Friday, September 28, 2012
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With the arrival of SI-10 and SI-11 finger sticks amongst orienteers, it is important for the people maintaining club SI equipment to insure that the firmware is up to date with the latest firmware. Version 5.74 has been available for over a year now and should by now be installed on all controls.
This page will be updated shortly with a link to a detailed explanation on how to upgrade the firmware in your controls. Check back within an hour.
The latest (and greatest!) finger stick chips are now available from your SPORTident dealer.
Both the SI-10 and SI-11 have a data transfer time of 60ms, which is double as fast as the SI-6 that they replace. Also, they can hold up to 128 controls, again double what an SI-6 could manage. Yet the price is essentially unchanged.
In addition the SI-11 will confirm a successful control punch, by showing a blinking light in the tip of the control.
The battery in the finger stick is used exclusively to blink the light. It is rated to 30,000 control punches (which the American elite orienteer Ali Crocker has calculated would take her about 12 years).
Once the battery expires, the SI-11 will continue to function identically to the SI-10.
A few years ago I had prepared a chart, similar to the one from SPORTident, which shows the different finger sticks that are available, but also included the discontinued SI-5.
I've now updated it to also show the discontinued SI-6 on the list for comparison.
Check here for the chart.