DIY Wavelight System

The main issue is durability. The official system is designed to hold up, but a DIY is a little more hodgepodge. When it rains or snows, when a 250lb linebacker from the football team falls on it, when part of the wire frays cause someone left a bench on a stray cord and the entire thing goes out, etc.

It's definitely possible but not easy

You got the right idea, but the wrong solution.

Build an artificial pacer instead.

Think Roomba, but with stronger engine and different wheels. Program it to run at your desired pace. Put a pole with a warning flag on top of it to add some hight and visibility. You might even put some mantra or picture on the flag for additional inspiration.

Yes, you'll have to go around it out in lane 2 on the final lap when time comes to kick (and don't slow down afterwards back in lane 1 or it will hit your achilles), but that's a minor problem, isn't it?

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=13440380

I made a thread on this last year, got some good responses if your interested

I've thought about this too. I agree about the comment on durability -- that could be an issue for something installed year-round outdoors. My idea is a temporary solution. The OP citation about LED strips for $17/5m is probably about right, but I'm not convinced that is the right approach. Instead, I'm thinking there are 200 low profile lights placed uniformly around a track at 2m intervals. Of the Wavelights I've seen, they don't appear continuous. If you watch closely, it looks like lights spaced at intervals and since the light is inside a translucent rail, it is somewhat diffused. So, I'm not convinced you need a continuous strip of 400m LEDs.

I think at 2m intervals, the spacing is close enough to convey the pace ahead. At a typical stride length of >1m, you're always within one stride of a light. Wavelights look to activate in 5 to 10m ranges. That's 3-5 lights in my solution which seems like a density of lighting that would convey the message. If it isn't, we can simply deploy more lights at a closer spacing.

I'm thinking something the size of a hockey puck that is large enough to house the electronics and battery. Each puck has the electronics inside them and the surface of the puck has LEDs embedded. For a race, the pucks are laid out on top of or alongside the rail and can be dispatched before and reclaimed after the event. I'm picturing a "kit" and there could even be a 2m measuring tape included in the kit to help space them at the proper interval. Of course the pucks can be recharged after the event. I'm picturing some sort of box where the pucks, labeled 1 through 200, are stored and can be deployed in the proper sequence and then reclaimed after the event for storage and recharging.

I'm thinking there might be a master puck that can act as a local WiFi AP which the other pucks connect to. Each non-master puck has the necessary identity to know where it sits in the sequencing. For a typical 400m outdoor track, WiFi network would probably work well enough, but that requires testing. The master puck might also host the software for a user to program the pace(s) and color(s) plus the ability to receive a signal from the starting system telling it to activate.

The downsides are the obvious loss or movement of pucks -- they aren't bolted down. But, they would be easily replaceable. Many inner track rails are 2" aluminum square stock, so we could probably devise some sort of bracket that slips over the rail to hold the pucks more firmly, but of course that won't work if the track has something different to mark the inside of lane #1. For a non-railed track adjacent to an infield, maybe we make a spike mount (akin to an outdoor walkway light?) that can be driven into the turf.

something like this may work better if you had a rail on the track and could mount it on that. Although, I do agree that if you are on a budget something like this is probably the best option.

I always imagined kind of a combination, where the pace is indicated by some sort of physical robot, but on a “track” of some kind, right on the inside of the running track, about where the pace lights currently are

I've been thinking about this for a while also.

https://www.sprintpacer.com/

For the robot idea, it's been done by this guy:

zeiasathletics.com

Zeias Athletics

Train, perfectly. Zeias delivers precision pacing so you can focus on your running ??? not the stopwatch.

Open link

Their Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_zeias/?hl=en
This system was around $600-$700.

For the lights, a cheaper alternative was used at UW indoors this winter:

lighttrack.run

LightTrack Systems

Train Smarter. Race Faster. LightTrack is a light pacing system to enhance training and performance for track athletes. With precision timing and multiple pacers, the lights guide athletes around the red oval, providing consi...

Open link

Their Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lighttrack.run/
The cheaper system is around $1.2k for 400m.

For DIY replicas, both are pretty doable if you have microcontroller experience and the help of AI. But you'd likely still need to go through a few prototype iterations.

The real DIY solution is just to get better.

I attempted it with the LED strips you are referring to, got them off of alibaba for $9, and tried to pace myself for 40m, the issue with long run programmable LED's is signal timing, you run into a lot of issue quickly. There are solutions though, I'll follow up on this thread if I ever get a good MVP going.

FWIW, a few years ago, I created my own pacing device because at that time, I was terrible in pacing my workouts. Since I didn't care about spectators or other runners, I chose sound instead of lights and a wearable device instead of 400m of lights.

You'll need some low soccer cones, a GymBoss Plus interval device ($30), the ability to do 4th grade math, and a few minutes to set up. Alternatively, you can use a Tabata app on your phone instead of the GymBoss Plus. Since my training partner and I train at the same pace, we routinely use this approach in our interval workouts.

I'll use my current mile goal pace as an example. You will obviously be much faster, but this is just to illustrate the math.

1. Determine your desired training pace. Example: In my case, it's a 7:00 minute mile or 420 seconds/mile
2. Divide by 4 to get seconds/lap. (Yeah, I know that we're now working with 1600m and not 1609m, but it's close enough.) In my case 420/4 = 105 seconds/lap.
3. Divide seconds/lap by the number of cones you want to use. To keep it easy to set up, I put one cone every 50m around the track so that's 8 cones. 105 divided by 8 = 13 1/8.
4. I set the GymBoss to beep every 13 seconds. Or, I could download a Tabata app and set it to beep every 13 seconds. SmartWOD is good app for this on Android phones.
5. Every 50m cone, I get an audible beep to let me know if I'm a little too fast or a little too slow. A pacing check every 50m is good enough for me. If I wanted more pacing checks per lap, I'd add more cones and make the distance between them shorter.

Example for a 5 minute/mile pace

5min=300 sec or about 75sec/lap
* A cone every 50m is 8 cones. 8 into 75 seconds is 9 3/8 seconds. Oops. We can't set the GymBoss or the Tabata app in fractions of a second. A quick workaround is to divide the lap time by whole numbers until you get something very close to 75 seconds. After dividing 75 by a few numbers on either side of 8, we see that 11 almost works, so we'll use 11 cones over 400m. That's one cone every 36m. Set the interval timer at 7 seconds, so your timer will be pacing you at 77sec over the 400m. If that's not close enough to 75 for you, then just pace yourself to be 2 seconds ahead of the beep at the end of the lap.

Oh, one final point: wearable pacing devices are banned in USATF competition.

Yes, this, but larger, large enough that you don't have to adjust your posture (i.e. neck alignment) to look at it while you run.

Additional thought: Make it big enough to sell and put ads on it and it might be self-financed at club/school meets.

Literally done years ago.

Look up "Puma BeatBot."

https://www.fastcompany.com/3059417/puma-created-a-robot-as-fast-as-usain-bolt-to-make-athletes-better

For the last 40 years I’ve used ye olde Timex Ironman’s Interval function. I figure out what I want to go through each 100m in and set the watch to beep every 20s for instance. If it beeps when I hit each 100m marking I know I’m on pace. Problem is that I have trouble hearing the high pitch beep now that I’m officially old. I might give a DIY wavelight system a try!

Baylor does something similar

This but with some AI tech. You could have Parker Valby pace you to a sub 20. Or Abraham Lincoln.