Timers

A swim timing console, or timer, is the head end of a timing system: the unit that collects the finish signals from each lane’s touchpad and backup pushbuttons, runs the race clock, receives the start pulse from the start system, and drives the scoreboard.

History and development¶

The current platform from Colorado Time Systems (CTS), Gen7, replaced the earlier System 5 and System 6 consoles; CTS first announced Gen7 in April 2017, beginning with the Serial in-deck system, and launched it more broadly later that year.¹² Where those consoles were self-contained units operated from a built-in keypad, the Gen7 timers move the operator interface to a Windows laptop or tablet connected over Ethernet and keep all timing data on the console itself, so a race finishes even if the interface drops.³

Daktronics’ current console, the OmniSport 2000, succeeded the company’s OmniSport 1000 and OmniSport 6000 consoles of the 1990s; the lineage is covered in the OmniSport 2000 article’s history section.

How a swim timing console works¶

In a fully automatic officiating setup the console is the component that actually measures each lane’s time; the operator’s computer and any meet-management software sit alongside it but do not do the timing.

Governing-body requirements¶

Under World Aquatics rules, competition times are recorded to a hundredth of a second, and championship swimming is timed by automatic officiating equipment, touchpads at both ends of each lane, backed up by pushbuttons, reporting to a console of this kind.⁴

Products¶

This section catalogs the swim timing consoles made by Colorado Time Systems and Daktronics.

Gen7 ships in two consoles that share the same enclosure, software, and price-list accessories but differ in how they cable to the deck:

Product	Part number	Deck cabling	Lanes	Status
Gen7 Serial Timer	GEN7-TMR	Connect-hub bus: keyed, colour-coded, wet-pluggable titanium connectors	Up to 20	Current
Gen7 Legacy Timer	GEN7-TMR-L	A facility’s existing CTS multi-pin lane harnesses and display boards	Up to 12	Current

The two are aimed at different installations. The Serial timer is built around CTS’s newer connect-hub cabling and suits new construction; the Legacy timer is a direct replacement for an existing CTS console that drives a facility’s current multi-pin lane hardware and scoreboards without rewiring the deck.⁵

Daktronics makes one aquatics console, the multi-sport OmniSport 2000, which times swimming and also runs diving, water polo, track, and pace clock programs from swappable sport inserts. Consoles shipped from June 2013 carry an Ethernet jack and are marketed as the OmniSport 2000e.

Product	Part number	Deck cabling	Lanes	Status
OmniSport 2000	0A-1240-0096 (2000e kit)	On-deck lane modules or in-deck deck plates	Up to 10	Supported; Pro software interfaces discontinued

Each article covers one console in full (its specifications, connections, and part-number variants) and how it differs from the others; this page is the shared overview they refer back to.

See also¶

• Start systems: the starter’s equipment that triggers the timer
• Colorado Time Systems and Daktronics: the manufacturers
• Equipment: the equipment reference

References¶

Footnotes¶

1. Aquatics International, Colorado Time System Introduces Gen7 Swim Timing and Scoring (April 2017; Serial in-deck system, up to 20 lanes). ↩

2. Aquatics International, Colorado Time Systems Launches Gen7 (December 2017). ↩

3. Colorado Time Systems, Gen7 Legacy Timer User Guide (F1058). ↩

4. World Aquatics, Swimming Technical Rules, competition times are recorded to a hundredth of a second, timed by automatic officiating equipment. ↩

5. Colorado Time Systems, Serial or Legacy, Which Gen7 Timer is Right for You?. ↩