Hey all,
Quick intro and a small ask at the end.
I came back to cubing a few months ago after stepping away for about ten years. When I went looking for a timer I liked, nothing quite clicked for me, so I started building one in my free time. It is called PowerCubers (powercubers.com). It is free, there is no paywall, and I am working on it as a side project whenever I can.
I am not trying to replace csTimer or anything that already works for you. This is just me building the tool I wanted to find and could not, and sharing it in case it resonates with anyone else.
Where it is today:
- Labels (the part I am most excited about). Labels are shared across the whole user base. Anyone can apply them to their solves: your cube model, your method, whether it was a warm-up or focused practice, etc. The labels themselves are created and curated by the community on a dedicated platform page, so the set grows organically with what cubers actually want to track. The reason this matters: once enough people are tagging consistently, you can do things that no timer does today. End-of-year rankings like "where do you sit among everyone solving on a MoYu WeiLong V11," a Spotify Wrapped style recap of your cubing year sliced by label, community-level comparisons on CFOP vs Roux, cold-start solves vs warm, you name it. That is the direction I care about most. None of that works without people labeling their solves, so the system is being built from day one.
- Tags. Your own personal tags on top of that, for whatever labels do not cover.
- Stats page. Still early, but this is going to grow a lot. Basic PBs, averages, progression, distributions for now. The label-based analytics above plug in here
- A bunch of color themes. Because why not. Pick what you like
- Clean, simple UI. The timer stays the center of everything. Minimal clutter
WCA-compliant timer, 17 events. Basics are there.
What I am focused on right now is making the foundation solid before piling on features: the data model around labels and tags, the stats surface, and making it feel good to use daily.
On money, to be upfront: it is free and I want to keep it that way. There is no paywall and no ads. Servers and domains cost something, so if anyone wants to support the project there is a Buy Me a Coffee link on the site, but it is completely optional and nothing is gated behind it. I would rather be honest about that than pretend there are zero costs.
The only thing I am really asking for is honest feedback. Not upvotes, not shares. If you try it for a few solves and something annoys you, feels off, is missing, or is just plain broken, I want to know. Brutal is fine. That is the fastest way this gets better.
Nothing committed, no timeline, just things I think about and want to throw out there:
- Weekly events. Per event, ideally. Something like a weekly Ao5 for 3x3, a weekly Ao5 for 4x4, and so on. You show up, do the attempts, see where you land. Daily Challenges already exist on the site (one scramble per event, per day), but weekly averages would give you something longer-form and a bit more serious to chase.
- A shared scramble pool. Right now every scramble you get is essentially unique to you, which means comparing your solve on a specific scramble to anyone else's is impossible. The idea: a limited pool of scrambles (growing over time) where the same scramble gets handed to hundreds of different people. Suddenly every scramble has a distribution. You can see where you sit on it, what the fastest solve on that exact scramble was, what the average looks like. Combine it with labels and it gets really interesting: what times are other people running your exact cube, in roughly your state, getting on this exact scramble? That is probably the simplest way to get honest comparative feedback I can think of. Same scramble, same cube, same context, different hands.
If any of this sounds good, bad, or pointless, I genuinely want to hear it. Especially the scramble pool idea, because I am not 100% sure how the community would feel about solving the same scramble as everyone else instead of a fresh one every time.
Theme: Custom Themes > Signal Station
Thanks for reading
Quick intro and a small ask at the end.
I came back to cubing a few months ago after stepping away for about ten years. When I went looking for a timer I liked, nothing quite clicked for me, so I started building one in my free time. It is called PowerCubers (powercubers.com). It is free, there is no paywall, and I am working on it as a side project whenever I can.
I am not trying to replace csTimer or anything that already works for you. This is just me building the tool I wanted to find and could not, and sharing it in case it resonates with anyone else.
Where it is today:
- Labels (the part I am most excited about). Labels are shared across the whole user base. Anyone can apply them to their solves: your cube model, your method, whether it was a warm-up or focused practice, etc. The labels themselves are created and curated by the community on a dedicated platform page, so the set grows organically with what cubers actually want to track. The reason this matters: once enough people are tagging consistently, you can do things that no timer does today. End-of-year rankings like "where do you sit among everyone solving on a MoYu WeiLong V11," a Spotify Wrapped style recap of your cubing year sliced by label, community-level comparisons on CFOP vs Roux, cold-start solves vs warm, you name it. That is the direction I care about most. None of that works without people labeling their solves, so the system is being built from day one.
- Tags. Your own personal tags on top of that, for whatever labels do not cover.
- Stats page. Still early, but this is going to grow a lot. Basic PBs, averages, progression, distributions for now. The label-based analytics above plug in here
- A bunch of color themes. Because why not. Pick what you like
- Clean, simple UI. The timer stays the center of everything. Minimal clutter
WCA-compliant timer, 17 events. Basics are there.
What I am focused on right now is making the foundation solid before piling on features: the data model around labels and tags, the stats surface, and making it feel good to use daily.
On money, to be upfront: it is free and I want to keep it that way. There is no paywall and no ads. Servers and domains cost something, so if anyone wants to support the project there is a Buy Me a Coffee link on the site, but it is completely optional and nothing is gated behind it. I would rather be honest about that than pretend there are zero costs.
The only thing I am really asking for is honest feedback. Not upvotes, not shares. If you try it for a few solves and something annoys you, feels off, is missing, or is just plain broken, I want to know. Brutal is fine. That is the fastest way this gets better.
Nothing committed, no timeline, just things I think about and want to throw out there:
- Weekly events. Per event, ideally. Something like a weekly Ao5 for 3x3, a weekly Ao5 for 4x4, and so on. You show up, do the attempts, see where you land. Daily Challenges already exist on the site (one scramble per event, per day), but weekly averages would give you something longer-form and a bit more serious to chase.
- A shared scramble pool. Right now every scramble you get is essentially unique to you, which means comparing your solve on a specific scramble to anyone else's is impossible. The idea: a limited pool of scrambles (growing over time) where the same scramble gets handed to hundreds of different people. Suddenly every scramble has a distribution. You can see where you sit on it, what the fastest solve on that exact scramble was, what the average looks like. Combine it with labels and it gets really interesting: what times are other people running your exact cube, in roughly your state, getting on this exact scramble? That is probably the simplest way to get honest comparative feedback I can think of. Same scramble, same cube, same context, different hands.
If any of this sounds good, bad, or pointless, I genuinely want to hear it. Especially the scramble pool idea, because I am not 100% sure how the community would feel about solving the same scramble as everyone else instead of a fresh one every time.
Theme: Custom Themes > Signal Station
Thanks for reading
