Our standard system includes everything you need to start scanning and recording results. The only thing you need to add are some tags, which we can supply or you can add your own UHF RFID tags.
The heart of the system, is the RFID reader. We include a pre-owned 4 port reader (Motorola FX7400), that is the key to how we can provide you an entire system at such a reasonable price.
The system includes 2 RFID Antenna. These are brand new units, 6dBi Circularly polarised, which from our own use and testing can comfortably read across a race finish line 4 to 5 meters wide. Each antenna is supplied with fitting brackets and a suitable tripod, which we have adapted to hold the antenna.
The reader is supplied without a mains power supply, as we intend for you to operate it using Power Over Ethernet technology (POE), and we supply the adapter to do that. We find this to be a lot more flexible at the finish line, as it is a lot easier to use a longer network cable, than to run the power to the desired location.
We provide all the cables required, that includes colour coded Cat5 cables, 3m to connect your laptop, 10m to connect to the reader.
Once you have your working system, the choice of software is up to you. There are some excellent commercial products out there, and we would be happy to make a recommendation.
If you would rather, we can assist you in timing you races using free software and a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Well, we say it’s a simple spreadsheet, in fact we think its rather clever. Our spreadsheet can automatically read in the output being captured from the reader, matches it to the runner data you have entered, and produces chip timed results with age categories and team results.
All of this is available as a working system, for an introductory price of £599, plus £10 P+P. The system comes with everything you need to start timing apart from some tags. We can provide our handmade tags to you for just 50p each. Note – although you can use the hardware we sell with other software systems, if you intend to use our spreadsheet solutions, you need a Windows PC (laptop is obviously much easier to use for races), with an ethernet port or suitable adapter and Microsoft Excel.
To help show how the system works, how tags are positioned and scanned, and how results are delivered into Excel, we have put together the demo video below.