Working with photocells or start gates

There are 2 ways of dealing with photocells or start gates in Wiclax:

• using cells only

• using cells in combination with transponders

Note: start gates being something equivalent from the Wiclax perspective we'll simply talk here about photocells, or just cells.

With cells only

An acquisition can be set to connect to the cell system, usually using an Ethernet connection.

This allows Wiclax to receive signals. When that happens you have a visual and sound notification and the next job is for you to associate the timestamp to the corresponding bib number. Signals monitoring and bib entry happens here, in the result entry form. Each timing line (start/finish/intermediate) has its own grid.

Here a signal has been received for the start line, bib number getting entered manually to integrate the passing

Tip: as for manual timing if the participant is known or announced before crossing the line you have the ability to pre-enter its bib number in the form, then press the End keyboard key. As a result the next cell signal will trigger the result integration automatically.

Cells together with transponders

Timing configuration

The field setup requires that the photocell beam is placed ahead of the RFID detection which can be set at a safe distance. Or more accurately that the cell signal is received by Wiclax prior to the transponder detection.

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Cell connection

2 situations can be distinguished:

The photocell device is directly connected to Wiclax

In this scenario you have to setup an acquisition dedicated to the device. Setup like a regular acquisition, selecting the manufacturer and optionally also the device model, then entering the connection parameters like an IP address.

On top of that the acquisition has to be declared as a photocell to be consumed by another RFID acquisition:

The photocell device is plugged to the RFID reader

Some RFID readers allow to plug a cell. This is the case for RaceResult or Mylaps systems for example.

That means the reader is in charge of transmitting both cell signals and transponder readings. Consequently on Wiclax a single acquisition is needed.

Usually a cell signal is transmitted by the reader as a regular transponder detection, having a specific chip ID to identify it. Please check our documentation on the manufacturer systems to make sure there's no setting mismatch - i.e. the default ID hasn't been modified on the device.

Signal lifetime

By default a cell signal lifetime - i.e. the delay after which it's no longer eligible to replace a transponder time - is set to 3s.

If your configuration begs for something more lasting (or shorter), the value can be edited here as a number of milliseconds:

A longer lifetime may be necessary for example in a context of remote acquisitions, when the transmission delays are not guaranteed as fast as with a wired connection.

Monitoring

Here as well you can retrieve a log of the acquisitions in the result entry form:

In this example a cell signal for the finish line has been received first, and a transponder has been detected for bib 55 right after. The time retained is the one from the cell.