Speed Climbing Timing Lessons Learned
07/14/2009 07:29 Filed in: Speed timing | USAC
Synopsis - the speed climbing timing system got its biggest test yet when we deployed two systems for the USA Climbing nationals in Sandy, UT near Salt Lake City this past weekend. This article is about some of the technical lessons learned. Previous articles in the speed climbing timing series discussed many other lessons learned as we developed, but this one is specific to the Nationals event. It includes a video of various speed races showing how the system works in a real event.
Overall I had some very positive feedback on the system, particularly the laser based hand sensors. The climbers, coaches told me, really liked them. They’re very sensitive and positive and easier to hit than a small button switch they’re used to. They’re easy to coach to, also. You have to touch the yellow line or it will not stop, simple as that.
The System in Action
First I wanted to show the system in action at Nationals. The bottom display is for the pair of routes that are left-most in the video. The top display is for the right-most routes in the video. They were independent starts though occasionally (like some races in this video) they started about the same time.
Backdrop for Lessons Learned
This was the third climbing event these timers have been tested in. The first was the regional competition for CO/NM. The second was two timers - one for the USAC southwest divisional championships and one for the USAC northeast divisionals championships.
After each competition the systems went through fairly substantial design changes to improve issues we saw during the competition. The final major design change was going to laser-based hand sensors from IR-based. IR worked pretty well but not well enough. This change was made for the national competition.
At nationals, the speed climbing qualifiers were on Saturday. The semi finals and finals were on Sunday. The first day there were over 300 climbers for qualifiers and each climbed twice. There were three timing systems total, two of them were mine. (I say mine to distinguish these from the one system there I didn’t design or build.)
This is the first event where we deployed two systems in one space. We made a complete spare set of hand and foot sensors so we could quickly replace one if needed.
Back in the warmup area for speed climbing, I installed a practice laser-hand sensor so the climbers could get the feel of how it worked. Coaches could see it and experiment with it also. This turned out to be a very good move to help the acceptance part of the human process. People could see how positive the sensor was and how if you missed the line it would not trigger - there was no ambiguity with this sensor and I think this both increased the confidence in the sensor and reduce the appeals that inevitably come when people think there’s a gap to take advantage of technology.
Installation
The speed climbing routes were all located on one large wall in the middle of the gym. There were three pairs of routes roughly separated by varying heights and designated age groups.
The routes were set very close together with no “gutter” in between lanes or in between pairs of lanes. This forced me to install the timing displays to the left of all 6 routes so they would be out of the way of climbers. This also had the effect of needing to use very long run CAT5 from the top sensors. The line went from the sensor, up over the top of the wall, down behind the wall to the ground and routed to the front of the wall where it joined other cables coming from the foot sensors.
There was sort of a “tributary” effect of creating cable bundles by the time they ran along the wall to the left two displays. The far right pair of lanes were the 3rd timing system and there was no space to the right of those.
Electrostatic Discharge (ESD)
Another major factor I saw during installation was how much electrostatic discharge (ESD) was being created by the carpet in this gym. It was a very coarse, almost wooly, short pile carpet. During setup, it seemed like every time I’d touch something I’d get an ESD pop. Not good.
There was so much ESD in this gym, that we needed to take some pains to deal with it best we could. I created several ground wires to tie the display’s GND to the metal superstructure that held the wall up. Ran the ground wire through a bolt hole in the wall and tied a stripped end to large bolts on the superstructure. The hope is this might help drain off any electrostatic that built up. Secondly, I created a ground wire from the starter console case to the same superstructure. FInally, we taped together some foam mats like you see in an exercise room so the starter could stand on that along with instructions to not set the console down (would have been a bad idea anyway because it could have been stepped on.)
Right before the event started, I misted the carpet in the staging area in front of the climbs where the climbers were lining. This also knocked down the source of static. All together the ESD mitigation worked well, but I suspect the biggest gains were from the mat and the mist.
