TLDR version - A non-profit I’m involved with has been using the Ipico Lite Readers for about four or five years to chip-time races. About $2500 gets you started, and they work well. Link at bottom.
**The longer version to explain the whole situation **-
I work for a small law enforcement agency (40 officers) in the upper Midwest. We’ve hosted 5k and other running races for kids and adults for years. It’s been a great way to build community relations and promote healthy, free activities for our youth. This is in an area where the local police still have the full support of the citizens.
About five years ago, we took it up a notch and purchased a Lite Reader from Ipico Timing (link below). The all-in cost was about $2500 for one reader and two mats. None of the money came from our department budget via taxpayers. It was all donations which get routed to a youth program our chief of police created as a branch of our police department. Spending the $2500 was an easy decision, given the going rate was about $1000-$2000 to have an outside company time an event. We were doing six or seven events per year, so the Lite Reader paid for itself in the first summer.
That one reader and mat set-up worked well for “running only” events, where you just need to time the start and finish. However, we wanted to start timing triathlons and longer running events with intermediate splits. We raised the funds for two additional readers and mats. This will be our third year of timing and hosting triathlons…with chip-timed splits for swim, bike, and run. We do at least one adult and one youth triathlon each summer.
I’ve never used any timing system other than the Lite Reader, so I can’t say it’s the best. However, it’s pretty intuitive, the accompanying software is straightforward, and the cost seemed fair. It’s simple enough that one person can operate the system for a typical 5k with a start and finish mat. For triathlons where we have all three Readers going, it’s nice to have a second or third person handy to assist with the timing role.
For running events, we just use disposable bibs with the RF chips built in. I think they are less than 10 cents each. For tris, we use ankle straps, which cost a few dollars each but are reusable.
The three Lite Readers can be connected to a single laptop wirelessly and simultaneously via wifi. That works well for most tris where the start, transition, and finish are within 40 yards of each other. Splits and results can be pushed to phones via SMS and to the web (Active.com) in real time. Or, you can skip all that fanciness and just print the results.
Once the word got out that we could time races, we had a dozen or so requests to take our little show on the road to races in nearby communities. We’ve done a handful of those events. We usually decide to charge a fee in most of those races outside our community, just to help offset the original cost of the equipment. The money we take in is then funneled back into youth races in our own community (for T shirts, medals, food, etc) so our local youth don’t have to pay a fee to participate.
We do not have a local timing company that we are stealing business from, so nobody gets upset when time a local race for free. There are actual timing businesses closer to some of those nearby towns, and we are aware that we might be irritating those businesses when/if we come in and time a race for half the cost too often. We don’t have the same overhead and need to clear a profit, because all of our workers are just off-duty police officers volunteering their time. And, that’s not fair to those timing businesses, so we do it sparingly.
But, sometimes the cause is really good. Toward the end of this summer, we’ll be travelling about 150 miles to time a 5k run for free. That race is held as a memorial in the hometown of a national elite-level young triathlete that died suddenly a few years ago. That sounded like as good a cause as any I’ve ever heard of. And besides, there is a beautiful campground close by, and I can do a sprint tri in the same town the following morning. That’s a win for the everyone involved.
https://www.finishlynx.com/...ng/rfid-lite-reader/