jcwren

So it'll hit 4 billion, then wrap around to 0?

What exactly is the box doing? Is it counting at all? Counts to what number and then stops? Please to explain exact behavior in more detail.

My experience is that you can tell them not to do that all you want, but someone invariably will. And when I see shooter info changing, other than a DQ or squad change, I instantly want to know WHY they decided they should mess around with it. We had this problem at Area 6. In spite of being told not to do things, *3* times we had ROs create a new user, "because we couldn't find them in the squad list".

"Steel should have to be recorded, not assumed"? For Dog's sake, WHY? If you have 30 pieces of steel on a stage, or even 12, do you want to have to tap the steel hits button that many times? I really can't see a legitimate reason to force steel to be recorded. Recording the misses is much more efficient and less error prone.

A password is not that trivial to add and manage. We've asked for a way to lock down stage devices where they can only score (no shooter add/edits, stage add/edits, etc). This is a subset of that requested functionality. The issue is that because there's no real master device (PractiScore is effectively peer to peer), you run into issues of people being able to lock themselves out of a match. If you sync from one device to another, does the password go with it, effectively locking out a competitor from playing "what if?". If you don't, then what happens if you forgot it? If you sync that stage device from somewhere else, and the password is thrown away, anyone remotely seriously about editing can defeat it. What if you have to *legitimately* edit a score? Hold up scoring until the MD/RM/stats person can get over to unlock it? What if someone maliciously sets a password on an unlocked device? The current solution, on the iOS side, is the scoring logs. You can tell what's been edited, at what time, on what device. Unfortunately, the Android version doesn't yet support this.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=49665945&postcount=279 It's all propeller headery, but it can be done. The new NOOKs lack the side bezel buttons, which I *really* like. By doing some repartition of the flash memory in the NOOK, you can create something that looks like an SD card to make Dropbox happy. It doesn't need to be very large, as the PS .apk file is small. 8MB would be more than enough, as long as you delete files when you're done with them.

A Kindle Fire does not need to be rooted. A Kindle Paperwhite does not run Android (it runs a Linux variant with a custom eBook app).

Jim, I won't discount those printers because I don't know what sort of stand-alone printing modes they may support, but *usually* they require a PCL or Postscript driver of some kind. In the olden days, you could actually send raw ASCII to a printer, and do some basic form control with various escape characters (like Epson's ESC/P control codes). Android and iOS aren't anywhere near as flexible in printing as a desktop OS like Linux, OSX or Windows. Printing directly from a stage device to a printer may be difficult. I worked around that by putting the data I want to print as parameters in a URL request, and then printing them and piping them to Linux's 'lpr' command. You can install print filters to support various printers, so in theory I could print to a USB or Ethernet attached printer. You have to know exactly what printer type you're printing to, and printing under Linux isn't as seamless as printing under Windows or OSX. It seems to be that for Android and iOS, the big thing is "cloud printing", but that generally requires more of a network infrastructure than is typically in place. iOS supports AirPrint, but that requires an AirPrint-enabled printer, and I don't believe there's a one-for-one service that's available on Android, or at least the versions supported by NOOKs or devices with earlier versions of Android. There may be other ways to print. I imagine an application could be aware of specific printer types and generate the PCL or Postscript directly. I can't really see that happening on a NOOK. You're correct about power, of course. Be aware that laser printers pull a LOT of power when the fuser cycles. I've ran a laser printer at East Alabama. I started out with a 2200VA UPS between the printer and the generator. Every time the fuser cycled the UPS would kick from standby to batteries. So I bypassed the UPS for that, but every time the printer cycled, the generator would bog down, and the UPS would switch to batteries. It got pretty annoying, so we pretty much left the printer off until it was time to print the final reports. Basically, I'm not sure that the average inverter is going to handle the surge when the fuser cycles. Impact printers offer the best operating range. They're not affected by humidity like laser printers, temperature (or at least high temperatures) like thermal printers. They don't pull excessive amounts of power at any phase of their operation. They are available with auto-cutters, which is a nice (but pricey) feature. The downside is they tend to run a little heavy, and you do have to deal with ribbon replacement (which will dry out sooner in hot temperatures). Ribbons for receipt printers are very available, unlike trying to find a ribbon for your old Epson MX-80 or Centronics C700 printer. And a lot cheaper than laser cartridges. Thermals are the best value, simply because the paper is the only consumable. But they are more susceptible to high temperature and humidity issues.

