Not every timing company means the same thing by remote timing. Some ship you a box and wish you luck. Some send a crew out with the equipment and call it remote because the scoring happens somewhere else. Before you compare quotes, it is worth knowing which one you are actually buying.
This post covers ours, which is the do-it-yourself version. We ship you everything, train you on it, and score the race live from here while you run the hardware on site. If you would rather have one of our timers on site, that is a different package on a different system, and the timing packages page lays those out side by side.
The short versionWe ship you charged equipment, a written guide, and a return label. You charge the phones, match chips to bibs, set the gates up at the finish, and stay in contact with us during the race. We handle scoring, live results, and reporting. It fits shorter courses with 200 or fewer participants, and the reason for that number is worth understanding before you book.
Pods and gates
The system runs on Bluetooth, and there are only two pieces of hardware.
PodsThe timing chips participants wear. Each one carries a number, and that number gets matched to a bib before race day.
GatesThe readers. They are phones with SIM cards already installed, running a timing app. A gate picks up every pod that passes within range and sends the read back to us.
That is the whole system. No mats, no cables across the road, no timing truck. It is also why this is realistic for someone who has never timed a race: standing a phone on a tripod is a different job from setting up a full standard timing system. If you want the wider picture of how Bluetooth compares to the other options, we cover all ten in what timing technology is right for your race.
What arrives
Pods, charged and ready. You tell us the quantity about three weeks out.
Gates. Two at the finish line is the recommendation, plus one at any on-course split you want.
Two mini tripods. Not required, but they keep it from looking like two phones sitting on the ground.
Charging cables, and extra batteries on longer events so the phones stay up all day.
A live results QR code sign. For the finish area.
A faraday bag. For pods you collect at the finish. It blocks the signal, so a bag of collected pods cannot be read a second time.
A prepaid return label.
The written guide, with screenshots for every step of the app.
Splitting the responsibilities
Your responsibilities run from the box arriving to the box going back:
Charge the phones and batteries before race day.
Match pods to bibs and complete the pod assignment sheet.
Send us the participant list with bib and chip assignments at least 48 hours out.
Set up and run the gates on race day.
Stay in contact with us throughout the event.
Collect pods from finishers and bag them.
Pack and return everything within 48 hours of the finish, using the prepaid label.
Ours start before the box ships and run past the finish line:
Test every piece of equipment before it leaves us.
Load and check your database so problems surface before race morning, not during it.
Score the race live as the reads come in.
Post your results and send the reports afterward.
On RunSignup, if you give us timer access we will pull the participant data ourselves. We still need the pod assignment sheet from you, because the chip-to-bib match only exists on your end.
The pod assignment sheet is the part directors underestimate. Somebody has to record which chip number went to which bib, and that is real work added to packet stuffing or packet pickup. It is worth staffing deliberately rather than assuming it absorbs into the line.
The job you cannot hand off
Because we are not physically at your race site, we can see the reads and nothing else. If the equipment misbehaves, we can diagnose that from here. If your start went off four minutes late, or the lead runner took a wrong turn, we have no way of knowing.
So the one responsibility that does not transfer is talking to us.
The exact gun start time for each event, before the first runner reaches a gate. This is the one that matters most. A missing or late start time is the most common cause of a results problem on a remote event.
Course flow as it happens. "First finisher just crossed" tells us more than it sounds like it does.
When the last participant is in.
Anything that looks wrong, immediately. Almost everything is recoverable if we hear about it while it is still happening.
One physical rule that catches people out. Any pod that is not on a participant needs to be at least 100 feet from the finish line and from any on-course gate. A box of spare pods sitting near the finish reads as a crowd of finishers.
Where remote timing stops being the right call
It is a good fit for a lot of events and a bad fit for some. Three things decide it.
1Start type. Mass starts are gun start only. Chip starts are available for time trials or a limited start chute, but not for a mass start.
2Field size on short courses. Around 200 participants is the ceiling on something like a 5K, and that number is not about our scoring. It is how many Bluetooth devices a gate can hold connections with at once. A 5K field finishes in a tight window, so a lot of pods are in range simultaneously. Longer courses and multi-sport events spread the field out over time, which is why they can carry more total participants on the same hardware.
3Packet workload. The chip-to-bib assignment has to happen somewhere, and it lands on your packet operation.
Common questions
Do we need to be technical to run this?No. If you can charge a phone and open an app, you can run it. The guide has screenshots for every step, and we walk you through it before race day. We do not ship a box and wish you luck.
Can we time on-course splits?Yes. Two gates at the finish is the standard recommendation, and any additional gate can go out on course.
What happens if a pod does not come back?Fees apply for unreturned pods, which is why the faraday bag is in the box. Collecting them at the finish is the easiest way to make sure they all come home.
When does the equipment have to be returned?Within 48 hours of the event finishing. Everything goes back in the boxes it arrived in, with the pods in their bag, and the prepaid label goes over the old one.
What if something goes wrong during the race?Tell us the moment you notice. We can fix a great deal from here while the race is still running, and much less once everyone has gone home.
Think remote timing fits your race?Send us your date and field size and we will tell you honestly whether it is the right call.
