VRA - capture data from first rowing stroke on

[eurorower]

Hi all,

I have a question re data and time measurement that is generated through the VRA.

We are organising an event using indoor rowers model D, PM5 monitors and firmware version 20.

The event is a mix of rowing and cycling in three rounds. First round is rowing, then the athletes directly move on to a bike for the second round and for the final round they go back on the rower.

Now the problem is with calculating the correct times for the individual rowers in the final round, i. e. the second round of rowing. For the VRA we connect 8 rowers. When we start the application, there is a short countdown before the time measurement starts for the whole group of 8. This works just fine in the first round as everybody is starting at the same time. However, the problem we have is on the last round when the athlethes come back from their bike round. The time measurement starts for all 8 rowers simultaneously, i. e. when the leading athlete comes back and starts his final round. Let's say the second athlete starts 10 seconds later, the time measurement will not start at his first stroke but has already started when the leading athlete started. So if we assume both rowers would need 5 minutes for the last round, the leading athlete would measure these correct 5 minutes, the second one however would measure 5 min 10 sec.

What I was hoping you could help me out with is a way to measure time from the first stroke as opposed to when the first in the group starts. Is there any data/timestamp generated by the VRA for this event?

Thanks so much for your help and all the best!

[Citroen]

I don't think it's possible, unless you forced everyone to start the second round of rowing at the same time on a VRA restart (which would be 100% silly).

Your best bet is to use the VRA to ensure all of the clocks in the PMs are sync'd. But use the memory, or logcard (PM4), or USB stick (PM5) to capture the workout data. That has an explicit timestamp.

[eurorower]

Hi Citroen,

Cheers for your reply, appreciated.

We have tried this in the past but it seemed that no data is saved on the USB as soon as the VRA was connected. Is there a setting we need to change perhaps?

All the best!

[Citroen]

Sorry I don't know how PM5s handle that stuff. With PM4s you would get the logcard data as long as the logcard was inserted when the monitor was in "OK to Warm Up" mode and extracted after the next race is loaded (back to "OK to Warm Up" mode).