Home | Overview | Race Day | Screen Shots | Race Results | Web Version | Downloads | Contacts | Links
Welcome to LapTrack software, designed as an efficient solution to facilitate counting and timing laps.
Why was LapTrack written? As a former swimmer, runner, and triathelete laptimes and splits were always a critical part of any race or training session. When I started PWC endurance and closed course racing, it was strange relying only on finish place, how the pwc ran, and how you felt for feedback on performance. Waiting around after packing up for the results of an endurance race wasn't satisfying and wondering how your laptimes compared to another class in closed course wasn't any better. So while sitting out the remainder of the 2001 season with an injury, I thought back to the discussions that had been going on in TeamSportRacing on the prohibitive cost of transponder systems and wrote the first version of what is now LapTrack. TeamSportRacing used the palm based version during the 2002 and 2003 seasons and then migrated to the laptop edition for the 2004 season.
LapTrack is a lower cost alternative to implementing a transponder system. When TeamSportRacing was looking at the option of implementing a transponder system several years ago they were getting estimates between $20,000 and $30,000 to implement one that could handle the wide variety of conditions that they were likely to face. I developed LapTrack to facilitate using a 10 key to enter boat numbers as an interim solution until an affordable transponder system could be found. (LapTrack will accept any letter or number from the keyboard.) Once fully integrated into the scoring process, LapTrack worked so well that TeamSportRacing efforts to find a transponder system have just about stopped. If an affordable one comes along that meets the environment requirements, we would then use LapTrack as a secondary system and see if we could integrate them to use LapTrack's race compare feature.
LapTrack easily handles multiple laps for multiple racers, and quickly
produces both overall results and detailed lap charts. The simplicity of the user interface
reduces training and implementation time, while behind the scenes LapTrack analyzes
race data and flags potential data entry problems. Integrating LapTrack in the overall
race scoring process can significantly reduce time and effort required to produce final
results.
The flexibility of LapTrack provides you with multiple options for integrating it into your
scoring process. Assuming multiple races are run with limited time between races, the
preferred option is installing LapTrack on 2 computers that are connected (wirelessly is
an easy option). The scoring tower computer requires a numeric keypad and captures race numbers as they pass the lap/finish markers. The second computer can retrieve the information from the scoring tower and start validating and correcting data. The second computer can retrieve an update from the scoring tower as often as necessary during the race and becomes the final results at the end. Just retrieve a final update after the race is
complete and the scorer has performed a final save. During the race, second computer can be used
for announcers or to begin validating data entry against other / manual score sheets. With this method, the raw data remains on the scoring tower computer and two copies of the race exist.
Load LapTrack on 3 computers and use 2 of them for scoring. LapTrack can retrieve results from the two scoring computers and perform a comparison, identifying matches, and flagging mismatches as well as potential data entry problems. LapTrack can delete extra entries or copy entries from one result to the other.