Crafted by a husband
and wife team

OMNIPRO IS THE RESULT OF A
DECADE LONG PURSUIT OF A COMMON GOAL

The very first time Olav went riding he was on holiday in New Zealand, in the glorious locations of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Olav recalls it as an amazing experience, and he was instantly hooked. As soon as he returned to Norway he started taking riding lessons. Before he knew it, he was riding 3-4 times per week, knew everyone at the yard, and was a key member of the Sporting Committee, which in turn was responsible for hosting all the show jumping and dressage competitions.

The dressage events were great, but Olav was unhappy with how the show jumping was timed. It required people on the start and finish line to wave flags as the competitor went by, and a judges assistant to manually start and stop a stopwatch as the flags waved. Having developed a manual timer for go-carts in the past, Olav knew that the human reaction times dictated that manual button presses gave an accuracy of about half a second, whereas show jumping competitions required an accuracy of 1/100 s. Moreover, it was very easy for the flag wavers or the stopwatch user to favour one competitor to another by acting a little faster or slower, thereby increasing or reducing that competitors time.

There had to be a better way, and at a price even the smallest riding clubs could afford.

Obviously there are general use sports timers on the market. They can typically employ a variety of buttons and sensor inputs such as mechanical, touch based or optical, and are great for fixed sensor installations such as a running track, a skiing hill or a swimming pool. Most of them need an adapter in order to turn give a wireless signal transfer from an optical gate to the timing unit. The optical sensors typically use single beam that can be somewhat difficult to align perfectly, and can be unreliable when placed on a soft ground (such as sand or grass), making them vulnerable to false triggers and subsequent timing errors. Sunlit also poses difficulties. Olav discovered that their operating manuals would typically be 100 pages long or more, because they were designed to work with almost any sport and a variety of wired and wireless sensors. Even so the user interface is typically fixed, offering only a few buttons around a small, low resolution screen.

This was at odds with the typical desires of riding clubs, who are only interested in measuring times and registering faults on an arena with soft grass or sand floor. The FEI requires the use of optical sensors only, and these should be quick and easy to set up because the location of the start and finish lines generally move each time a new course is made. Lastly, the sensors must be very reliable and wireless in order to avoid damaged cables from passing horses.

After Sandra entered the project with her background as a social anthropologist and UX designer the entire product development turned from focusing on the engineering over to the user and their needs. The OmniPro timing system has been designed exclusively for equestrian sports in order to maximise user friendliness. Our instruction manual is only a few pages long, and we even have video instructions for those who prefer that. We run our user interface on a Windows PC and it’s intended to run alongside Equipe for a fully integrated experience.

We are proud that our company is UX infused, meaning that every design action we make is centered around giving the best user experience. In fact, we even consider the user experience in between events – when it’s NOT being used! We developed a rugged storage case that lets you store the entire system and also recharge the optical gates, keeping the batteries topped up until your next event. And when it’s time to run the event you simply carry the case out to the arena and unpack.

Make your competitions Powered by OmniPro and give your staff and competitors the best timing experience available on the market. We are introducing the affordable OmniPro Club system now. Soon we will add the FEI homologated Elite version.

We are very proud to present the best timing experience for equestrian sports.