Category Archives: General

Alerts and Messaging available (plus, Relay v3.6.5!)

Since our last update, we have expanded the RaceHero team and made many improvements. We are thrilled to release a new tool to help you run awesome events and keep your participants engaged: In-App Alerts and the best RaceHero Relay to date!

In App Alerts

A common challenge for event organizers is getting event day messages out to spectators and participants. RaceHero already provides real-time live timing and instantaneous provisional race results. Now you can communicate through RaceHero using our new Alerts feature.

As an organizer, you can send alerts to everyone following the event in the RaceHero apps or at RaceHero.io. Even better, as an event promoter, you can send from any Internet connected device using your RaceHero.io control panel. No need to be sitting at a Race Control computer to publish an alert.

RaceHero alerts and push notification editor

Have a message that is destined for one or more race groups? We have you covered with the ability to choose who your message is directed towards.

RaceHero mobile app alerts

You can start sending messages today from your RaceHero console. Alerts are visible in the Alerts tab of the RaceHero mobile app and website as soon as you hit “Send”.

We are preparing an update that turns Alerts into native Push Notifications. Your participants will be able to subscribe to push notifications on their mobile devices when an Alert is published including if they do not have the RaceHero app running. Subscriptions will also work in all modern web browsers.

Relay 3.6.5 Released

The latest RaceHero Relay for MyLaps Orbits boasts numerous updates for real-world challenges our organizers face using unreliable track internet or wifi hotspots. We’ve worked closely with many organizations to resolve small bugs or issues that impede our goal of completely hands-off operation of the Relay.

Additionally, we have further improved the speed of the relay while minimizing its resource usage, keeping with our motto that “speed never goes out of style”.

After more than 50,000 race results from early testers of 3.6.5, we will be forcing promoters to update beginning in early November. We recommend downloading and installing the latest version now:

Download the latest RaceHero Relay for MyLaps Orbits

History of Timing and Scoring at the Indy 500

indianapolis-500-timing-scoring

We missed a piece our friend Marshall Pruett (of RACER and Road and Track fame) wrote on how timing and scoring became automated prior to the electronic transponder systems we know today. Specifically, he captured some fascinating stories about the Indianapolis 500 using a wire running 1″ off the ground at start-finish to trigger a kind of punch card system:

The Indianapolis 500, as we noted in an earlier TRA tale, got its start using the most intrusive timing system possible—one with an actual wire that ran across the start/finish line and sat approximately one inch off the racing surface. Passing cars would run over the wire and trigger an create an imprint on a time card. Timing and scoring workers would then be responsible for noting which car tripped the wire and building a manual running order list for each lap.

indy-500-timing-and-scoring-tapers

Even then, the promoter wanted a backup to all that newfangled technology, so Indianapolis 500 historian Donald Davidson explains how they used “tapers” (which we still see today at SCCA road racing events as a backup to the MYLAPS transponder system):

“And then to complement that you had three or four people doing serial scopes, which is where you’re writing down the number of every car that comes by; that takes a special person to do that, you’re doing it down the column and then when the leader comes by, and you better know who the leader is, and then go to the top and you write another column. So they would have three or four people doing that.”

Read the full article on RoadAndTrack.com and follow Marshall on Twitter (he’s always at a race track!) Be sure to read the previous piece which explains how one lucky guy had to fix the tripwire during the race!