Since version 24.6.1, RaceMeter can measure with “laser” precision. This means a small hardware modification, where the big red Start button is replaced by a special connector that allows the connection of a laser sensor or an external Start stick.
A laser sensor contains a laser transmitter and receiver. It is assumed that a reflector/mirror is placed against this sensor to reflect the laser light back to the receiver.
When the laser beam is interrupted, a simulated press of the Start button occurs. And in addition to being recorded in the start table, this event is also recorded in the chip entries with the chip code START_BTN and with antenna 0 in the device. So on the master device it will be antenna 0 and on the slave device 10 it will be antenna 100.
So far, RaceMeter can only use the information from the laser sensor to precise the time resulting from the RFID chip’s recording. It cannot be used without RFID chips yet. Except for controlled individual starts.
Different situations can occur in real life. First the RFID chip is recorded (maybe even more than once) and then the racer crosses the laser beam, or it can happen the other way around – first the racer records the laser beam and then the RFID chip is recorded. Therefore, the problem is solved as a refinement of the chip time using the time recorded by the laser sensor. When the results are displayed online, the time resulting from the RFID chip recording is displayed first and only then possibly refined/corrected from the laser sensor recordings. Therefore, we need to set in the race definition that we will require this feature at all and also a time limit that determines the time distance between the laser sensor record and the RFID chip record in order to use the time from the laser sensor record to precise the time.