The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat
Surely that saying applies to the speed climbers but I’m applying it to the timing systems in this case. The first day, both systems cranked through all the qualifiers without any major downtime. There were over 600 climbs on the systems during qualifiers and they stood up to the beating pretty well.
Throughout the first day, there was one hand sensor whose signal wire had come loose inside the end cap of the sensor. We sent a route-setter up with a new sensor, replaced it and had those lanes running again in about 5 minutes. That pair of lanes had no more problems all the way through finals and ran like a dream. The “spares” strategy worked very well in this case...trying to fix a system in the middle of an event is a nightmare. With the spare working, I took the other sensor into the back, quickly tore it down, found the problem, fixed it and so we still had two spare sensors on hand.
We noticed the first day an issue with the mechanical design of the foot sensors. Because the wall was concave (slab to vertical to overhanging), the kids tended to shove the foot sensor right up to the corner of the wall and floor to get close to the wall because they needed to reach forward on the slab for the start. This had the effect of mashing the cables coming out the front of the foot sensor into 90 degree kinks. In some cases, it shoved the RJ45 jacks back into the housing. We had spares for those and used them, so again the spare strategy worked well.
As a temporary fix, the night of the first day, I went to Home Depot and bought some large plastic cable straps that have two nails on either side of a large U-shapped plastic retainer. I nailed those on either side of the RJ45 housing as a “bumper” so the sensor could not be shoved so far against the wall that it would kink the cable. The next day in finals, that solution worked very well.
Lesson: We need to redesign the foot sensor enclosure to recess the cable housing. In testing up to this point, most speed walls were vertical and the natural place for the foot sensor is away from the wall a foot or two, so this was a new lesson learned at nationals.
Also, on the first day, the left most lane’s system had a few glitches where the start signal would not start the clock. I could see the microprocessor’s status lights show the start signal getting to the base station, but the time would not start. We’d message it and get it running and then proceed with the event. This occurred several times during qualifiers but we always got it going again with minimal downtime.
The finals day, however, was another story. The first race out of the chute the left lane’s system failed in a similar way. It would either not start, or would start but the time would just stop midway into the race. This was not a false trigger from the sensor because in that case the lane that fired would have shown a time in the small digits. In this case, the large digit time just stopped so I knew it wasn’t stopping due to a false trigger.
The night before I built a spare starter console just in case and we tried that as well, but had the same results. The problem wasn’t in the starter console.
That was bad news because I didn’t have spare display base stations. I climbed up and messaged the cables and couplers going into the display and it started worked again. Was pretty sure I had something loose or short. We put the climbers on and started a race and I noticed that right when they climbed by the display, the vibration and banging from two climbers jostled the display slightly and the time stopped. I felt pretty sure the timer issue was in the display and was due to some loose connection or short, not sure which. I tried to secure the display so it wouldn’t move but it wasn’t enough and we finally had to abandon that system for the rest of the finals event. There was no practical way to remove the display, trace the problem, fix it and get it running again. We reverted to stop watches for those lanes.
I was pretty disappointed in that outcome needless to say, but the second, identical system running next to it worked flawlessly the entire time. So, I had the thrill of victory and agony of defeat all together in the same day during the same event.
Lesson: every component of the system needs a spare even if it seems like overkill or is expensive. It’s the only way to insure problems that come up can be quickly dealt with. In this case, the base stations are both expensive and time-consuming to build and I simply did not have the time to make another base display system before nationals. We took a risk and got bit.
Wired Systems and Cable Bundles
I went into the event thinking once I got the system set up and running, that’s where it would stay throughout the event, but what I hadn’t counted on was that I would need to dismantle the bottom part of the system (feet and cable bundles) before each day in order for spectators to stand and use the space to watch the sport climbing event.
So, I had to disconnect everything on the bottom, then take the cable harness and bundles and bury them under the carpet and foam mat along the bottom of the speed wall. They were relatively safe, but spectators would line up all along the wall, lean back on the wall, and literally just mash and message the cables underneath the carpet all day long before the speed event.
