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Dave 48
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A scoring idea, can you help?
I was thinking about EZ pass and could we use it for scoring. Over the years we have discussed many times about buying an electronic scoring system and the main problem is the system costs between 10K and 15K then the transponders are another $350 to $400 per car. We could never justify having the members buy their own transponder and AMEC could not afford to buy the 100 or so to loan or rent out because we wouldn't have the money to buy them to begin with.
Now most everyone has an EZ pass and if you don't you should. You can get one for $20 from the Thruway authority. We touched on this a couple of years ago but nobody ever researched it for real.
It has been tested that you can go thru a toll booth at 60 MPH and still get charged for the thruway usage so we don't know what the threshold is for ez pass as far as speed goes. We also know that the sensor is really high in the toll booth because it has to clear the tallest trucks and antennas etc. The EZ passes as far as I know do not use a battery so you don't have to worry about that.
Is there any one out there that knows how these things work? Maybe one of the young Street Legal class computer guys with an electrical engineering degree? We already have a member willing to do the excel spread sheets on the computer so what we would need is to come up with the hardware to read the EZ passes as they go down the track. The excel spread sheet would score the race.
We would always need paper scoring back ups but if we could figure this system out we might be able to come up with an electronic scoring system that is far cheaper than the AMB system and almost everyone already has their own transponder. Gee wiz I own three of them
Somebody tell us how this works and if we could do it.
Dave Burnham
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3/16/2008, 6:07 pm
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NYracefan
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
"I was thinking about EZ pass and could we use it for scoring."
It could work but it will be hard to get the toll booths out on a lake 
Seriously though, this could have merit. Dave's idea could turn into something. The EZ pass things in the car though do use some sort of built in battery. Mine died after 5 years, they just took it and gave me another one at no charge.
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Jeff Nicol
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3/16/2008, 7:57 pm
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erniey
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
EZ Pass is a RFID system: http://www.aimglobal.org/technologies/rfid/what_is_rfid.asp
We would need someone with a background in RF technology to reverse engineer EZ pass. Any EEs around? I don't think the specifics of the EZ pass system is open to the public, but if someone did it, they would surely make a lot of money selling equipment to racing clubs like us.
I suspect that they'd need a lot of expensive equipment to record the signals from the toll booths, then "play back" that signal to the vehicle transponder, then record and decipher that. Then build a hardware and software package that runs on a laptop, etc. And then they'd need FCC approval to sell it commercially... no wonder these racing transponders are so expensive 
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Ernie
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3/17/2008, 8:50 pm
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Mark Long
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
I just had a brainstorm on a cost effective idea to help with scoring.
1. Make sure all cars are properly numbered front and rear.
2. Buy a video camera with a hard disk or use an older tape camera.
3. Put a camera mount right on the flaggers stand or scoring vehicle. This mount will provide some sort of weather protection to the camera. The camera will also be powered by the scoring vehicle with an inverter to back up the camera battery. The camera will video the cars as they come across the line. Some one will be assigned to tend to the camera. This person(s) will start and stop the camera and maybe swap tapes.
4. Scoring will be done the traditional way or with electronically, with a bunch of AMEC volunteers.
5. After the race someone will take the tapes or download the video to a laptop and upload all races to something like video.google.com.
Having a hard drive in the camera would make this painless.
So when someone wants to dispute the race, they can view the video online and say, "Look I crossed the line at these times".
Someone with a lot of time some do lap timings.
If we had an issue with the scoring of a race like Cossayuna SL race #1, we would upload the race and let the competitors come to a conclusion during the week.
We would also copy the full races to a DVD and put it in the archives.
Last edited by Mark Long, 3/18/2008, 6:09 am
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3/18/2008, 5:48 am
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pete05
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
I'm an Electrical Engineer with some RF background, and I've also been an Amatuer Radio operator and radio technician. That said, I only know a little about RFID. I do know that they respond only to specific transmissions from the interrogator system that is mounted in the toll booth; they don't transmit randomly.
