A novel low-cost timing system for alpine ski races based on low power microcontrollers and peer-to-peer wireless data transfer

In this paper a novel timing system for alpine ski races is presented. The proposed system is composed by a starting gate, a finish line detector, a trainer handheld device and an athlete device that can be repeated for any number of athletes. Each device is based on a ESP32 microcontroller and all athletes’ devices communicate with the starting gate, finish line and trainer handheld using the ESP-NOW protocol. The athlete device is completed by an accelerometer used to disambiguate a running athlete from the others on the starting or finish line.