No special gear. Your devices just need a normal mobile connection, the same one they use to send a text. There is no track Wi-Fi to arrange, no hub to power, and no hardware to set up.
Coverage is not always good, and that is expected
Fields and tracks are not known for perfect signal. FinishLine is built to ride out the hiccup rather than assume it away.
Every device keeps its own times. When a finish timer records a time, that time is saved to the device itself before anything is sent over the network. If the connection drops, the time is already safe. When the connection returns, the device catches up on its own.
That is what matters most on a weak signal: a brief outage costs you live updates, not results.
What an outage actually looks like: the results device stops seeing new times appear, and the affected device shows its connection state in the toolbar. Times keep being recorded the whole time. They arrive in a burst when the signal returns.
What stops working, and in what order
| Connection state | What still works | What waits |
|---|---|---|
| Good signal | Everything | — |
| Weak or patchy | Timing, staging, reviewing your own heats | Live results, updates from other devices |
| Fully offline mid-heat | Timing on each device | Everything else, until it returns |
| Offline before the meet opens | Standalone timer only | Joining a meet |
The one thing that genuinely needs a connection is joining a meet. A device has to get online once to be let in. After that it can ride out the drops.
Timing accuracy on a poor signal
Devices keep their clocks in step by checking against a shared clock, so it is fair to ask what happens to accuracy when those checks get sparse.
Each device learns how its own clock tends to run fast or slow, so it stays accurate through short gaps rather than falling out of step the moment it misses a check. If a device genuinely cannot keep its clock close enough, it flags the affected results rather than quietly recording a time it cannot stand behind. The full picture is in how the clock sync works.
Practical advice
- Check signal at the finish line, not the parking lot. That is where the devices that matter will sit.
- Devices on different carriers is a feature, not a problem. They do not talk to each other directly, so one carrier having a bad day at that field does not take the crew down.
- A phone hotspot is a fine backstop for a device that has no service of its own, though it will drain the host phone over a long meet.
- Fully offline? The standalone stopwatch works with no account and no connection at all. You lose coordination and live results, not the ability to time.
Did this answer your question? If something here is wrong, missing, or out of date, tell us at support@finishlinetimer.com and we’ll fix it.