles and although I've heard that some can be interchanged in order to save money, it could be an exercise in false economy.

AMB decoder

The AMB decoder supports 3 timing loops and a maximum track width of 60 feet. Typical accuracy is within 2/1000 of a second for the transmitters. AMB has embraced newer technology and uses Internet Protocol (IP) to communicate with the scoring computer. You also have USB and good ol' RS232 connections available if you want. They also use GPS technology to determine the physical location of a decoder because... wait for it ... AMB supports multiple timing points. That translates to more timing loops embedded in the track surface but it also means you can record entry and exit on and off of Pit Lane, Start/Finish (of course), create speed traps and record sector times. The track can be divided into sectors to allow the racers to more accurately determine where they may be faster (or slower) than their competitors. All these extra timing points do not come cheap, however. The wire for the timing loops themselves is cheap. It's the cost of the additional decoders, power sources, network infrastructure and additional software modules that can really add up.

Let's Get Rolling

Josh Hayes Laguna Seca 2009

After  a couple of abortive attempts to get into the websphere commerce engine, I realized I was too late to market with my 'Big Idea'. Then it occurred to me that there may be others out there that have gone through the very same trials and tribulations I've endured.

I thought this might be a useful forum for others to benefit from the experiences of others when it comes to using timing and scoring systems at motorsports events.

So here we go.

Back in 2004 I was doing volunteer work with the Westwood Motorcycle Racing Club. Problem was, there was a huge shortage of willing and capable people to do timing and scoring of race events. That left the club's President in a major bind.  If you are racing, you want to know who came first, second, third, etc., etc.. So, since I was the de facto club geek, he wanted me to find a solution. Another member had already contacted one vendor for pricing on a system so he just handed his file over to me to continue the research.

I began a short and sweet Internet search for entry level (i.e. cheap) and advanced (i.e. not so cheap) timing and scoring systems.  I came up with a short list consisting of dBcom and AMB. dBcom had already provided a system quote that I had in the file I received and I was able to piece together a reasonable facsimile of a cost to acquire an AMB system.

So begins the journey. I'll go through a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the AMB and dBcom systems next.