NCAA Tournament to use Precision Timing
 

The reasons they didn't never made sense to me.

Bout f-ing time.

Maybe they haven't done it in the past because they didn't have the money. I mean, it's not like they make any profit on their games and television contracts. ;)

I'm guessing it had more to do with the variety of facilities used. The thought was probably thought if you couldn't use the technology for all the games, you couldn't use it for any. We've probably also arrived at the point where all D1 officials are 100% comfortable with using timing packs.

This year is probably the first in which they've mandated and/or confirmed that all facilities, including the cavernous football stadiums usually used for the final four, can support the technology.

For those of us that don't work college, what would they need to "support?" I'm guessing it's just a little receiver that sits on/near the table and receives a signal from the pack on the official's hip.

Why would an old football stadium be any different?

Thanks for the insight!

I'm not an expert on the devices, but I'm pretty sure it is contained entirely on the official as far as equipment. To start the clock, they push a button on the pack attached to their waist. They attach a microphone-like device on their shirt (See the Lauren Holtkamp picture in the shoe thread) which picks up whistle frequency and stops the clock. I think the technology part had to do with syncing the timing packs to the clocks in the arenas. I'm not sure how that works though.

Not sure it would be, but my thought was that echoes from the whistle might be tricky. Also, in a regular arena, all of the electromagnetics are centered on the floor and bounded by the stands/walls, but in a football stadium the court is often offset around the 20 yard line with temp bleachers on one side, leaving the other half of the field dark and empty. Might be some interference or signal scattering from the timing pack's signal.

But there is probably an easy engineering solution or two to solve these problems, assuming they are even problems at all.

Echos don't matter. The whistle is only used to stop the clock. The system detects the initial sound of a whistle and sends a stop-clock command. If there is a second whistle, either from the same official or another official, the system will get another stop-clock signal...but already being stopped, it does nothing. Additionally, the echo probably wouldn't be loud enough to trigger the stop anyway. It is probably even immune to someone in the stands blowing a whistle. I'm guessing here, but, the microphone, being so close to the whistle, is probably very insensitive and wouldn't even register a whistle from 20' away.

The clock is started by a push button, not the whistle. And like the stopping action, multiple start commands don't cause a problem.


Interference, doubt it.

It's the air from the whistle that stops the clock, not the sound of the whistle. You can blow directly into the microphone and the clock stops.

I don't know the technology in use for this, but track and field starters can use a remote start sensor to start the clock. The way it works is it sends a signal that includes the time when the sensor was triggered. If the signal is missed by the receiving end, you press a button on the transmitter and it resends the time, effectively starting the clock retroactively.

If this works the similarly, it wouldn't matter which "echo" the receiver were to receive, it has a timestamp in the signal and can automatically adjust the clock to take that timestamp into account.

How the Systems Work The Precision Time Systems works via a radio transmitter in the belt pack worn by the officials. Attached to the belt pack is an omni directional microphone which docks in the microphone adapter on the lanyard just below the whistle. When an official blows the whistle, the belt pack recognizes the frequency of the FOX 40 whistle and sends a radio signal to the base station receiver that is connected to the scoreboard controller, stopping the clock at the speed of light. The Precision Time System not only stops the clock, it gives the official timer the ability to restart the clock, as well as each official. Each belt pack has a restart button, so the clock can be started from the floor, if necessary.

It also recognizes the frequency of direct hot air since blowing directly into the microphone is how test that they are working.

The mic isn't close enough to the whistle for the air coming through the whistle to even affect it.

Microphones detect sound, that's it. Blowing across the microphone opening at very close range to test them just happens to make a very loud sound across a wide spectrum of frequencies.....similar to the actual sound of the whistle.

Time For Mr. Wizard ...
 

Both of you guys are right, and both of you guys are wrong.

The microphone does detect air, actually the movement of air. Sound is a vibration that propagates as a typically audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a medium such as air, or water.

Also, no air (or no medium), no sound propagation. I used to teach my middle school science students that if two astronauts were an inch apart on the surface of the Moon (no atmosphere), and yelled at each other at the top of their lungs, that neither would hear the other one (unless their space helmets were touching).