31 August 20264:00487 views on YouTubeWatch on YouTube
Timing a race on land is a solved problem. You string something across the line, a rider breaks it, and you get a number. On water none of that is available to you. There is nothing to string a tape between, and the commercial answer is a set of waterproof timing gates and RFID hardware that costs real money and is largely locked up in patents. That is the gap this test was aimed at.
What actually happened
The setup is deliberately thin. Start the camera, switch to the telephoto lens, arm the detector, let it relearn the scene, then ride through the frame. That is the whole procedure. No fobs, no break beam sensors, no gates in the water, nothing bolted to the board.
It worked. The detector fired, captured the crossings and produced times, and it timed the rider out on one of the passes. The start and finish landed close enough to the middle of the frame to be usable, which is the bar a working system has to clear rather than the bar of laboratory precision. One pass did fail, and memory filled up quickly, so what you are watching is still a prototype at version 0.25.
Why optical is the right shape for this
The argument is about ubiquity rather than cleverness. Optical detection needs a camera and something to run the code. If a device can run a browser it can run this, which means an old Android phone on a tripod is a timing system. Compare that to the alternative, where every sensor has to survive being in or near the water and each one is another thing to buy, charge and lose.
That also makes it self serve. A timer that needs no hardware is a timer anyone can use for a backyard session or a meetup heat, without asking whether the event is big enough to justify buying equipment.
Where it stands now
The memory problem that cut this test short has since been dealt with. The current build has been run through the course twenty times back to back without it, which is the point at which a prototype starts being something other people can use.
It is not really about eFoiling
The reason this started with eFoil is that eFoil had no option, not that the problem is unique to it. Running, cycling and anything else you cannot put a physical gate across has the same shape. eFoil just ran out of alternatives first.
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