Practiscore Verifications

hungrybeagle

hungrybeagle

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Just got back from the IPSC Canada Nationals where Bluetooth thermal printers were used to print verifications for competitors as they finished the stage. Worked great, but as far as I can tell, it only works with Android versions of Practiscore and requires the investment of a printer on each stage.

Last March, I attended Area 1 where the same information was emailed to you as you finished the stage. Worked great, but right now only works with iOS versions of Practiscore and requires range wide wifi.

If you were a competitor attending one of these matches, which option is preferable?
 
Printer, it is required that we receive a copy of scores. As many people still don't have mobile devices with email or such on them, printers is far better. It is also an actual hard copy that can be referred to in case some weird IT glitch. two copies should be made, one kept for stats and one for the competitor to take.
 
Slavex said:
Printer, it is required that we receive a copy of scores. As many people still don't have mobile devices with email or such on them, printers is far better. It is also an actual hard copy that can be referred to in case some weird IT glitch. two copies should be made, one kept for stats and one for the competitor to take.
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Was thinking 2 copies too. We are going to have a look at this for our qualifiers.

The only downside will be for squads that want to have a shooting order outside of what's in the tablet. No big deal, they just have to go back to having a hand written shooting order to give to the stage RO.

The other thing I really liked was the choroplast tablet sun/rain shield from PractiScore. Those looked very handy! I understand They sell them as a set - tablet sun/rain shield, printer, and printer cover/holster.
 
Chris, I really liked what you did at TMSA by extending a private WiFi network to all the ranges - the emailed results were awesome, but for whatever reason I missed a couple. For ranges without cell service (and people without devices that can get the emails as Rob mentioned) I think the Bluetooth printer option is worthwhile though. I thought the printed verification at Nationals was great.
 
Still alive said:
We used Practiscore at Lone Butte. They have no Wifi at all on site so everything was loaded and scored and the results were emailed out when the organizers got back into Wifi range.
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Yes and no. We had a router there to sync all the tablets, but had to use mobile hotspot to upload final stats and DL the initial match lists from PS. We could have set up per-stage emails if there was an internet link or ongoing hotspot. Chris' system at TMSA IPSCBC provincials was great with the emails after each stage.

Printers would be good so long as there is someone taking care of them, people are trained to use them (i know not hard but that's an ongoing thing with tablets sometimes too).
I would prefer email to me, and a printed copy kept at the stage or with the stats guy so that nothing needs to be written down

Not many clubs have the funds for tablets, let alone a printer for each stage, and toner/ink paper, storage of them etc (for putting on only one weekend match a year). A few routers would have more longevity to email out...if android can be made to work with it!
 
brit84 said:
...Not many clubs have the funds for tablets, let alone a printer for each stage, and toner/ink paper, storage of them etc (for putting on only one weekend match a year). A few routers would have more longevity to email out...if android can be made to work with it!
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You can get a decent tablet for $30..50 USD. That can be easily covered out of the next IPSC match fee.
 
ivan said:
Nope: We let squads shoot in any order they want at the Nationals last week: no problem.

-ivan-
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Not if you were the first couple of groups through on Stage 16 Thursday morning lol.

The sort order on their tablet was changed after they sync'd and the CRO was adamant that was the shooting order to be followed. And yes many of us explained to him that it was a very simple thing to change the sort order back to alpha last name. šŸ˜œ

We got halfway though our buddies squad before the CRO relented and let us write down the shooting order from the previous stages and go from that.

No worries, it's all good šŸ¤ . You folks put on one hell of a match. There was a wide variety of stages that tested all aspects of our sport. I thoroughly enjoyed every stage. Will be definitely coming out to more matches in Calgary šŸ˜Š
 
I like your system Chris. Although there isn't a hard backup, the tablets are being synced to multiple masters so often that it's unlikely that there will be any major problems. The email back up is still useful backup even if a competitor isn't monitoring it actively during the shoot. If a score was entered and he tablet was broken before it was synced to the range wide wifi, the shooter could log in to get the emailed log from one of the myriad devices on the range.

Does the email log function work if you are using android tablets then syncing to an iOS master? Would the logs be sent from the master?
 
The printers used were tiny ones for printing receipts. Thermal ones. They were apparently very inexpensive, and charge via USB. Stats crew constantly drives around with a master tablet and picks up the stage tablets to pull results - a loss of a stage tablet would only result in a loss of very few scores.
 
"clubs can't afford tablets and/or printers", really simple solution, charge more for a match. Explain why. And extra $10 for one match isn't going to chase anyone away.
 
Topcon said:
I like your system Chris. Although there isn't a hard backup, the tablets are being synced to multiple masters so often that it's unlikely that there will be any major problems. The email back up is still useful backup even if a competitor isn't monitoring it actively during the shoot. If a score was entered and he tablet was broken before it was synced to the range wide wifi, the shooter could log in to get the emailed log from one of the myriad devices on the range.

Does the email log function work if you are using android tablets then syncing to an iOS master? Would the logs be sent from the master?
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It's not my system; but the systems that are developed my Ken Nelson (iOS) and Eugene Kuleshov (Android).

Ken's system uses the Internet to store all of the scores, and those scores are also emailed to competitors. No hard copy is necessary, because all of the scores are saved and can be viewed online. If a device fails, it doesn't matter when it was sync'd, as long as the scores have been logged to the Internet. However, this requires an internet connection and (currently) only works on iOS devices. As far as I can tell, the score logs can only be sent from the device that was used to score the competitor. I tried importing logs from another device, and that didn't work out so well; it's either buggy right now, or I'm misunderstanding the use of the feature.

On the flip side, Eugene's Android version does not currently talk to the Practiscore scorelog website (as far as I know), but instead has other, more user friendly enhancements, including being able to be connected to thermal printers (which are not that expensive, they look like they're around $50 USD) via Bluetooth (and even wifi). A downside is that not all android devices are created equally, and some have horrendous battery life or very dim screens. Also, if a device dies (although I've never seen this be an issue), you lose everything on it that hasn't been sync'd yet. Our club purchased iPads, but personally, I keep an Android tablet as one of the main masters. It has some features (especially the checking for edits) that are far superior to the Apple Version, but syncing back and forth between Android and iPad introduces some weird results.

I'm still going to encourage IPSCBC to purchase a couple of the thermal printers to trial and develop some documentation for setting them up for our clubs that do have Android tablets. Hopefully, they'll also be compatible with future iOS versions of Practiscore as well.
 
hungrybeagle said:
...Also, if a device dies (although I've never seen this be an issue), you lose everything on it that hasn't been sync'd yet...
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This is not completely accurate. If your device has an SD card, Android app allows to configure logging to SD card that you can remove from device and read scores.
 
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