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Devon Orienteering's Timing setup
Devon Orienteering’s timing setup
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 Martin's ambitious misadventures trying new ideas!
Controls
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.
SiAC
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.
Download
Specific sections below. Details on using this setup at an event are in DEVON’s SiTiming Guide.
Download: Power
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.
Download: Laptops
We use refurbished laptops, preferably ex-business laptops, which tend to be more reliable. Requirements:
- Solid state drive - massively improves performance. Can have minimal size - just enough for Windows and not much more.
> 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.
Download: Printers
Chosen because power and print jobs both come via the same USB cable.
Tips for optimal performance
- SiTiming
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. - Use a high quality 3rd party USB-C cable - the stock cable does not seat securely in the printer, causing frequent drop-outs. We have used this StarTech cable from RS Components.
- Keep the printer clean of dust, especially the roller. We use this Phoenix cleaning pen from RS Components.
Download: Networking
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<b>=</b>allow ssid<b>=</b>%COMPUTERNAME% key<b>=</b>my-password
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
@echo off
timeout 10
@echo on
Download: Displaying Results
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.
Tablet computers
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.
Live results to website (smartphone Wi-Fi hotspot)
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.
Live results locally (USB Wi-Fi router)
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:
Router basic setup
- Connected router to the Internet - ethernet cable into the
WAN
socket, and into one of the router network sockets. - Connected to the router from a PC:
- Connect to the router’s Wi-Fi network using its default settings.
- Visit
http://192.168.8.1
in any web browser. - WHENEVER YOU CONNECT: I recommend going via a private/incognito window. This avoids some redirect mess that I got into.
- Now is the time to customise the admin password, Wi-Fi name and Wi-Fi password.
- Updated the router to the latest firmware.
- It can do this automatically, but in my case it was so out of date that I needed to download the update from their website then upload onto the router - they have a menu for this.
- Change the
LAN IP
(underMore Settings
) to10.10.10.10
- easier for attendees to enter versus the standard IP. - Installed
vsftpd
- a simple FTP server - via thePlugins
menu.
Router FTP server configuration
- Connected to router via WinSCP - instructions here.
- Made new directories for the results:
/usr/results
/usr/results/css
/usr/results/public
- Set this one to have read/write permissions for User, Group and Others.
- If you ever put something in this directory manually (not via FTP), make sure it has these permissions too else FTP results update may break.
- Make a link:
/usr/results/public/css
, which links to/usr/results/css
.
- Used the router’s existing website hosting to make the results page(s) visible in browsers:
- Make a link:
/www/results
, which links to/usr/results/public
. - Make a link:
/usr/results/public/idx_vue.html
, which links toindex.html
.
- Make a link:
- Copied SiTimings Override CSS files into
/usr/results/css
.- See the SiTiming User Guide for where to find these files.
- Started
vsftpd
, and enabled auto-start.- Used the commands listed here (note: none of the other points on that page are relevant to our case).
- These commands can be entered using WinSCP’s terminal.
- Edited
/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