AMB patent expiring... affordable transponders? (Page 1 of 2)

I may be able to help some here.  Brother is an EE and a patent agent.  I remember running this by him a few years ago and it seemed like the tech is pretty trivial.

I believe all the transponder is doing is transmitting a number.  The magic that figures out the lap time and who is who is done on the timing computer side.  Since there do exist transponders that are not registered with AMB/MyLaps that get picked up and displayed in results, I would wildly speculate that a knockoff transponder would work in the same manner but you just don't get the lap time details.  My personal opinion is that there have been a few companies in motorsports that have been overly greedy in their business dealings and MyLaps is most definitely on that list.  I'm pretty sure that if they felt threatened they would initiate a lawsuit against anybody invading their space through what I call "Rule of Bigness" litigation.  That is the merit of their case is irrelevant, they would solely use their size to litigate.

I think at least one of our T&S people would probably let you run an open-source transponder as a second transponder to test it out. At the very least, they'd enjoy talking to you about it. Suffice to say, most T&S people (and race organizers) have a suboptimal opinion of MyLaps.

I couldn't have said it better myself re: cheseroo. Transponder rental costs for HPDE's, TA's, races, etc isn't breaking the bank... but I'd much rather put that money back into the community rather than feeding a company that monopolized simple technology to exploit a non-profit community.

I don't know enough about patents or RF to provide anything helpful, but I wanted to bring this up in hopes that someone out there knows, or knows someone, who can exploit this expired patent to take a jab at AMB. However, I'd bet that AMB's legal team is larger than their engineering team, which likely means that they covered their bases.

If anything comes out of it... I'll certainly be a follower.

Been playing with duplicating a transponder. I think the only way for them to detect if transponder is fake, if the ID number is not a number they issued. So if use their numbers, than it should be alright.

I am going from memory here but my transponder (old yellow one) transmits around 3.5 MHz which means the wavelength is between 75 and 80 meters. A quarter-wave antenna puts us somewhere around 65 feet which is roughly the distance back and forth across most tracks. I'm almost certain it is a loop. The buried antenna doesn't have to be very good for how these work.

There's another thread here where I went into details, but I have done a bit of work in this area, it's part of the reason I have about 3 X2 and 4 TR2 transponders. (The other part is that it costs about $20 more for a new transponder every year, and I feel like that hurts MyLaps bottom line more)

The "new gen" (X2 and TR2) transponders transmit an encrypted packet and pseudo-random intervals. This packet contains not only the transponder number, but also some timing information among other things. The period of packet transmission is non-constant. If the receiving hardware received packets at a time other than when the last packet said it would be sent, the packets are ignored. This prevents any kind of simple replay attack where you send the same packet over and over, as every message is different and encrypted and must follow a sequence. It may be possible to record the packets and the timing from a transponder for say 24 hours and replay it.

The X2 design is very good (from a security perspective), so there's no much you can do to them. Due to some design "oversights" in the TR2 design (thanks MyLaps, really, thank you), it's possible to extract the firmware and encryption keys from the transponder. It would then be conceivable for one to "unlock" transponders to bypass the yearly fee/robbery.

The "old gen" transponders are very simple. They have no encryption and can be easily and replicated with cheap hardware.

There's a few paths one could take, each with their own issues:
- You could hack/unlock your X2/TR2 to bypass the licensing (and the stupid direct-power fee, as they all have the same hardware), but it would rely on the Orbits(?) software not checking transponder ID's against an online MyLaps database of currently licensed transponders. This hack could work for a while, until MyLaps implemented countermeasures, unless T&S could disable these "features". It's a bit of a cat and mouse game.
- You could make your own "old gen" transponder, but you would need to pick an ID and hope no one is using it. This could again be thwarted by MyLaps if they have some check for valid transponder numbers, but some tracks aren't online and maybe the feature could be "disabled" or internet connectivity to MyLabs could be blocked by T&S.

The tricky part of all this is that the T&S hardware/software is expensive and without it you can't test out an open source transponder design or a hacked TR2, unless you're willing to "send it" during a race weekend and maybe get no laps for a while.

The bottom line is that there's no magic bullet for the masses, without cooperation from T&S. One or two hacked TR2 transponders can and will slide under the radar but a bunch of people using DIY or open source "old gen" transponders and not bothering to change the default ID will quickly cause a mess. If Lemons is willing to let someone test an open source transponder and also be ok with flagging/rejecting duplicate ID's then we could likely all have license fee free, hard-wired transponders, for $50 or less.