We ran the risk that the RJ45 jacks would get mashed, lose the tab on their plug, or cables badly kinked under the weight of the spectators. If that would have happened, we would have had to rerun a long cable or replace the jack in-line by cutting off the old one and recrimping one - not something that would be fun to do with 100’s of people watching and waiting.
This cable bundle logistical problem was initially the result of the fact that I could not put the displays directly with the lanes they were associated with and therefore created these long run cable bundles along the bottom of the wall to reach the two displays on the side of all the climbs.
Lesson: Whenever possible, it would be good to not have to dismantle and reassemble the speed system multiple times during the event. The more robust we can make the system the better, but still, its best to install it, shake it down, and then leave it.
Lesson: Why oh why didn’t I bite the bullet and go to a wireless system from the get-go? Next major design iteration will be wireless.
Starter Console
Both system’s starter consoles worked fine both days, but I’ve decided that 1) they’re too hard to build and 2) I can make them simpler which will make them easier to build.
Sometimes you have a doh! moment (I do anyway.) I built the starter consoles to have LED indicators that showed the foot status. So, when the climbers feet are in the foot boxes, they are ready to start when both LEDs are lit. This tells the starter that the system can see their feet and is ready to detect false starts.
That’s all good, but I decided that’s overkill. That, along with the disable switches for a lane make the starter console much harder to build and pack into a little hand-held enclosure. It looks cool and works well, but if it’s hard to build, then it’s less likely to have a spare built for it and becomes a potential single point of failure.
The doh! part is simply this: I should remove the LED status indicators from the starter console and display the foot status on the big display. Similar to the false start indication of F1 or F2 depending upon lane, the ready indicators will be R1 and R2. The starter simply needs to look at the big display to see the climbers are ready. The system already knows the status or it wouldn’t be able to toggled the LEDs on the starter console, so it simplifies the hardware and is a simple firmware change. It also gives the audience more information to see as the race stages.
Lesson: simplify the starter console, show foot status on the large display.
Lane Time
An issue caused by the displays being all the way to the left of the 4 routes instead of physically being associated with the lane pair was that when the final times are displayed, the time is on the large digits and the lane designation is in the small digits...the problem was the lane designator is the right-most small digit. Because the officials were well off to the right, the lane designator was hard to see form the rightmost lanes.
Lesson: simple firmware change to center the lane designator on the left-most small digit so it’s easier to read from all angles.
Sensors
I think the laser-based sensor approach was more than proven as very effective during this event. I had many people, climbers, coaches and audience remark about how well they worked.
One coach told me that a climber loved it because as she finished she launched and wasn’t even sure she hit the line, but it’s so sensitive that it caught her touch as she brushed it during the finish. These sorts of scenarios show how little it takes to indicate the finish.
Other feedback on the hand sensors:
Audience liked the light indicator on the sensors but wished for a bigger or brighter light. The LED is actually very bright but is in a holder that directs it perpendicular to the sensor end cap so it’s probably easier for the climber to see it than the audience. I never heard the brightness complaint from a climber. They all seemed to know they hit it.
The good thing about having a light indicator on the sensor is that both the climber and the audience can see when it triggered and there’s far fewer panics to hit it again or appeals due to some ambiguity about whether the sensor was hit.
Lesson: brighten up the indicator and/or make it larger so it’s more obvious to the audience.
I spoke to Richard Levin about supplying us with some high-brightness LEDs to incorporate into the system.
False Starts
Numerous false starts were detected, but the venue was so noisy (a good thing when the audience is screaming for their climbers), but made it impossible to call the climbers down from a false start. The false start indication for the climber was only verbal.
We got into a bad feedback cycle when a false start occurred which was this:
1) The display would indicate a false start by showing F1 or F2 - the time would not continue. From a timing point of view the race was over.
