Mylaps Registration

Has anyone else run into this?

I just bought a new (to me) car that has a hardwired transponder. I asked the previous owner to unregister with Mylaps so I could register the number in my name.

He was told that only the original owner could register it, but the new owner, me, could return it and get a 40% discount on a new transponder.

So I've bought a perfectly good transponder but can only register with my laps if I send them my perfectly functional transponder and $200 so they can send me a different perfectly functional transponder? Talk about Bull@#$t!

Additionally, this is the 3rd "used" transponder I've bought and the first time I've run into this.

Did the previous owner get bad information or has my laps/AMB decided now that they've kinda cornered the market they can stick it to the customers?

Rory

you just need the previous owner or whoever it is currently registered to, to release it from mylaps.com then you can go in and register it


at least thats how I have done it in the past (probably 9 months ago)

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Originally Posted by Sandro

you just need the previous owner or whoever it is currently registered to, to release it from mylaps.com then you can go in and register it

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+1.

The owner is either uninformed, or wants to be able to retain access to prior timing info. There's nothing you can do to FORCE him to release it if he wants to retain it, but if he's simply uninformed you can ask nicely...

Or, you can threaten to drive extremely poorly, so that all crappy laps get "credited" to him...;)

to add to what Greg said

if the previous owner wants to still be able to view their times for future reference, all they have to do is search by your name because the actual data cannot be erased(will still show their name on those times) for example mine shows the previous owner ran the ARRC in 05 (to bad it shows a DNF so I can't brag :()

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sandro

you just need the previous owner or whoever it is currently registered to, to release it from mylaps.com then you can go in and register it


at least thats how I have done it in the past (probably 9 months ago)

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They have changed their policy; I got this response from mylaps this morning:

Robert,

Personal Transponders can only be registered one time by the original owner, and cannot be changed or transferred. However, we can offer you 40% off the purchase of a brand new transponder by trading in your used one.

Thank you. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Sincerely,

Name withheld since I don't have permission to quote

Pity, since our MR2 came with a transponder in the previous owner's name.

Yea Rob. I should have stated in my post that the previous owner sent me a copy of the email he received. I knew he was not trying to put anything over on me. I had hoped that he asked the wrong person or was getting an answer to a different question.

As stated earlier, the new policy is BULL@#$%!!!!!

WOW !!! that is just pathetic.

like they aren't already making enough money from them. They must have finally realized that those transponders are as good as property, since after a few years you can typically sell them for more than you paid for them.

That is wholly unacceptable. Yet, there is nothing I can think of to do about it.

With the regions all in bed with this company, requiring us to purchase them in order to race, we are completely subject to their requirements, whether we wish to or not. We have no recourse that I can think of at this moment.

I'm stunned.

Well they are our regions. Maybe the racers should ask their regional execs to request this be put back to how it was, or we start looking at alternative timing/scoring options.

I'm serious. It is our club, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shwah

Well they are our regions. Maybe the racers should ask their regional execs to request this be put back to how it was, or we start looking at alternative timing/scoring options.

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+1. And now I'm pissed off enough to pay extra money/dues/entry fees to make it happen.

Anyone know what the copyright/patent status is on these devices?

I'm extremely pissed off about this.

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Originally Posted by Greg Amy

That is wholly unacceptable. Yet, there is nothing I can think of to do about it.

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www.gregamysversionofmylaps.com

AMB doesn't have any rights to the data from the scoring systems.

All you need to do is create the applications to make the data available from the database.

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With the regions all in bed with this company, requiring us to purchase them in order to race, we are completely subject to their requirements, whether we wish to or not. We have no recourse that I can think of at this moment.

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"Hey, T&S! Can I have my time card? Can I have John Doe's time card? Here's a data transfer device. Can I have them all?"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shwah

Well they are our regions. Maybe the racers should ask their regional execs to request this be put back to how it was, or we start looking at alternative timing/scoring options.

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It has nothing to do with T&S. Mylaps.com is a service that AMB provides, for free. Your transponder works whether you register or not. You have access to all of your times regardless of your status as the original owner of the transponder.

