No. FinishLine runs on the phones and tablets your crew already has. There is no finish-line rig to buy, no cables to run across the track, and nothing to store between seasons.
That is the whole point of the design. Traditional fully automatic timing means a dedicated camera on a tripod, a wired or radio link to the starting gun, a laptop running proprietary software, and someone who knows how to set all of it up. For a youth league or a small high school program, that equipment costs more than the season does and usually ends up in the hands of the one volunteer who understands it.
What you bring
- Phones and tablets. One per crew position. See how many devices do I need for the shapes that work.
- A normal mobile connection. No track Wi-Fi, no hub, no base station. See connectivity at the track.
- Your usual starting pistol, if you use one. FinishLine listens for it rather than replacing it.
That is the list.
What replaces the hardware
Each piece of a traditional timing system has a software counterpart that runs on an ordinary device:
| Traditional rig | What FinishLine uses instead |
|---|---|
| Wired start sensor on the gun | A device at the start that hears the gun and marks the instant it fires |
| Finish-line camera and controller | Any device's camera, in photo-finish mode |
| Timing console and cabling | Every device on one shared clock, kept in step over cellular |
| Laptop and results software | The record keeper's device, publishing as the meet runs |
Photo finish is not a paid add-on. It is available at every level, including the free standalone timer. It is part of the app, not an upsell.
Where the accuracy comes from
Without hardware, the honest question is where the precision goes. Two answers:
- Every device measures against the same clock. Times captured on separate phones line up because each one is continuously checking itself against a single shared clock rather than trusting its own. This is covered in how the clock sync works.
- The remaining error is human, and it is removable. A finger tap lands roughly 150 to 250 milliseconds late. The acoustic start removes that error at the start, and photo finish removes it at the line for the heats where places are close.
Hardware triggers are not supported today
To be clear about what is and is not here: FinishLine does not connect to external timing hardware. There is no support for a beam, a pressure pad, a hardware start sensor, or any other external trigger, and none is planned for a specific release.
What we can say is that nothing in the app rules it out. A hardware trigger would report a time against the same shared clock a finger tap does, so it would fit alongside the ways the app already captures times rather than needing a separate path to results. That keeps the door open, but an open door is not a feature, and FinishLine is worth choosing on what it does now.
If external hardware is something your program needs, tell us at support@finishlinetimer.com. What people actually ask for is what gets built.
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.