2) The audience could see the F1 or F2 and would yell “false start!” but it’s all mushed together and the climbers cannot hear what they’re yelling just that lots of yelling is going on - they think it’s cheering and keep going
3) The farther they go without stopping the more the audience yells because they don’t want them to climb the whole race and waste energy
4) The climbers never hear the false start from the official or the crowd and finish the race anyway.
Lesson: we badly need a visual indicator for the climbers that there was a false start. Several ideas have been kicked around, but this is a major improvement that’s needed for the sport of speed climbing independent of what timing system is used.
Even an audible false start indicator ( PA or boom box ) is not a good solution due to both loudness of the crowd and the fact that other lane pairs are usually adjacent and might think the false start was their lane’s. So, it can’t be audible, it has to be visual and obvious to the climbers to stop.
Some ideas for a false start indicator - a cluster of high-brightness LEDs situated on the line between the lane pair could flash. If it’s positioned 10 - 15 high, it would be visible well before they made too many moves into the climb. Another possibility is something similar to what’s been used in swimming in the early days - drop a rope - except that instead of a physical rope, lay down a red laser light beam across the lanes as a virtual rope for a false start.
I think the flashing light would be the best. High brightness red LED clusters. Will have to figure out the best way to wire it midway into the route. Perhaps the trigger indicators on the top hand sensors could double as a secondary false start indicator especially if one high-brightness LED was projecting down.
Shipping
Dale Herbert created a custom shipping sandwich insert for the systems that worked splendidly. We had no damage to either system once it arrived in Sandy, UT. So, that lesson learned during damage incurred during the divisionals shipment paid off for nationals. We will repeat that shipment method with very few refinements.
The Future of Speed Climbing Timing
The future of speed climbing timing systems has to be wireless. I’ve got a design sketched and will start working on this year for next season’s use.
The main things a wireless system will do are:
a) virtually eliminate the ESD problems of a wired system.
b) radically improve the ease of installing the system
c) eliminate the cable routing and bundling problems outlined above
d) make the system even more modular and easy to do component replacement
We’ve proven the laser hand sensor technology combined with the RS-485 differential bus driver is robust and very positive. The climbers and coaches all like it very well. The future is still with this type of sensor. In the future, I will extend it to the foot sensor as well - just did not have time to do that for this year.
This nationals we used IR for foot sensing which worked fine, but it would be better to go with a completely laser-based system for hands and feet...that way the same controller board could be used for the hands and feet including the LED status indicators so the climber can see the foot trigger as well (the IR footbeds this year did not have an LED indicator on them when the climber steps in.)
A wireless system does require re-architecting where the master timer resides. I’ll go into the design and why this is necessary in a future article when I have time.
My goal is to get a wireless system up and running and make them available for purchase to clubs, teams, and gyms in 2009 and 2010 before Nationals next year so that many people around the country will have experience with the national timing system. Furthermore, if clubs were amenable, they could bring their systems or portions of it as spares to nationals so as a group we can combine parts to make many spares of all the components of the system by pooling our resources. That’s one good outcome to many people using the same system besides just the training benefits throughout the year. The same spares and pooling would work for Divisionals timing systems as well if enough people owned a system.
Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas, design reviews, and operational feedback to make the system better. I have enough encouragement to keep at it and it will be even better next year.
Landon Cox
@ESawdust
Speed Climbing Timing Part 1 - Sensors
Speed Climbing Timing Part 2 - Controller
Speed Climbing Timing Part 3 - Integration
Speed Climbing Timing Part 4 - Touch Pad Construction
Speed Climbing Timing Part 5 - Schematics
Speed Climbing Timing Part 6 - Perf Board
Speed Climbing Timing Part 7 - Display
Speed Climbing Timing Part 8 - Hand and Foot Sensors
Speed Climbing Timing Part 9 - Demonstration
Speed Climbing Timing Beta Test Boulder Rock Club
Speed Climbing Timing - Sensor Improvements
Speed Climbing Timing SHIPPED!