DC Region used the system for a number of years without making use of mylaps.com. T&S posted the time cards as a PDF.

I'm in the same boat on the transponder which came with my ITS car. I'm just going to ask for the previous owners logon and password.

I'll let you know if that works OK.

(Sounds of gears turning...anyone know of any decent web/database coders...?)

In my radio control racing world, we use AMB transponders also. There is a company in the UK which can make AMB compatible transponders and clone the ones you already have.

http://www.team-mrt.com/

The RC transponders are not the same as the road racing, but, I'd bet it is the same technology.

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Originally Posted by jjjanos

www.gregamysversionofmylaps.com

AMB doesn't have any rights to the data from the scoring systems.

All you need to do is create the applications to make the data available from the database.

"Hey, T&S! Can I have my time card? Can I have John Doe's time card? Here's a data transfer device. Can I have them all?"

It has nothing to do with T&S. Mylaps.com is a service that AMB provides, for free. Your transponder works whether you register or not. You have access to all of your times regardless of your status as the original owner of the transponder.

DC Region used the system for a number of years without making use of mylaps.com. T&S posted the time cards as a PDF.

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You are exactly right. Great points. We can just take control of the data. It would be a hell of a lot easier to find results without an entire planets worth of motorsports to sift through:happy204:

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Originally Posted by benspeed

I'm just going to ask for the previous owners logon and password.

I'll let you know if that works OK.

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thats a great idea, way to beat their system. :026:

but its still the principle that is crazy.

With the price of the transponders up in the range of $400, its too bad their is not a way for the track to gets times from data loggers(without each person giving them a file) since for $1000 each person could buy a DL1 and get a whole lot more features.

agree a transponder will still work and its only the mylaps feature that won't, but when I am paying $400 for a transponder it would atleast be nice to view each lap individually and compare to others.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shwah

You are exactly right. Great points. We can just take control of the data. It would be a hell of a lot easier to find results without an entire planets worth of motorsports to sift through:happy204:

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We can take control of the data, but we won't. Let's be realistic. SCCA could jump all over this and become the record of reference for our race results. But it won't.

When considering buying a car it was nice to be able to go out and look at the times posted. Nice to be able to look at a large representative number of races and see how the driver/car performed.

Also nice after races to know where to look. Nice to have one single place to see results.

This is something known as "value". But when you are selling a product to people who have no choice in what they are buying, you are wasting money if you spend a dime to provide "value" when you don't have to. Even over the last 1 year I have noticed mylaps going from being fairly useful to being mostly useless.

Picture a barrel. Picture us over it. Get used to it.

jim

Jim Hardesty
Diablo Verde ITC Civic
Powered by Makers Mark

I am hardly a computer/database expert, but it does not seem like it should be a complicated task to get the data from T&S and display it somewhere online. I know there must be a couple of computer geeks (and I mean that in the nicest way) in the SCCA. Anyone want to take a stab?

And, I agree with Greg A. At this point, I'd be willing to pay (a little) if required to maintain a site to access results. It would be nice if it was managed through the SCCA, but there is no reason that it has to be in order to be effective and convenient. In fact, some enterprising soul might be able to make a buck or two.

Actually, now that I think about it, here in ATL we use dlb for our registration. What is that if not a database function. Perhaps dlb would like to get in on the whole process. Hmmmmmmmm?

You're right, it's not brain surgery to do it. It just takes time and dedication. But if it is not the hardware manufacturer or scca doing it, it won't happen. Nobody else has the leverage on the data.

How will the raw data be obtained? an outside agency can't require a region to submit the data. Shoot, only a small percentage gets on mylaps now. It'll be even worse with joeblow.com trying to get the data. Or worse, several sites competing for the results.

Imagine this, a site with not only the timing data but links to pictures and video. Imagine being able to go to a site like mylaps.com and being able to find in-car video from each car just by clicking in results. Video from Sat qualifying, video from the Sun race. there is a thread here with several version of video from the same race. it's pretty cool to see. wouldn't it be nice if that was linked from the results? Or you could click one race and see a list of all that person's videos?

