[FoxHunt] Next ARDF at O'Neill Park 2/12/06

Jay Hennigan jay at west.net
Thu Feb 2 21:17:00 EST 2006


J.Gordon Beattie, Jr., W2TTT wrote:

> Pardon my asking but what is a "e-sick"?

Illness brought on by excessive use of technology.  But you knew that.

An "E-stick", however, is a transponder produced by SportIdent.  It is 
also called an "SI-card", although it looks nothing like a card.  The 
unit clips onto your finger with an elastic strap.  The business end is 
about the diameter of a pencil and half an inch long.  Inside is a coil 
and a microchip as well as a memory capacitor.

For use in orienteering events, one first "clears" the unit by placing 
the stick end into a receptacle on a "control", which is the mating half.

Controls are about the size of a cigarette pack with a hole that accepts 
the business end of the E-Stick.  The clear control induces a magnetic
field into the coil in the stick, charging its capacitor.  It then 
erases a portion of the unit's flash memory containing any previous data 
(leaving intact the electronic serial number) and starts the internal 
clock.

A "check" control detects that the E-stick is running and initialized.

When a competitor starts the race, the E-Stick is inserted in the 
"Start" control.  This creates a timestamp that is stored both in the 
stick and in the control.

As the competitor finds other controls on the course, the stick is 
inserted into each control which timestamps the control with the stick 
number and the stick with the control number.

Continue up to and including the "Finish" control.  Then the stick is 
"downloaded" where its data is dumped to the race officials via a 
special control connected to a PC.  This gives a record of the time at 
which each control was located.  Software then tallies the score, shows 
the split times between controls, in which order, etc.

The data in the controls is available for backup and can also be used 
for search-and-rescue if a competitor turns up missing.  By 
interrogating them it can be determined where the competitor last 
checked in and when.

Called "SI-cards" because they're made by Sport-Ident and they take the 
place of a paper card carried by competitors and punched at each control 
with a paper punch having a unique hole pattern.   Old-school terms like 
"punching in" are used to denote registering a control with the E-stick.

Come to the event and find out for real!


-- 
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay at west.net
NetLojix Communications, Inc.  -  http://www.netlojix.com/
WestNet:  Connecting you to the planet.  805 884-6323


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