Speed Climbing Timing Schematics (shipped v1)
Speed Climbing Timing Installation
Speed Climbing Timing - Laser-based Hand Sensor Design
Overall I had some very positive feedback on the system, particularly the laser based hand sensors. The climbers, coaches told me, really liked them. They’re very sensitive and positive and easier to hit than a small button switch they’re used to. They’re easy to coach to, also. You have to touch the yellow line or it will not stop, simple as that.
The System in Action
First I wanted to show the system in action at Nationals. The bottom display is for the pair of routes that are left-most in the video. The top display is for the right-most routes in the video. They were independent starts though occasionally (like some races in this video) they started about the same time.
Backdrop for Lessons Learned
This was the third climbing event these timers have been tested in. The first was the regional competition for CO/NM. The second was two timers - one for the USAC southwest divisional championships and one for the USAC northeast divisionals championships.
After each competition the systems went through fairly substantial design changes to improve issues we saw during the competition. The final major design change was going to laser-based hand sensors from IR-based. IR worked pretty well but not well enough. This change was made for the national competition.
At nationals, the speed climbing qualifiers were on Saturday. The semi finals and finals were on Sunday. The first day there were over 300 climbers for qualifiers and each climbed twice. There were three timing systems total, two of them were mine. (I say mine to distinguish these from the one system there I didn’t design or build.)
This is the first event where we deployed two systems in one space. We made a complete spare set of hand and foot sensors so we could quickly replace one if needed.
Back in the warmup area for speed climbing, I installed a practice laser-hand sensor so the climbers could get the feel of how it worked. Coaches could see it and experiment with it also. This turned out to be a very good move to help the acceptance part of the human process. People could see how positive the sensor was and how if you missed the line it would not trigger - there was no ambiguity with this sensor and I think this both increased the confidence in the sensor and reduce the appeals that inevitably come when people think there’s a gap to take advantage of technology.
Installation
The speed climbing routes were all located on one large wall in the middle of the gym. There were three pairs of routes roughly separated by varying heights and designated age groups.
The routes were set very close together with no “gutter” in between lanes or in between pairs of lanes. This forced me to install the timing displays to the left of all 6 routes so they would be out of the way of climbers. This also had the effect of needing to use very long run CAT5 from the top sensors. The line went from the sensor, up over the top of the wall, down behind the wall to the ground and routed to the front of the wall where it joined other cables coming from the foot sensors.
There was sort of a “tributary” effect of creating cable bundles by the time they ran along the wall to the left two displays. The far right pair of lanes were the 3rd timing system and there was no space to the right of those.
Electrostatic Discharge (ESD)
Another major factor I saw during installation was how much electrostatic discharge (ESD) was being created by the carpet in this gym. It was a very coarse, almost wooly, short pile carpet. During setup, it seemed like every time I’d touch something I’d get an ESD pop. Not good.
There was so much ESD in this gym, that we needed to take some pains to deal with it best we could. I created several ground wires to tie the display’s GND to the metal superstructure that held the wall up. Ran the ground wire through a bolt hole in the wall and tied a stripped end to large bolts on the superstructure. The hope is this might help drain off any electrostatic that built up. Secondly, I created a ground wire from the starter console case to the same superstructure. FInally, we taped together some foam mats like you see in an exercise room so the starter could stand on that along with instructions to not set the console down (would have been a bad idea anyway because it could have been stepped on.)
Right before the event started, I misted the carpet in the staging area in front of the climbs where the climbers were lining. This also knocked down the source of static. All together the ESD mitigation worked well, but I suspect the biggest gains were from the mat and the mist.
The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat
Surely that saying applies to the speed climbers but I’m applying it to the timing systems in this case. The first day, both systems cranked through all the qualifiers without any major downtime. There were over 600 climbs on the systems during qualifiers and they stood up to the beating pretty well.
