August 8, 2026
Lap drama at light speed
Building a local positioning system to track runners using Ultra-Wideband
Students built a super-precise runner tracker, and the comments instantly wanted more
TLDR: Students in Ghent built a cheap, highly accurate way to track relay runners live, avoiding the cost of commercial systems. Commenters loved the clever DIY approach, dropped open-source one-upmanship, and immediately tried to turn the idea into everything from better race tech to racecar tracking.
A student race in Ghent just got a serious glow-up: instead of guessing where runners are, the organizers built a new local tracking system that can tell exactly where each baton is on the course. The big appeal is simple even for non-techies: cleaner lap counts, live maps that are actually accurate, and a whole new level of stats on how fast people fly through corners. It’s the kind of project that makes nerds cheer and regular readers go, wait, students built this themselves instead of buying the expensive version?
And the comment section was absolutely ready to turn that into the real event. One camp showed up with wholesome academic rivalry energy, pointing out that the Leuven version of this race had already open-sourced its own counting system. Translation: the inter-university “our running tech stack walked so yours could run” vibes were strong. Another commenter barged in with a delightfully chaotic side quest, confusing ultra-wideband tracking with mobile internet speeds on New York streets. Was it on-topic? Not really. Was it funny? Extremely.
Then came the inevitable escalation: someone immediately wanted to strap this onto racecars. Because of course the internet looked at a student relay race and said, nice, but what if we made it louder and faster? The overall mood was wildly positive, a mix of admiration, open-source flexing, and classic comment-thread energy where one smart build instantly becomes ten other people’s next project.
Key Points
- •The 12Urenloop is a 12-hour student relay race in Ghent where each team uses one baton and can have only one runner on the track at a time.
- •Zeus WPI previously handled lap counting manually and then introduced an automatic Bluetooth-based baton detection system in 2011.
- •Between 2019 and 2022, the race’s technical stack was overhauled with modern hardware, estimated live runner positions, and stronger redundancy and monitoring.
- •The article explains that Ultra-Wideband enables centimeter-level localization by measuring packet travel time with highly precise clocks and multiple fixed transmitters.
- •The article says UWB could improve the race by providing exact position measurements, precise lap counting at team-specific start lines, richer runner statistics, and cleaner signals than Bluetooth.