Special delivery, reevaluated

Yesterday Cindy took delivery of a large pallet of timing equipment.  It was the new stuff from MyLaps which is replacing the Ipico equipment I have used to time races for years.  It was a LOT of stuff, including four timing boxes and 24 rubber timing mats.  When I got home Cindy and I worked on getting it broken down and relocated.

Last night after dinner  I hooked up one of the new boxes and mats to my network for some initial testing.  I was limited in what I could do since I don’t have any of the timing chips yet, which are supposed to arrive today.  Even without chips I got a good sense of just how slick the MyLaps hardware is.  I think it is going to really work out well for both me as a timer and our race participants.

There were a few things that stand out right away with the MyLaps hardware.  The timing boxes, whether they are for the 4 meter or 8 meter set up are identical in size which is cool.  With Ipico if you want to support a wider line you need their Elite box which is a huge box, probably triple the size of the MyLaps box.

The timing mats are a huge upgrade to me.  They are 1 meter wide rubber mats that lock together.  They are extremely durable and have a low profile.  Ipico uses mats that are stored in bags and rolled out on race day.  It’s impossible to not have wrinkles in the mats as a result and more than once these wrinkles have snagged a runners foot, causing them to trip.  The Ipico mats/bags also get wet and will stink if you don’t allow them to completely dry out in between events.  There is no issue with that for the MyLaps set up, simply stack the mats in a corner and you are done, wet or dry.

The MyLaps timing boxes have internal GPS hardware that allows them to precisely synch their time.  With Ipico I synch the boxes in a very imprecise manner which requires me to manually synch the timing computer and the timing boxes to my watch which means if I am lucky the times will still be off by as much as a second.  There should be none of that slop with MyLaps.

Finally, the MyLaps timing devices that get adhered to race bibs is a tiny fraction of the size of the Ipico bib timing devices.  This is because Ipico hardware was designed to be used with timing chips worn on the sneaker.  They have been forced to make their bib chips very large to accommodate the older hardware.

The MyLaps system was designed from the start as a bib based timing system.  As a result they are able to use tiny RFID chips that a runner hardly even notices they are wearing.  We have had a number of runners complain that they did not like running with the Ipico bib tags because of their size.

So anyway, I am excited to do a lot of testing and practice with the new system.  It is going to get a true trial by fire since it’s first real world test will be the 4th of July race which is close to 1000 participants.

So I was discussing my potential 4K tv purchase with Jeremy yesterday.  He sent me an article talking about 4K tv’s specifically how their higher resolution is basically not discernible after you get a certain distance away.  For the 70 inch set I was considering that distance is somewhere around 5-6 feet.  Well I measured the distance my couch is from the TV last night, it was a 12 foot span.   I am one who doesn’t mind reevaluating decisions if the situation merits it.  The other consideration is the signal that is fed to both of my HDTV’s on the Comcast X1 service is only 720 HD, which honestly looks pretty damn good already.

So I now am considering staying with a 1080P set which would allow me to increase my desired screen growth curve.  Samsung makes a 75 inch set that would just barely fit inside my entertainment nook with a fraction of an inch to spare.  The dollar figure for the 75 incher is roughly the same as the Vizio 70″ 4K set.   Ali seems to not be interested in a free 73 inch tv for some reason but I still might be chasing the 75 inch dream anyway.

Cindy got an incredible amount of stuff done around the house yesterday.  She is like the Energizer Bunny, just point her in a  direction and things get done.