Throughout the first day, there was one hand sensor whose signal wire had come loose inside the end cap of the sensor. We sent a route-setter up with a new sensor, replaced it and had those lanes running again in about 5 minutes. That pair of lanes had no more problems all the way through finals and ran like a dream. The “spares” strategy worked very well in this case...trying to fix a system in the middle of an event is a nightmare. With the spare working, I took the other sensor into the back, quickly tore it down, found the problem, fixed it and so we still had two spare sensors on hand.
We noticed the first day an issue with the mechanical design of the foot sensors. Because the wall was concave (slab to vertical to overhanging), the kids tended to shove the foot sensor right up to the corner of the wall and floor to get close to the wall because they needed to reach forward on the slab for the start. This had the effect of mashing the cables coming out the front of the foot sensor into 90 degree kinks. In some cases, it shoved the RJ45 jacks back into the housing. We had spares for those and used them, so again the spare strategy worked well.
As a temporary fix, the night of the first day, I went to Home Depot and bought some large plastic cable straps that have two nails on either side of a large U-shapped plastic retainer. I nailed those on either side of the RJ45 housing as a “bumper” so the sensor could not be shoved so far against the wall that it would kink the cable. The next day in finals, that solution worked very well.
Lesson: We need to redesign the foot sensor enclosure to recess the cable housing. In testing up to this point, most speed walls were vertical and the natural place for the foot sensor is away from the wall a foot or two, so this was a new lesson learned at nationals.
Also, on the first day, the left most lane’s system had a few glitches where the start signal would not start the clock. I could see the microprocessor’s status lights show the start signal getting to the base station, but the time would not start. We’d message it and get it running and then proceed with the event. This occurred several times during qualifiers but we always got it going again with minimal downtime.
The finals day, however, was another story. The first race out of the chute the left lane’s system failed in a similar way. It would either not start, or would start but the time would just stop midway into the race. This was not a false trigger from the sensor because in that case the lane that fired would have shown a time in the small digits. In this case, the large digit time just stopped so I knew it wasn’t stopping due to a false trigger.
The night before I built a spare starter console just in case and we tried that as well, but had the same results. The problem wasn’t in the starter console.
That was bad news because I didn’t have spare display base stations. I climbed up and messaged the cables and couplers going into the display and it started worked again. Was pretty sure I had something loose or short. We put the climbers on and started a race and I noticed that right when they climbed by the display, the vibration and banging from two climbers jostled the display slightly and the time stopped. I felt pretty sure the timer issue was in the display and was due to some loose connection or short, not sure which. I tried to secure the display so it wouldn’t move but it wasn’t enough and we finally had to abandon that system for the rest of the finals event. There was no practical way to remove the display, trace the problem, fix it and get it running again. We reverted to stop watches for those lanes.
I was pretty disappointed in that outcome needless to say, but the second, identical system running next to it worked flawlessly the entire time. So, I had the thrill of victory and agony of defeat all together in the same day during the same event.
Lesson: every component of the system needs a spare even if it seems like overkill or is expensive. It’s the only way to insure problems that come up can be quickly dealt with. In this case, the base stations are both expensive and time-consuming to build and I simply did not have the time to make another base display system before nationals. We took a risk and got bit.
Wired Systems and Cable Bundles
I went into the event thinking once I got the system set up and running, that’s where it would stay throughout the event, but what I hadn’t counted on was that I would need to dismantle the bottom part of the system (feet and cable bundles) before each day in order for spectators to stand and use the space to watch the sport climbing event.
So, I had to disconnect everything on the bottom, then take the cable harness and bundles and bury them under the carpet and foam mat along the bottom of the speed wall. They were relatively safe, but spectators would line up all along the wall, lean back on the wall, and literally just mash and message the cables underneath the carpet all day long before the speed event.
