I have been working on a project over the last several weeks to develop a live scoreboard that can be viewed using a simple web browser. Typical scoreboards are very expensive ($5000+) and way outside of my budget. I needed another, less expensive alternative, so as usual, I started to build one. I ended up creating a program that uses a custom scoreboard script within FinishLynx. It decodes the data being sent and sends to a website called Pusher.com. This site then ‘pushes’ the data out to a specially designed web page, designed to accept the information and display it in an orderly fashion. It takes less than a second for the data to get sent from the computer and show up on the web page. Another timer named Christopher Sabato created and published a similar project. I am grateful to him for the basic architecture he provided.
For runners, coaches and spectators, what this means is that you can use your phone, link to the ‘Live Scoreboard’ page on this website and you will continuously see updates of finishing times and places (within that heat) a split second after the finishing time has been determined. You can sit in the stands and see how each finisher did by looking at your phone. Once that heat is complete, however, another will be loaded and the scoreboard refreshed for the new event. All of the previously scored events will be available using the ‘Live Results’ link.
I will continue to develop this project to make it better and more complete. I may add ‘lap times’ and ‘laps to go’ in future versions. Certainly, if you have any feedback for me, I would love to hear it.