When providing live tracking for events & races in a scalable manner our users work with APIs to import and export participants' information and GPS devices. We now refactored our generic import. We flattened nested objects and now provide to import RACE RESULT lists. 

Read all about our generic import in the documentation: https://docs.racemap.com/api-import-and-export-data/import-basics/metadata-api

Our grabber is a handy tool to poll our live data API and directly show race data in real-time in a browser tab. Use this solution to seamlessly provide real-time participant data such as speed, distance to go, or gap for your video productions. No coding skills needed.

With the new version of the grabber, you can now set 

• Multiple deviceIds respectively startNumbers to show specific participants only. (Instead of showing all participants or only one.)
• The number of devices in lead showLeaders eg. in order to show data of the five leaders only. 

Download files and all information about our grabber tools to easily extract live data from our API are summarized in our documentation: https://docs.racemap.com/data-api/grabber.

The */ranks API provides the data from a specific leaderboard through an interface. We now added the activeDuration parameter in this API. The active duration is the duration within the event start- and end time in which the device sends locations and moves faster than 1 km/h. For example at a multi-day endurance cycling race, you can use activeDuration to infer the break times of the cyclists. 

Read more in our documentation about our

• */ranks API: https://docs.racemap.com/data-api/ranks
• leaderboard solution: https://docs.racemap.com/how-to-use-live-tracking/gps-timing

Since last season we provide small HTML apps that make live data from endurance races easily usable for video productions such as TV overlays. The spotter is our latest release. For example, this tool feeds the speaker with real-time information from anywhere on the race course. 

• Just define up to three different spots (distance from the start location in m). 
• The table sorts participants within the sensitive range (rangeBeforeSpot and rangeAfterSpot) coming closer to the spot. 

All information about our handy tools to easily extract live data from our */current-API can be found in our documentation: https://docs.racemap.com/data-api/grabber

For a couple of months now, we are providing the grabber to pull real-time data from endurance races and make the data usable for live productions such as video broadcasting. Time for an update. 

We now added the new parameters gap, gapAverage, gapChase and gapDistance to the grabber. Additionally, there can be set a refDeviceId or a refStartNumber to flexibly define the reference device for the gap calculations. 

Furthermore, the drafting- and related penalty discussion at triathlons let us develop a prototype of a drafting tool. The tool evaluates the distance between participants and monitors if participants move in the draft zone.

All information about our handy tools to easily extract live data from our */current-API can be found in our documentation article: https://docs.racemap.com/data-api/grabber  

The current API processes real-time geolocation data for TV graphics & overlays, speed monitoring, gap time calculation, and any other 3rd party application that needs live data from sports events. We now added three parameters to the API: 

• speedRaw: Average speed in [m/s] is calculated with the interpolated raw coordinates. 
• gapChase: Duration in [s] to reach the current location of the leader respectively of the reference device. Prediction with the speed of the chaser. 
• gapDistance: Distance in [m] to reach the current location of the leader respectively of the reference device.  

With this update, the startNumber is a query parameter and the leader is the reference for the calculation of gapAverage, gap, gapChase, and gapDistance by default.

Read all about our current API and find live samples to test with your applications in our documentation: https://docs.racemap.com/data-api/current

We've added parameters to flexibly adjust the mapping algorithm to the specific needs of your event: 

• Max. mapping distance
• Max. and Min speed for speedfilter

This will allow for more accurate mapping, and we are sure it will be a helpful addition for your event. Access the mapping parameters in the "Danger Zone" of the advanced settings of your event.

The mapping impacts all functions and features in Racemap that calculate the relation of the devices' locations to the shadowtrack. Which are visualization, leaderboard, monitor, */ranks & */current API.

How does the mapping work? GPS devices send their geo data to a specific tracking map. The mapping calculates the device's location on the shadowtrack. The algorithm takes into account the device's current coordinates and its previous location on the track. Mapping considers laps and assumes that a device moves onwards (and not backward) on the track.

Since we are providing live geodata through APIs two years ago, we have been asked for a handy tool to extract specific values such as speed, distance to go, gap or away from track etc. 

In most cases, a TV production has no time to develop or adapt their solution feeding the overlay with live data from our API. Now you can use our handy and flexible grabber tool to directly display specific live data in a browser tab. We are looking forward to learning more about your use cases and how you are going to apply this solution.

Read more about this solution in our documentation: https://docs.racemap.com/data-api/grabber

We reworked the participants section in the settings of each tracking map. Now, it is much clearer how to import respectively synchronize Participants Data with CSV files or from hosted (recommended) sources such as RACE RESULT or your own server.  

• To better control the import you can switch on & -off the synchronization from a hosted source. 
• The synchronization stops calling the hosted source three days after the end time of the tracking map, automatically. 
• You can synchronize participant data from different sources with the same tracking map. 
• You can automatically call the participant data in your tracking map from the given API endpoint, also. 
• You can import participants from RACE RESULT without a transponder code. We removed the requirement for transponder1 field.

Read more about the import of participants' data in our documentation https://docs.racemap.com/api-import-and-export-data

Customers using our */current API to feed TV graphics with real-time location data asked for gap values in relation to a specific reference device. Advantage: The reference device can be selected and flexibly changed during a running event. 

So we developed the new gapAverage parameter. gapAverage provides the duration in seconds to reach the current location of the reference device. The prediction is calculated with the average speed of the reference device on the leg between its current location to another device.

• The gapAverage value can be calculated only for devices behind the reference device.
• gapAverage fluctuates less than gap calculated with small values of currentSpeedDuration query.

Read all about the */current data feed and find many samples to test your APIs in our documentation: https://docs.racemap.com/data-api/current#optional-query-parameters