We ran the risk that the RJ45 jacks would get mashed, lose the tab on their plug, or cables badly kinked under the weight of the spectators. If that would have happened, we would have had to rerun a long cable or replace the jack in-line by cutting off the old one and recrimping one - not something that would be fun to do with 100’s of people watching and waiting.
This cable bundle logistical problem was initially the result of the fact that I could not put the displays directly with the lanes they were associated with and therefore created these long run cable bundles along the bottom of the wall to reach the two displays on the side of all the climbs.
Lesson: Whenever possible, it would be good to not have to dismantle and reassemble the speed system multiple times during the event. The more robust we can make the system the better, but still, its best to install it, shake it down, and then leave it.
Lesson: Why oh why didn’t I bite the bullet and go to a wireless system from the get-go? Next major design iteration will be wireless.
Starter Console
Both system’s starter consoles worked fine both days, but I’ve decided that 1) they’re too hard to build and 2) I can make them simpler which will make them easier to build.
Sometimes you have a doh! moment (I do anyway.) I built the starter consoles to have LED indicators that showed the foot status. So, when the climbers feet are in the foot boxes, they are ready to start when both LEDs are lit. This tells the starter that the system can see their feet and is ready to detect false starts.
That’s all good, but I decided that’s overkill. That, along with the disable switches for a lane make the starter console much harder to build and pack into a little hand-held enclosure. It looks cool and works well, but if it’s hard to build, then it’s less likely to have a spare built for it and becomes a potential single point of failure.
The doh! part is simply this: I should remove the LED status indicators from the starter console and display the foot status on the big display. Similar to the false start indication of F1 or F2 depending upon lane, the ready indicators will be R1 and R2. The starter simply needs to look at the big display to see the climbers are ready. The system already knows the status or it wouldn’t be able to toggled the LEDs on the starter console, so it simplifies the hardware and is a simple firmware change. It also gives the audience more information to see as the race stages.
Lesson: simplify the starter console, show foot status on the large display.
Lane Time
An issue caused by the displays being all the way to the left of the 4 routes instead of physically being associated with the lane pair was that when the final times are displayed, the time is on the large digits and the lane designation is in the small digits...the problem was the lane designator is the right-most small digit. Because the officials were well off to the right, the lane designator was hard to see form the rightmost lanes.
Lesson: simple firmware change to center the lane designator on the left-most small digit so it’s easier to read from all angles.
Sensors
I think the laser-based sensor approach was more than proven as very effective during this event. I had many people, climbers, coaches and audience remark about how well they worked.
One coach told me that a climber loved it because as she finished she launched and wasn’t even sure she hit the line, but it’s so sensitive that it caught her touch as she brushed it during the finish. These sorts of scenarios show how little it takes to indicate the finish.
Other feedback on the hand sensors:
Audience liked the light indicator on the sensors but wished for a bigger or brighter light. The LED is actually very bright but is in a holder that directs it perpendicular to the sensor end cap so it’s probably easier for the climber to see it than the audience. I never heard the brightness complaint from a climber. They all seemed to know they hit it.
The good thing about having a light indicator on the sensor is that both the climber and the audience can see when it triggered and there’s far fewer panics to hit it again or appeals due to some ambiguity about whether the sensor was hit.
Lesson: brighten up the indicator and/or make it larger so it’s more obvious to the audience.
I spoke to Richard Levin about supplying us with some high-brightness LEDs to incorporate into the system.
False Starts
Numerous false starts were detected, but the venue was so noisy (a good thing when the audience is screaming for their climbers), but made it impossible to call the climbers down from a false start. The false start indication for the climber was only verbal.
We got into a bad feedback cycle when a false start occurred which was this:
1) The display would indicate a false start by showing F1 or F2 - the time would not continue. From a timing point of view the race was over.
2) The audience could see the F1 or F2 and would yell “false start!” but it’s all mushed together and the climbers cannot hear what they’re yelling just that lots of yelling is going on - they think it’s cheering and keep going
3) The farther they go without stopping the more the audience yells because they don’t want them to climb the whole race and waste energy
4) The climbers never hear the false start from the official or the crowd and finish the race anyway.
