Just had a good idea I thought i'd share with the community.
Many games involve assigning points for flipping a flag / glowstick at a location, and assigning points for the team which holds that point. The problem with this is it is labor intensive for game control, and it forces you to take "score captures" along a certain time interval.
If you did a score capture every hour, a team can hold it for 59 minutes and lose it in the last minute and they lose all credit for the time they held the point.
My idea involves building a simple score clock that allows you to keep score of team ownership at a location to the nearest second.
How it Works:
Using two cheap analogue alarm clocks, you set each clock to 12:00. Remove the batteries and wrap wire around the positive and negative poles in the battery compartment, then hook both clocks up to a toggle switch and battery.
All of this would be contained within some sort of container (like an ammocan) just to protect the components, with the switch protruding from the container. You could even use something like a locked ammo can to prevent player tampering with the clocks.
This configuration would allow clock 1 to run when the switch is on position 1, and clock 2 to run when the switch is on position 2. Each switch position is for one team or the other. A player would throw the switch to his teams position to capture the control point and begin accumulating time on his team's clock.
Say for instance you ran an 8 hour game. If at the end of the game you see one clock shows 2:00, and the other shows 6:00, you know exactly how long each team held the location and can assign points based on that.
A single pole triple throw switch could also be used with a neutral position to stop both clocks (ie for a flag to be neutral at game start/end).
Parts Required:
2x Cheap Battery Powered Travel Clock (Analogue)
1x Container
1x Battery Holder
Electrical Wire
1x Single Pole Double Throw Toggle Switch (or SPTT)
Total cost < 10$
