If a partner holds a phone is their an app and an associated piece of hard ware I can buy that will trigger once I cross a line and finish once I cross another line? I Know the professional systems are thousands, but is their any thing for £100 to do such, like say you place a beam thing on the finish line of your course and the start line of a track, you program it to either stop timming after the first time the chip cuts through both lines (400m) or the second time (800m) etc. No button presses at all (except in programming before starting to adopt position to time) would be desirable to get as accurate as possible without buying pro stuff.
Comments
reaction times. Not so bad for distances over 800m but for 100, 200, 400m not so good.
Because that newbie is more interested in the means to the end, rather than the end itself.
🙂
No but once one reaches close to the limit, tenths will be a big gain. Thinking ahead.
I am not sure I follow, if by that you mean that I am more interested in how one would technically do such a set up, without spending thousands of pounds, and if such a set up even exists that is fully automated for less than 200 pounds (without having to be a build machines yourself kind of person) then yes that is exactly true.
There is a powermeter for running coming out soon. That might be more useful than your finish line technology.
There's been some comment in the media lately about how energy measuring gadgets don't really stack up. I think they are missing the point.
The point is curiosity. Its fun. For a start, I didn't bother with a Garmin watch. Then I got one, gave it away and went back to the plain watch. I bought another Garmin.
I like to think it doesn't control me. But lets face it, how many of us run that extra 0.31 miles around the block to finish with a nice round number.
Seems we are now only limited by our imaginations as to techno gadgets. Its also been proven that if the gadget exists, it will be bought. In their 1000's.
🙂
I'm not aware of anything off the shelf that's less than a couple of grand. If you want a DIY solution I'd suggest a stopwatch with an external trigger and a pressure mat (from a burglar alarm).
An alternative if you want accuracy and don't mind some inconvenience is to use a video camera (or film it with your phone) and then count the number of frames between start and finish. At 30 frames per second the accuracy over 10 seconds would be around 1/300 (i.e. 0.33%).
Personally, the only thing I would use a phone for is making calls and text messaging.
Why is it that people seem to need to use a phone for everything, a stopwatch is probably easier and alot more simple!
Makes me laugh....... oh, I aint got me phone, oh, I aint got me ipood, oh, I aint got me headphones.......... yep, me phones fully charged, but I forgot me trainers.
Oh, hang on before the starting pistol goes off........... I just gotta rig this video up to go on me shoulder, can we do a trial run please so I can make sure it's working!!
Thanks tom and gideon your answers are probably best. How would one see how many frames are in the movie they filmed? The pressure mat sounds interesting but 2 of them is probably still quite expensive (more than 200 once you include a stop watch with an external trigger)
a coach who is a qualified timekeeper will be accurate to within 1/10th-1/20th of a second.
Thats a proper stopwatch, not one that's on your phone.
not to much more than your price list, try hunting them out in the UK
http://speedendurance.com/store/freelap-timing-systems/
http://www.hssports.co.uk/products.html?dir=asc&order=price&p=3
Any half-decent video editor will display the time in hours:minuteseconds:frames. GoPro Studio (free) does, as does Adobe Premier Elements (fairly cheap), plenty of other software available.