Those of you that have raced with me in the SEDiv have probably seen a demo of RaceTimer+, the stopwatch app that I made for the iPhone/iPad/iPod. I've just released a major update to it, so I want to share it with a wider audience now.
I got the idea for the app when I was trying to teach my wife how to use the stopwatch and relay important information to me over the radio. Of course, I was pretty busy getting the car ready, so I didn't have a lot of time to explain things in detail or run through examples, and you can probably imagine how that turned out.
RaceTimer+ has four features that set it apart from other stopwatch apps, and make it powerful enough to retire a clipboard and a drawer full of Robics.
First, it keeps all of the cars that you're tracking sorted by track position. This way (excluding passes), the next car you should be looking for will always be at the top of the list. You can keep your thumb in one place nearly all of the time. This economy of finger/eye motion allows you to stay focused on what is going on out on track, even when you're following a lot of cars.
Second, it will calculate gaps or deltas for you. You can set it up to show you the gap to the car ahead, the car behind, the race leader, or any other competitor you mark with a star. That way you can try to control the pace. (At least you can if you're in a situation like Vettel this year, some of us have to work hard no matter what!)
Third, once a race or session has been completed, you can see a summary that includes the overall finishing positions plus everone's individual lap times. You can email this summary to yourself for record keeping, or to others for bragging rights. Of course the number of races and sessions you can save is practically unlimited.
Finally, and this one is a big help for Christy, you can attach a photo of the car or car number to each name to make ID easy.
Now Robic wants $75 for their SC-888, which only can keep track of 3 cars, doesn't give you the gaps, and makes you remember which car goes to which button. So $2.99 for RaceTimer+ should be a pretty darned good value.
I hope you'll give it a try, and download it from the App Store. If you like it and find it useful, I hope you'll also help a fellow racer out and write a nice review of it on the App Store.
__________________ 2003 VanDiemen FSCCA #29 KeithCarter.net
"Faster and faster, until
the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."
--Hunter S. Thompson
great idea you have there does it work like the race monitor app which we use here in Ireland in that when we are qualifying we have everyones times on the phone so need for your friends to be stuck on a pit wall in the rain anymore.
will you be putting something together for the blackberry by any chance and if so i would purchase it,if you do let me know what you will call it.
great idea you have there does it work like the race monitor app which we use here in Ireland in that when we are qualifying we have everyones times on the phone so need for your friends to be stuck on a pit wall in the rain anymore.
Does your sanctioning body use MyLaps for its timing? Is it their own race monitor app for the gameboy or is it something else. Would be great to integrate this app to the broadcast data that supports the gameboy, but it appears MyLaps has no developer API, after many unreturned inquiries that has been my conclusion.
Tim
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'Stay Hungry'
JK 1964-1996 #25
we use the amb transponders here so I persume it is mylaps if you wanted more info look up octane.ie it is a forum here in Ireland for petrol heads and look up the pitlane sub forum and look out for a guy called Paul Grogan he is our guru when it comes to timing on our race tracks in Ireland he should be able to help you out more.
Does your sanctioning body use MyLaps for its timing? Is it their own race monitor app for the gameboy or is it something else. Would be great to integrate this app to the broadcast data that supports the gameboy, but it appears MyLaps has no developer API, after many unreturned inquiries that has been my conclusion.
Tim
It would be really cool to be able to have that data streaming to a tablet or ipad.
I downloaded the app a while ago but I have not had a good chance to use it yet. Previously I have been using an app named "stopwatch" that allowed me to time up to six cars at once and that is the app that I have grown used to.
I think that your app offers a lot of advantages over the app I have been using:
- more than 6 cars is great
- moving the cars to the bottom as they pass start finish should make everything easier.
- putting the splits on the screen reduces workload
There are some features that I would like to have added that would help. I would say that the features I would like to have are probably more related to qualifying, which I consider to be an even more important time to make sure that all of the information is correct.
-I would really like to be able to stop people's times individually and have them fall to the bottom of the screen and stay there until I restart them individually. This would let me stop the timer for people who exit the track or come in for a change and not have them clog the top of the screen.
-I was concerned about the lack of a total elapsed time counter, but it sounds like you have already fixed that.
Either way, great product and well worth the money for anyone looking for a stopwatch app for racing.
Thanks Wren. I like your in-the-pits/crashed-out idea. I'll give some thought to how to add an interface for that that won't get in the way of normal operation.
General Classifieds
iPhone/iPad Stopwatch App : RaceTimer+
