Boat Timer can now be installed on Android devices from the Google Play app store. Because screen size is usually too small it is not recommended for phones, but should be useful on an Android tablet. The Boat Timer Android app can be found here.
Boat Timer: rating number updates for 2020
Each year the RYA publish the new Portsmouth Yardstick (PY) numbers around this time (March). The new table has arrived and you can see it here. Boat Timer keeps a table of these rating numbers and also has an easy way for you to change the numbers for your club (each club can adjust the ratings to suit their racing) and add boats not on the table. You can even add a new rating system.
The Portsmouth Yardstick is not the only system, other countries such as the USA have their own, though many are based on PY numbers. Another popular system in the UK is “Great Lakes” which is a variation of the PY based on the Great Lakes winter series racing and Boat Timer includes the Great Lakes numbers for many classes. You can see more details about it here.
Boat Timer: Backup option plus revised CSV columns
Boat Timer now has a backup option. This is a significant addition as it allows data to be saved and also moved to another computer. Under Options – Backup are “Export” which saves all Boat Timer information to a single file and “Import” to read an exported file back in.
“Import” should be used carefully: it deletes all Boat Timer databases and recreates them from the file, so anything done in the app after the export will be lost.
In the CSV file created from the Boat Timer results are two new columns: “Status” and “Actual”. Actual simply records the finish time as would be recorded on a clock. Mark at Rooster suggested this would help when using programs such as HAL Race Results. The Status column records codes such as DSQ, OCS, RTD for boats that do not finish. These codes previously appeared in the Elapsed column which made it difficult to import them to another program.
Finally Boat Timer now displays the version number of the app so it is clear what version you are using – it appears just under the black header when you open the Options page. The new version is 20071 – the number is based on the day of the year, in this case the 71st day of 2020.