Overview
- A referee used the phone-sized device in Nacional’s Copa AUF round-of-16 game, and it issued the first in-game digital yellow card to Juan Pablo Plada in the 12th minute on Thursday.
- The system timestamps bookings, substitutions, goals and penalties and sends that data to the competition-management platform (COMET) as events occur.
- Developers built the device to work without conventional Wi‑Fi so it can function in remote or lower-tier stadiums where internet is unreliable.
- Early tests and Thursday’s match exposed visibility problems: sunlight glare and a small, low-contrast screen made the digital colour hard for spectators and TV audiences to read.
- REFe and the AUF are treating the rollout as experimental while developers pursue hardware fixes such as LED lighting, note the company has registered the brand and filed patents, and plan to seek CONMEBOL and FIFA consideration.