I'd very much like to take you up on that offer, if/when the mini gets rebuilt So far I assumed my MyLaps tomfoolery would be frowned upon by T&S.

Exactly right, building your own detector hardware is no joke. Your other point is why these non-commercial efforts will mostly never go anywhere. As much as racers and orgs dislike MyLaps and their money grabbing tactics, no one wants to risk being cut off.

It is true that MyLaps oldest patent has expired, but they have over a dozen other patents that are active. Here is a link to their patents: https://patents.google.com/?assignee=my … p;sort=old

Here is the expired patent with the claims.

System for determining a position of a moving transponder
https://patents.google.com/patent/US200 … p;sort=old
Expired: 2023-02-14

1. System for determining a position of a moving transponder adapted to receive a substantially stationary magnetic field signal and to transmit a further signal, said system comprising:
a signal generating arrangement adapted to generate said stationary magnetic field signal for said transponder, said transponder being adapted to determine a plurality of signal strengths of said received magnetic field signal;
at least one signal receiving arrangement, adapted to receive said further signal of said transponder, said transponder being adapted to insert at least one message portion in said further signal indicative of at least one of said plurality of signal received signal strengths;
processing means adapted to determine said position in accordance with a plurality of said received signal strengths determined by said moving transponder.

2. System according to claim 1, wherein said further signal is an electromagnetic signal of relatively high frequency.

3. System according to claim 2, wherein said relatively high frequency relates to a carrier frequency range of 0.4-6 GHz.

4. System according to claim 1, wherein said signal generating arrangement and said signal receiving arrangement are decoupled from each other.

5. System according to claim 1, wherein said processing means are adapted to determine said position by construction or reconstruction of a position determination pattern on the basis of said plurality of received signal strengths.

6. System according to claim 1, wherein said transponder is adapted to insert a further message portion in said further signal comprising additional data.

7. System according to claim 6, wherein said signal generating arrangement is assigned an identification code and adapted to insert said identification code in said magnetic field signal, such that said transponder may employ said identification code as said additional data.

8. System according to claim 6, wherein said transponder comprises at least one sensor for probing at least one variable of and/or concerning an object associated with said transponder, such that said transponder may employ said variable as said additional data.

9. System according to claim 1, wherein the signal strengths of said plurality of signal strengths are associated with irregular time intervals.

10. Transponder being adapted for receiving a substantially stationary magnetic field signal, for determining a plurality of signal strengths of said received magnetic field signal and for transmitting a further signal having inserted at least one message portion indicative of at least one received signal strength.

11. Transponder according to claim 10, wherein said transponder is assigned an identification code and adapted to insert said identification code in a further message portion of said further signal.

12. Transponder according to claim 10, wherein said transponder comprises at least one sensor for probing at least one variable of and/or concerning an object associated with said transponder and is adapted to insert said variable in a further message portion of said further signal.

13. Transponder according to claim 10, wherein said transponder comprises an encryption module for encrypting said further signal.

14. Transponder signal transmitted by a transponder to a signal receiving arrangement in response to reception of a substantially stationary magnetic field signal of a signal generation arrangement, said transponder signal comprising at least one message portion indicative of at least one signal strength of said received magnetic field signal.

15. Transponder signal according to claim 14, wherein said transponder signal further comprises message portions relating to an identification code of said signal receiving arrangement and/or an identification code of said transponder and/or a variable concerning an object associated with said transponder.

16. Transponder signal according to claim 14, wherein said transponder signal is an encrypted transponder signal.

Yes and no. EZPass doesn't care if it grabs the transmission a little early or late for one car to the next, so long as it grabs them all. It doesn't matter if it picks up car A a few feet before car B. But that's not true in racing. We've had races decided by fractions of a second, to the point that position of the transponder on the car matters. This is one of the big pieces making a system like this hard to design, and what a bunch of patents are focused on.

Totally agree that it is not worth pissing off MyLaps for the entire series.

But I'm still up to throw CAD time at a DIY solution should anyone believe it's worth the time to do so.

100% agree. To make it work well someone needs to find an ID range that's unused but still works with the decoders. Hacked TR2s would be fun and a couple won't get noticed, but it's a short term solution for a few of us, not all of us.

Longer term, I'm sure that with cheap high-end SDR hardware and open source software becoming widely available, someone will hopefully build an entirely software based loop decoder that works with both (unencrypted) MyLabs transponders and an open source transponder. If someone wants to start playing with transponders, this is where you should focus your energy.