I believe that it's probably technically possible to use the EZPass transponders (the part in your car) for scoring, but it might not be entirely legal to transmit to them, and there might be a problem with interference from multiple transponders responding together (like would happen when two or more cars were the same distance from the interrogator). The interrogator consists of a radio transmitter, a radio receiver and a computer; and while that could be replicated, the software needed to run everything is the most complicated part. Getting a response from an EZPass transponder is relatively easy; using that response in a reliable timing/scoring system is much more difficult and time-consuming, and would certainly require multiple trials before it could be considered useful.
I'll work to find out more specifics about operating frequencies and digital protocols, but I'm not too optomistic about it being a real solution: It's not likely that anything I could rig up on a budget would be as reliable as two workers and decent numbers like the number plates that Mike Kamm has illustrated.
If anyone knows of a link to more technical information, please notify me.
Pete #51 SL4
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3/18/2008, 12:14 pm
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Dave 48
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
Thanks guys for you knowledge and ideas so far. If you electrical wizards find out more please keep us posted. I thought this would have been easier but I work on cars that still use ignition points.
Marks idea of video taping the races has been brought up in the past and would be a good idea for after the races (like the next day) determination of finish positions. Taking the time during the day to review a whole race even at 2X speed would take a while and we need the line ups for the next race quite fast. Having more workers though could put a second team on it and working in conjunction might still get the results of a disputed race done in a timely manner for the next line ups. As the club gets bigger it is like a 2nd full time job for the chosen few!
Dave Burnham
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3/18/2008, 6:39 pm
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Mark Long
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
quote:
Dave 48 wrote:
Marks idea of video taping the races has been brought up in the past and would be a good idea for after the races (like the next day) determination of finish positions. Taking the time during the day to review a whole race even at 2X speed would take a while and we need the line ups for the next race quite fast.
I did not mean to review the tapes on the ice.
I would only suggest to upload them and allow all members to view then the day after on the Internet.
Last edited by Mark Long, 3/19/2008, 6:40 am
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3/18/2008, 9:29 pm
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CnnmnSchnpps
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
You may be onto something with RFID.. Although using ezpass would probably be difficult for a variety of reasons (including the legality of attempting to reverse engineer it), RFID tags and one receiver might be relatively cost effective..
The tags themselves are cheap, but a good enough receiver might be somewhat pricey.. I will investigate as well.
The software side doesn't have to be that advanced. Input the starting grid, and then it keeps track of how many laps people completed. Heck, it could even provide people with printouts of lap times after each session - wouldn't that be nice?
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Dmitri 69SL
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4/16/2008, 11:08 pm
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Dave 48
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
Hi Dimitri, Please look into it for us, most of the club members don't know how serious finding scorers or a scoring system will be for 2009. I am running down a few options but getting people to sit in a car and concentrate for 5 hours is really hard. I was involved in setting up the last 2 or 3 scoring teams we had and it is tough to do. I think it is time to move to electronics personally but we do not have the money to buy a store bought system and will need to rely on the membership for ideas and workers for 2009 and we need to do it soon.
Dave Burnham
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4/17/2008, 7:06 am
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Mark Long
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Re: A scoring idea, can you help?
I took some time today and looked into electronic scoring options.
I am sure the club looked at this before, but AMB Systems makes traditional transponders and receivers. They can handle work in cold climates.
The Cross country Snowmobile Association uses them. It uses a 60 foot cable that need to go across the starting line. I am not sure how the snowmobile club sets that up. The price is a high. $6560 for the base unit, and 335 per transponder!
I found a company called Hardcard Motorsports Management that is developing a RFID scoring system. I talked to John Parris, who is a partner at Hardcard and his company has been doing development on RFID scoring for about 6 months. He says he believes his company is the only company which developing the technology. He says a working system is still about 6 months away.
With a RFID system the transponders (the thing in each car) will be less than 10 bucks.
I am going to give him a call around September and see how things are going. Maybe there will be a need for some extreme weather testers
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Mark Long
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5/7/2008, 3:31 pm
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