Success with Impinj Chip Reader at Midweek Weekly Criterium Series

Post date: May 11, 2013 10:07:08 AM

It has been three weeks of solid results at Midweek's weekly criterium series using CrossMgr and the Impinj passive chip reader. Results are at the bottom of this page.

I put the system together for them and helped out on site for the the first two races, but Midweek is now self-sufficient. They will be moving two their 2-race format each evening as the days get longer.

The performance of the chips, chip mounts, antennas, reader and software has been excellent - approaching 100%. The "AutoPilot" self-configuring feature of the reader works very well. There was no "fiddling around with parameters" with the Impinj reader - it configures itself. One has to keep an eye on riders sitting out laps and manually correcting them.

And, of course, riders are always creatively mounting their tags (no, they really don't work when you wrap them around a metal seatpost!).

This is impressive as the races have about 60 starters for 45 laps (that is a lot of reads!), with final sprints in excess of 60km/h.

For complete details on the Midweek CrossMgr-Impinj solution including the gear, chips, mounting, suppliers, etc.see the CrossMgrImpinjReadme file here.

The results fully reflect the riders with different ability participating in this club race - not what you would see in a more formal race format. Midweek also has a points system they are using in addition to the critirium distance-then-finish-order rules. This gives the field of riders a chance to earn points even if they getted lapped. They can get the full finish order from the History screen in CrossMgr.

Some say "eat your own dogfood". I prefer "Drink my own champagne" ;) However, you want to say it, the system is working well, and yes, I have used it myself.

CrossMgr supports the Impinj, Alien and J-Chip readers. Impinj and J-Chip have been used at "live" races.

A number of folks have plans for the Alien readers this year. Stay tuned for updates.