Lesson: we badly need a visual indicator for the climbers that there was a false start. Several ideas have been kicked around, but this is a major improvement that’s needed for the sport of speed climbing independent of what timing system is used.
Even an audible false start indicator ( PA or boom box ) is not a good solution due to both loudness of the crowd and the fact that other lane pairs are usually adjacent and might think the false start was their lane’s. So, it can’t be audible, it has to be visual and obvious to the climbers to stop.
Some ideas for a false start indicator - a cluster of high-brightness LEDs situated on the line between the lane pair could flash. If it’s positioned 10 - 15 high, it would be visible well before they made too many moves into the climb. Another possibility is something similar to what’s been used in swimming in the early days - drop a rope - except that instead of a physical rope, lay down a red laser light beam across the lanes as a virtual rope for a false start.
I think the flashing light would be the best. High brightness red LED clusters. Will have to figure out the best way to wire it midway into the route. Perhaps the trigger indicators on the top hand sensors could double as a secondary false start indicator especially if one high-brightness LED was projecting down.
Shipping
Dale Herbert created a custom shipping sandwich insert for the systems that worked splendidly. We had no damage to either system once it arrived in Sandy, UT. So, that lesson learned during damage incurred during the divisionals shipment paid off for nationals. We will repeat that shipment method with very few refinements.
The Future of Speed Climbing Timing
The future of speed climbing timing systems has to be wireless. I’ve got a design sketched and will start working on this year for next season’s use.
The main things a wireless system will do are:
a) virtually eliminate the ESD problems of a wired system.
b) radically improve the ease of installing the system
c) eliminate the cable routing and bundling problems outlined above
d) make the system even more modular and easy to do component replacement
We’ve proven the laser hand sensor technology combined with the RS-485 differential bus driver is robust and very positive. The climbers and coaches all like it very well. The future is still with this type of sensor. In the future, I will extend it to the foot sensor as well - just did not have time to do that for this year.
This nationals we used IR for foot sensing which worked fine, but it would be better to go with a completely laser-based system for hands and feet...that way the same controller board could be used for the hands and feet including the LED status indicators so the climber can see the foot trigger as well (the IR footbeds this year did not have an LED indicator on them when the climber steps in.)
A wireless system does require re-architecting where the master timer resides. I’ll go into the design and why this is necessary in a future article when I have time.
My goal is to get a wireless system up and running and make them available for purchase to clubs, teams, and gyms in 2009 and 2010 before Nationals next year so that many people around the country will have experience with the national timing system. Furthermore, if clubs were amenable, they could bring their systems or portions of it as spares to nationals so as a group we can combine parts to make many spares of all the components of the system by pooling our resources. That’s one good outcome to many people using the same system besides just the training benefits throughout the year. The same spares and pooling would work for Divisionals timing systems as well if enough people owned a system.
Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas, design reviews, and operational feedback to make the system better. I have enough encouragement to keep at it and it will be even better next year.
Landon Cox
@ESawdust
Speed Climbing Timing Part 1 - Sensors
Speed Climbing Timing Part 2 - Controller
Speed Climbing Timing Part 3 - Integration
Speed Climbing Timing Part 4 - Touch Pad Construction
Speed Climbing Timing Part 5 - Schematics
Speed Climbing Timing Part 6 - Perf Board
Speed Climbing Timing Part 7 - Display
Speed Climbing Timing Part 8 - Hand and Foot Sensors
Speed Climbing Timing Part 9 - Demonstration
Speed Climbing Timing Beta Test Boulder Rock Club
Speed Climbing Timing - Sensor Improvements
Speed Climbing Timing SHIPPED!
Speed Climbing Timing Schematics (shipped v1)
Speed Climbing Timing Installation
Speed Climbing Timing - Laser-based Hand Sensor Design
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