And wouldn't it be nice if registration was available at scca.com? nothing against dlb, but when the registration is split between competing sites, it gets fragmented and it's a pain to see who is entered where. Registration isn't as big a hassle as results. but it is pretty bad that in this day and age there are still events, even big events without online registration.

Instead we spent our money on myscca.com. maybe if we added registration and results to it then there would be some actual value...

Jim Hardesty
Diablo Verde ITC Civic
Powered by Makers Mark

I have been a part of the IT industry since 1969. I also started working with electronic timing and scoring systems in 1991 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, all the way from installing the timing loops in the pavement to operating the systems all year round at open test sessions. If someone can send me a copy of a file that they post to MyLaps, I would love to take a look at it and see what kind of effort it would take to make the information available.

Perhaps I'm showing my ignorance, but how does the info get to mylaps anyhow? AFAIK, it isn't sent automatically, there aren't any black helicopters circling the track, and I haven't seen any carrier pigeons leaving T&S. This info is SOMEWHERE in T&S. It would seem to me that we need someone like RacerBill to get there hands on the data (that we already have) and post it somewhere.

Someone in T&S uploads the data to mylaps.

There's NO reason that it couldn't be put into a different web-based system, unless the agreement between the region and the AMB people forbids it (which wouldn't surprise me under the circumstances).

K

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Knestis

...unless the agreement between the region and the AMB people forbids it (which wouldn't surprise me under the circumstances).

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Not as far as I know.

Looking to buy a used transponder?http://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gifhttp://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gifhttp://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gifhttp://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gif

AMB i.t. has been listening to your comments about the recent changes to MyLaps.com.
MyLaps.com is a service that AMB offers to racers and time keepers who use our equipment, including the personal transponders. The number of daily page views keeps doubling each year, along with its registered members and archived data. As a consequence of this growth AMB, over the years, has invested heavily into additional servers, software engines and support, to ensure a reliable online service for its customers.
For instance, recently the site’s entire user-interface was rewritten to retain the rapid response time it was known for and continue to deliver accurate results. Comments from thousands of users were cataloged, analyzed, and prioritized for inclusion in the new version. This resulted in the inclusion of more advanced search algorithms and the possibility to filter results for country and sports, to name a few improvements.
As a result of the success of MyLaps.com, the costs of maintaining it have risen dramatically. However, AMB is committed to continue offering its MyLaps.com site as a free service to all original owners of a personal transponder for as long as they use it.


Recently AMB has decided to make the process of re-registering a personal transponder from its original owner to buyer of a used transponder more difficult. Reasons for this decision are the following:

• Complaints of previous owners: They no longer had access to their data after re-registration
• Inability to erase old results: Owners of used transponders have been disappointed to find out that with the current structure of MyLaps.com it is impossible to erase the old race results from the period before they owned the transponder.
• Unknown transponder history: One never knows where a transponder was used, how it has been charged or what hardships it has endured, possibly resulting in a poor perception of AMB quality if the transponder does not work correctly.
• Access to technological improvements: Our transponders may look the same, but we are constantly working to improve our products, and our new transponders are better than old ones.

Even though worldwide a very small percentage of transponders are re-registered, we understand that this might have caused some dismay among those that obtained a used transponder recently. In an effort to address your concerns, AMB is investigating a method of modifying MyLaps.com by which transponders can be re-registered for a fee, while addressing some of the drawbacks of the previous method. In the mean time, the following applies:

• One can still benefit from all the advantages of MyLaps.com with a used transponder. The only drawback is that it is not under the new owner’s name, and other personal data.
• If you have a used transponder, trade it in. We are offering up to 40% off for a new one with the warranty and your own account on MyLaps.com.
• If you are selling your race car, but will get another one, keep the transponder, it is yours after all.
• - If you sell your race car with the transponder, give the new owner your login information.
• If you buy a race car with a transponder, get the previous owner’s login information or benefit from the trade-in offered.
• We realize that in special cases a more tailored solution is warranted so feel free to contact an AMB representative by phone to discuss your situation.

