Live timing is broken!

Have you stopped receiving live timing updates? Are they seriously delayed? Or do many updates suddenly show up all at once? Here are possible reasons and solutions:

Who is experiencing problems?

Just Me or a Few People Everyone
  • Do you have the same cellular provider or network in common? A common culprit, it's likely to be local network problems.
  • Your phone may be running slowly due to processor or memory shortages. Try closing background apps.
  • Do you all have the same device? Could be a RaceHero bug.
  • Popular events can cause local cell phone tower brownouts resulting in slow and/or sporadic connections to all websites.
  • T&S may be offline due to their own network problems preventing data from being sent to RaceHero.
  • RaceHero servers may be down or experiencing problems.

How is your Internet connection?

If you are using a cellular data connection to access RaceHero, especially at a popular event, be aware that individual local cell phone towers may be easily overloaded and cause unstable or sporadic network connectivity. Viewers watching RaceHero, but also streaming Facebook, posting videos, ordering an Uber, browsing Yelp, etc all eat up bandwidth and can cause local network congestion. 

This is not the same as the number of bars you have. Your signal strength may be 5 bars and you may have zero bandwidth due to other users.

To check, try using other apps or services. Can you stream a video from YouTube? Can you quickly browse your Facebook timeline? Can you surf the web on your phone?

If you CAN access other services without a problem, then:

Is the T&S System online?

Just as you may be having connection problems, so may the event promoter and their timing and scoring system. Our RaceHero Relay software will queue up live timing data until connectivity is restored and then send it all at once. This may result in seeing a mass update of live timing positions and times.

If T&S is not having any queueing or network connectivity problems, then:

How is your phone behaving generally?

Are other apps on your phone functioning normally? Do you have apps running in the background? Try closing those apps for a speed boost:

iPhone/iPad iPhone X Android
  1. Double click the Home button to bring up the fast app switcher.
  2. Swipe left/right to the app screen you want to quit.
  3. Swipe up on the app card you wish to shut down by flicking it up and off the screen.
  1. Touch your finger to the gesture area at the bottom of the screen.
  2. Swipe up and hold your finger in place for a moment until the card-like multitasking interface appears.
  3. Tap and hold on the app you want to quit until the red circle with the "-" symbol appears in the top left corner of the app.
  1. Launch the recent applications menu. How you get to this menu will vary a bit from device to device. On the LG G5, for example, tap the square button to get to recent apps, while on the Galaxy S8 the icon looks like two 90 degree-angles.
  2. Find the application(s) you want to close on the list by scrolling up from the bottom.
  3. Tap and hold on the application and swipe it to the right.
  4. Navigate to the Apps tab in settings if your phone’s still running slow. On Samsung phones, this menu is called "Application Manager." On LG phones, go to Settings > General > Apps.
  5. Go to the "All apps" tab, scroll to the application(s) that’s running, and click on it.
  6. Tap "Force Stop" to kill the process for good.

If your network speed is fast, T&S is not experiencing problems and your phone is otherwise behaving normally, then either:

  1. There is an Internet routing problem between your local network and the RaceHero servers. This will require resolution from Internet backbone providers outside the control of the event promoter or RaceHero.
  2. RaceHero is down or experiencing problems. You may see a "crash" image when browsing RaceHero in this situation. If this is the case, our 24/7 global monitoring system will alert our team immediately and we will will begin troubleshooting. 

If none of the above addresses your situation or you experience different scenarios, please email us at info@racehero.io.