DEVON uses the SPORTident timing system, supplied by SPORTident UK. Many thanks to SPORTident UK; their SiTiming software is superb for staging events, and they are unfailingly supportive, even during my ambitious misadventures trying new ideas!
Kites and stakes are bundled in 10’s, with the expected total number clearly visible on their bags/boxes - to encourage counting out and counting back in.
The stations are always SiAC-enabled. This gives all event Planners the option of supporting SiAC for their event, without any intervention from Timing volunteers (more effort, and opportunity for mis-communication). This benefit is considered worth the extra battery drain.
The Start is not SiAC-enabled - experience shows this causes confusion among start volunteers.
The Finish is not SiAC-enabled - it is a valuable to be able to check this station for punches in case of a non-downloaded competitor, and contactless punches are not stored on stations.
Specific sections below. Details on using this setup at an event are in DEVON’s SiTiming Guide.
Krisdonia 25000mAh and 50000mAh power banks.
Sold under many names, here’s the site for the mainland Europe version.
Power banks are much safer, smaller and simpler than the traditional 12V battery + inverter setup. However: no mains power influences choice of all other download equipment - see sections below.
The Krisdonias were chosen specifically for their wide array of DC power adapters - can plug into any laptop we use. We don’t need a bank per laptop - laptops can last some time on their own, so we swap power banks around as different laptops get low batteries.
We use refurbished laptops, preferably ex-business laptops, which tend to be more reliable. Requirements:
> 4GB RAM.> 2hr battery.A common Microsoft account between all the laptops, including OneDrive, makes it easier to keep the laptop files and settings aligned with each other.
Thanks to Mike’s Laptops of Exeter for supplying and maintaining our club laptops.
Chosen because power and print jobs both come via the same USB cable.
v4357
(release notes)
includes an enhancement developed with DEVON to avoid printouts having long
blank ‘tails’. Make sure you
select the shortest available paper size.Cable Matters USB ethernet switcher
Ethernet minimises latency, which is important when running download and the database on separate laptops.
We can use Wi-Fi in an emergency - any laptop can create a network using the below script:
@echo off
echo SETTING UP LOCAL WIRELESS NETWORK...
@echo on
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=%COMPUTERNAME% key=my-password
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
@echo off
timeout 10
@echo on
No mains power prevents using an A4 printer or big screens.
Basic results can be printed by the splits printers. We offer full results pages via attendee’s smartphones, with basic tablet computers for those that aren’t carrying phones.
Kindle Fire or any other budget tablet
As basic as possible - just need Wi-Fi and a web browser. Low power requirements, and can charge from the power banks if needed.
Ideally via smartphone hotspot and FTP onto the club website. Attendees get results by visiting the club website on their personal smartphones, or on the tablet computers which access the website via the smartphone hotspot.
Need a website that supports FTP uploads from SiTiming’s HTML Results
interface. DEVON’s website is provided by PFweb
and includes an effective setup for this.
For when a smartphone can’t be used (e.g. signal, mobile data limits). Attendees’ personal smartphones and tablets both connect to the router and visit the results webpage - details of both these steps are described in the Live Results appendix of DEVON’s SiTiming Guide.
This router is fantastic. It runs on USB power, has
comprehensive documentation,
and uses open source
software so can be configured as an FTP server that will receive and then
display SiTiming’s HTML Results output.
Here’s how we did it:
WAN socket,
and into one of the router network sockets.http://192.168.8.1 in any web browser.LAN IP (under More Settings) to 10.10.10.10 - easier for
attendees to enter versus the standard IP.vsftpd - a simple FTP server - via the Plugins menu./usr/results/usr/results/css/usr/results/public
/usr/results/public/css, which links to /usr/results/css./www/results, which links to /usr/results/public./usr/results/public/idx_vue.html, which links to
index.html./usr/results/css.
vsftpd, and enabled auto-start.
/etc/vsftpd.conf to set results directory editing to be done by
anonymous login:# Guidance: https://linux.die.net/man/5/vsftpd.conf
background=YES
listen=YES
check_shell=NO
anonymous_enable=YES
anon_root=/usr/live-results
write_enable=YES
anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES
anon_other_write_enable=YES
anon_upload_enable=YES
anon_umask=000
vsftpd needed some ‘anonymous user’ directories (default behaviour
presumably), which we had to create:
/home/home/ftp/home/anonymous