Call us today to trade in your old transponder for a new one. Until the end of 2008, all orders placed through our webshop will be shipped free. Logon today to take advantage of this offer and set up your own account on MyLaps.com.
We appreciate your loyalty and all of your suggestions and look forward to providing your MyLaps.com results for years to come.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by supersmile

Looking to buy a used transponder?http://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gifhttp://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gifhttp://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gifhttp://www.amb-it.com/images/pixel.gif

AMB i.t. has been listening to your comments about the recent changes to MyLaps.com.
MyLaps.com is a service that AMB offers to racers and time keepers who use our equipment, including the personal transponders. The number of daily page views keeps doubling each year, along with its registered members and archived data. As a consequence of this growth AMB, over the years, has invested heavily into additional servers, software engines and support, to ensure a reliable online service for its customers.
For instance, recently the site’s entire user-interface was rewritten to retain the rapid response time it was known for and continue to deliver accurate results. Comments from thousands of users were cataloged, analyzed, and prioritized for inclusion in the new version. This resulted in the inclusion of more advanced search algorithms and the possibility to filter results for country and sports, to name a few improvements.
As a result of the success of MyLaps.com, the costs of maintaining it have risen dramatically. However, AMB is committed to continue offering its MyLaps.com site as a free service to all original owners of a personal transponder for as long as they use it.


Recently AMB has decided to make the process of re-registering a personal transponder from its original owner to buyer of a used transponder more difficult. Reasons for this decision are the following:

• Complaints of previous owners: They no longer had access to their data after re-registration
• Inability to erase old results: Owners of used transponders have been disappointed to find out that with the current structure of MyLaps.com it is impossible to erase the old race results from the period before they owned the transponder.
• Unknown transponder history: One never knows where a transponder was used, how it has been charged or what hardships it has endured, possibly resulting in a poor perception of AMB quality if the transponder does not work correctly.
• Access to technological improvements: Our transponders may look the same, but we are constantly working to improve our products, and our new transponders are better than old ones.

Even though worldwide a very small percentage of transponders are re-registered, we understand that this might have caused some dismay among those that obtained a used transponder recently. In an effort to address your concerns, AMB is investigating a method of modifying MyLaps.com by which transponders can be re-registered for a fee, while addressing some of the drawbacks of the previous method. In the mean time, the following applies:

• One can still benefit from all the advantages of MyLaps.com with a used transponder. The only drawback is that it is not under the new owner’s name, and other personal data.
• If you have a used transponder, trade it in. We are offering up to 40% off for a new one with the warranty and your own account on MyLaps.com.
• If you are selling your race car, but will get another one, keep the transponder, it is yours after all.
• - If you sell your race car with the transponder, give the new owner your login information.
• If you buy a race car with a transponder, get the previous owner’s login information or benefit from the trade-in offered.
• We realize that in special cases a more tailored solution is warranted so feel free to contact an AMB representative by phone to discuss your situation.

Call us today to trade in your old transponder for a new one. Until the end of 2008, all orders placed through our webshop will be shipped free. Logon today to take advantage of this offer and set up your own account on MyLaps.com.
We appreciate your loyalty and all of your suggestions and look forward to providing your MyLaps.com results for years to come.

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So the site was recently completely redone at great cost?
Well, for me, I have found the new configuration does not work nearly as well.
When I USED to do a search for a racer name or track name, I would get what I needed.
NOW, when I put in "sebring" or "homestead" the search results come back with now matches.
This is regardless of whether or not I'm logged in.

"The number of daily page views keeps doubling each year"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mattbatson4570

......NOW, when I put in "sebring" or "homestead" the search results come back with no matches.
This is regardless of whether or not I'm logged in.

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Problem solved. :blink:

jim

Jim Hardesty
75 ITC Diablo Verde Civic
2009 WOR Road Race Chair

How embarrassing... their prime marketing strategy is based on securing a monopoly... they succeed... and now they find they're unprepared for the consequences of their success.

I'm astute enough to recognize "We got you by the balls, sahib, and we know it".

If it's so damned expensive, charge a subscription for it. Holding our transponders for a ransom on the thing is the act of a little, little person.