SportsRev A2 MeetTime design complete, all hardware fit-checked in CAD, not built

SplitPole

The agility pole you already own, made into a sprint timing gate, and with MeetTime a race timer that needs one starter and one helper

Turns a standard 1 inch spiked agility pole into a timing gate: a HipHead with a 1000 Hz reflectorless LiDAR gives the time, a ChestPod with a second LiDAR confirms it was the torso, and poles sync over ESP-NOW so a coach's phone shows every split.

Who buys it: High school and club track, football and soccer coaches, small S&C gyms, and now school PE departments and athletics clubs that cannot find timekeepers for sports days and open meetings. Today they hand-time with $25-42 stopwatches (3 timekeepers per place by the book), pay $229-600 per gate, or under $5,000 for an entry FinishLynx photo-finish camera.
Why it pays: A pair at the $349 target costs about a third of a two-gate Dashr Silver ($940) or Vitruve Speed ($1,100) and removes the 0.22 s hand-timing error (est.).
Target price: $199 per pole, $349 Pair, $649 Squad Kit of 4 poles, $499 MeetTime Kit (2 poles + GunEar) (target)
First-minute wow: The coach pushes two poles into the grass 10 m apart, no reflectors, no aiming; the first athlete runs and the phone shows 1.84 s with a green 'torso' tick before they have stopped.

See the CAD design Concept page

SplitPole concept: the idea and where each part goes — The concept. The CAD design is below, under Printable CAD.

What the research found

And how this design answers it

Hand timing reads about 0.22 s fast on a 40 yd (two JSCR studies) → a 1000 Hz LiDAR beam timestamps each crossing to ±0.5 ms
Single beams stop the clock on an arm or a knee → a second, chest-height LiDAR on the same pole must confirm within ±60 ms, and the hip beam times the torso range segment, not the first object
Dual-beam sender/receiver gates need careful alignment → both beams are reflectorless and point across the lane, so there is nothing on the far side to aim at
Reflectorless beams widen with distance → CAD beam report: 63 mm spot at 1.0 m, 189 mm at 3.0 m, and a dark shirt is only seen to about 2.5 m, so the setup card says 1.0-1.5 m and the same offset at every pole (then the spot lead cancels)
Coaches already own agility poles → the heads slide onto a 25.4 mm pole and lock with a thumb screw; the pole goes back to cone drills afterwards
Clubs and schools cannot find the 3 timekeepers per place that hand timing needs (UKA, TR 19(8)) → rev A2 MeetTime: a GunEar pod starts the race on the gun flash or sound, two finish poles read each runner's lane from LiDAR range, and one volunteer taps the finish order on the phone

Use case

Primary-school sports day: 6-lane sprints with two teachers

Starter (PE teacher)Place judge with the phone (teaching assistant)Children

01Trigger: the GunEar pole stands 3 m from the starter; finish poles stand 1 m off the inside of lane 1 and outside of lane 6
02Detection: the clapper bang starts the race clock (8.7 ms sound lag removed); each finish beam reads the runner's range, and range / 1.22 m gives the lane
03Alert: the place judge taps the finish order 1, 6, 2, 5, 3, 4; the page joins places and times and flags any runner hidden behind another
04Action: results show to 0.01 s and as rounded-up hand times; a flagged runner gets the backup watch time

Outcome: Every heat timed and placed with 2 adults instead of about 8-10 timekeepers (est.)

How it works

Architecture

01
Sense: Benewake TFmini Plus at hip height (1000 Hz) and TF-Luna at chest height (250 Hz) on each pole
02
Decide: XIAO ESP32-C3 segments the hip-beam range trace, finds the torso, and checks the chest confirm
03
Send: ESP-NOW between poles with a two-way clock sync every second; the lead pole runs a Wi-Fi access point
04
Tell: the coach's phone page (roster queue, splits, CSV), start lights and buzzer on the pole
05
Start: GunEar pod (MAX9814 mic + BPW34 flash photodiode) sends one ESP-NOW start; flash wins, sound is corrected by distance

Hardware

Real parts, buyable today

Bill of materials: about $158 per pole, $316 per Pair, $633 per Squad Kit, $48 per GunEar and $364 per MeetTime Kit at qty 1 (est.).

Block	Part	Why this part
Timing beam	Benewake TFmini Plus IP65 (35 x 18.5 x 21 mm, 1-1000 Hz, FOV 3.6 deg)	Reflectorless, so one pole is a whole gate; 1 ms samples
Confirm beam	Benewake TF-Luna (35 x 21.25 x 12.5 mm, 250 Hz, FOV 2 deg)	Dual-beam logic on one pole, for $24.90 (est.)
MCU + radio	Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3	Two UARTs, ESP-NOW sync and a phone page with no internet
Power	18650 3,000 mAh + Adafruit PowerBoost 1000C	6.3 h armed, 26 h idle (est.)
Start cues	2 x Adafruit NeoPixel Stick 8 + 12 mm buzzer	Set / go lights visible from either direction
Race start (MeetTime)	GunEar: XIAO ESP32-C3 + Adafruit 1713 MAX9814 mic + Vishay BPW34 photodiode + 1000 mAh LiPo	Starts every race from the gun, clapper or flash with no wire across the track; about $48 (est.)

Mechanical

Printable CAD

6 parts, generated from code and checked as closed solids. Pick a part to inspect it, or download the STL files to print.

See the CAD parts render

SplitPole printable parts, rendered from the CAD — Render of the printable parts from the actual CAD. Not yet printed or photographed.

Loading the CAD…

Real CAD · drag to rotate · scroll to zoomReal CAD · swipe sideways

Open risks we are working on

Vitruve Speed ($600) and Dashr Silver ($475) already sell reflectorless single-unit gates; our case is price and dual-beam confirm, and either could cut price
LiDAR range on dark clothing in full sun is from datasheets and estimates, not measured; test T3 on a June noon field before any claim
The torso-by-range trigger (±5 ms est.) is untested; it must match a Brower dual-beam gate within 0.02 s on 10 m splits (test T1)
No coach-voice demand threads were found; gate G1 is 10 coach interviews and a 2-week loan to 3 schools
MeetTime lane-from-range is untested: a near runner can hide one behind, and dark tops past 4 m may be missed, so the place judge and a backup watch stay part of the kit (tests T7, T8)
MeetTime is not fully automatic timing and not for records; licensed meetings must keep their timekeepers, so the market is sports days, open and development meetings and training races

Design stage only: nothing on this page is for sale. Specifications and prices are targets.