Answers & a way to reach us.

Do I need special timing hardware?

No. FinishLine runs on the phones and tablets your crew already has. There's no finish-line rig to buy or wire.

How many phones do I need?

More than one. Timing a full meet is a team effort, with each role on its own device.

A minimal setup: a meet coordinator, plus a finish timer on every lane (one phone per lane, the way most meets are run today). As an alternative to per-lane timers, a single photo-finish device paired with a separate bib collector also works.

An ideal setup spreads the work a little further:

• One or two devices at the start: one at the chute, one on the starting gun.
• A finish timer on each lane, or a photo-finish device with a separate bib collector.
• A results device is preferred but optional. Add it when you want real-time adjustments and reconciliation during the meet.

You can run up to 10 devices on the trial and 20 on a Team subscription.

How does bib collection work for lane heats vs. pack heats?

It depends on whether runners are in assigned lanes or running as a pack. What changes is when you collect bibs.

Lane heats (pre-collect): assign each athlete to a lane during setup, before the race. Each lane’s finish timer already knows whose time it’s capturing, so results come together as the heat runs.

Pack heats (post-collect): runners start as a pack with no lanes. One operator taps each crossing to record the finish order and times, and a second collects bibs afterward — at the chute, or from an expected-athlete list — and matches them to places.

Do families need the app to see results?

No. Families can follow the live heat and browse full results right in a web browser. No account and no app required. They can also follow your team in the app to see results after each meet.

Do I need special network equipment at the track?

No special gear. Your devices just need a normal mobile connection. There’s no track Wi-Fi, hub, or hardware to set up.

Coverage at fields isn’t always perfect, so FinishLine is built to ride out the occasional hiccup: each device holds its own captures and catches up automatically once the connection returns, so a brief outage during the meet won’t lose times.

Timing on a single device with the standalone stopwatch works fully offline.

How do all the devices stay in sync?

Every device sets its clock to the same shared time source, so all your finish timers measure from the exact same starting instant, even though they’re on separate phones.

With a starter: the start time comes straight from the gun. FinishLine captures it from the sound of the start, with no human reaction delay.

Without a starter: each finish timer taps at the start, and FinishLine reconciles those taps into a single agreed start time that every result is measured against.

Because every finish is measured on the same clock, the main source of error is human reaction time, which FinishLine keeps to a minimum, and removes entirely at the line when you use photo finish, to keep results as accurate as possible.

What is photo finish?

For close races, a single camera images the whole finish line and records a strip accurate to hundredths of a second, far finer than a hand tap can resolve.

The photo-finish operator marks each crossing right on the strip, linking it to a place, lane, or bib number depending on how the heat is set up: by lane for a lane heat, or by finish order for a pack.

The strip is shared with the record keeper, who can review it and adjust the marks after the heat, so a contested or close result gets sorted out without holding up the rest of the meet.