Start lights as well as hoots?
So my winter project is to write a new start system for my club's race box. The club has had a computerised system for years, but recently it has failed quite a few times. Old age has plently to do with it - the software used means it has to be Windows XP (or older) and the computer must have serial ports (remember those?) to drive the relays for the hooter and lights (more on those in a sec). The system has been very useful - as well as making automated start sounds, it also records a finish time when you click a button, although it doesn't have a way to record the boat/sail number.
So I have started to write a replacement software system. I went with Python (as it can run on different computers) and USB relays (as serial ports are rare now). I am putting it up on GitHub in case it is useful to other clubs - you can see it here and there is an overview of what it currently does here. It is free to use or copy (there goes my billionaire lifestyle aspirations 🙄 ).
Feel free to comment on it to me if you have any thoughts. But my thought for today is about using lights for race starts.
The current system does use three different colours of lights on the outside of the race box to help sailors know what part of the start sequence is happening. Now I am going to confess here that in all my time at the club (15 years?), I hadn't used them or even noticed them - I just went with the hoots. But I know other club sailors say they are great. So I am planning to add lights to the new system as an option.
But I wanted to add lights that are useful to me - selfish, I know 😉 For the sake of simplicity I also wanted to write a system for just one light, not three. Now I have been known to forget my sailing watch at times and try to guess when the start is by watching other boats, so this is what might work for me when that happens: at 1 minute to the start, an LED light comes on (on the racebox or committee boat) and stays on. At ten seconds to go, that light starts flashing so I know to point my boat at the start line. At the start, the light turns off. It is the simplest option I could think of.
That would be helpful for me - but do you agree? Would you use start lights if they worked like this?
Thanks - it keeps me busy 😉 I did work on the hooter issue myself - I am not at all familiar with electrics but most useful bits seem to be 12v car parts - I got a twin air horn that was 175db. I did start off with a sealed lead battery (a small one though) but I think if you don't keep it charged, it can stop working though - and it did 😏
The thing that worked for me was one of those car jump start lithium batteries you can get now. Only £30-ish, very light, easy to charge (as it is USB phone tech) and has 12v output for the horn. You do have to get an extra cable (an EC5 female cable off eBay) to connect to the horn, but it seems a good improvement on lead acid tech. Do you know what battery Blithfield bought - I am always keen to find out what other clubs are doing?