1) Trust? Who said anything about trust? It's about having the technology, and being familiar with it. Some people don't bring their phones out on the range because there's no coverage at a couple of the venues. Some prefer not to risk their expensive phone out there. Part of a successful match is providing services to the shooters, not shifting the burden to them for basic things like "If you want a copy of your scores, you better have a smart phone or table, and know how to use it, or you're just SOL." That's a crappy attitude. We put temporary WiFi out at a couple of the ranges, and permanent installations at others. Total cost for 2 nodes for a meshed network? Under $175, including the extension codes, Tupperware to weather-proof the power adapters, and the conduit to stick them 10 feet up in the air. 2) (I'm not even sure what that comment was supposed to mean). 3) You're from New Jersey, so it's not likely you've shot a match at East Alabama, but they don't have power either. Oh wait, these things they're called... oh, damn, what's the name... OH, right, BATTERIES! They put up a $75 outdoor rated AP on a pole, and throw a car battery on it for match days. Works great.

You cannot use a solution that *requires* competitors to have equipment. A number of people don't have cell phones at all, much less smart phones. You're also requiring them to know how to use the Bluetooth capabilities of the phone. Unless you're supporting Bluetooth Low Energy, pairing becomes an obstacle (not all BT stacks support unpaired connections). BT doesn't provide a solution for polling devices from a central location. Because of BT's limited range, now I'd have to go back to walking to each sarge to pull scores in the middle of a match. BT as an additional mode would be nice, but there's no possible way for it to replace WiFi, and maintain the advantages that we get from that now.

No manual transcription, which reduces errors. Faster (prints in about 1.5 seconds). Less expensive, long term (thermal printer paper is dirt cheap). Smaller paper (less waste). Can print as many copies as we need (some competitors don't care about their copies (which is A Bad Idea)). Reprints if necessary. Complete record of all printed sheets (time, stage, etc). No need for competitor labels to stick to score sheets. Two-part forms aren't expensive, but it is about $150 for enough for a match. Most people put club logos and the year on them, so that makes re-using leftovers less viable. Labels are getting more expensive, and if a competitor loses enough of them, you have to reprint. I'm not saying this is a perfect solution. It's an idea, with proof-of-concept. Rather than talking about doing things, I'm trying to implement them, test their viability. Maybe shooters would LOVE the little thermal strips. Or, maybe, they'd totally hate them. But the long term goal is to find a solution that's easy to use, cheap to implement, minimizes (or eliminates) errors, and hopefully adds a "cool" factor to the shooter experience (like getting scores instantly did, vs waiting a week for someone to get around to keying them in).

I've heard a number of ideas for accepting scores, from using QR codes for competitors that would be scanned at the stage to "sign off" at a stage, to an actual signature by drawing your name, to thumb printing, to local stage printers. The problem is all these solutions (except local stage printers) require substantially more capable hardware than a NOOK, which translates to a higher cost, shorter battery life, and (most likely) a more complex user experience ("Here, hold your thumb here. No, rotate it more. Now hold still. Dang, it didn't get it. Here, try again..."). My favorite approach is a local stage printers. I've prototyped the idea below, using a $40 thermal printer, a BeagleBone Black Linux SBC, a USB WiFi adapter, and some custom software (it prints straight out of PractiScore, but only the Android version). They're quite viable, except it raises the technology bar. In some cases a stage printer needs to be it's own access point, other times it needs to be a network client. Maybe peer-to-peer WiFi (something I haven't played around with yet). If I hand you one of these, how do you configure it? Add cost with an on-board LCD? Spend hundreds of hours trying to replicate how a Chromecast is configured? Full custom hardware, or use COTS components? What's the lifetime of those components? How weatherproof does this need to be? Use a more expensive printer, like impact instead of thermal? (Requires ribbons be replaced). Is thermal fade tolerable? Should it be battery powered? Use a more expensive but lighter lithium-ion battery or more readily available standard form factor sealed-lead acid battery that's heavier? Technically, I'd need to get FCC certification for anything that's an intentional radiator (which WiFi is), or at the very least, a passive emissions scan ($1500). I'd love to field 12 of these at GA State, but my personal budget isn't that large, and there's a bit of labor involved in cutting the case and wiring. And if it's not fool-proof, then support becomes a nightmare. I'll say what I've said many a-time again. The NOOKs are sub-part from a hardware standpoint, but so far, nothing else has been able to touch them for cost, size, battery life, sunlight readability, and durability. No camera, so QR code and print scanners are out. The slow refresh rate of the e-Ink makes on-screen signature most likely impossible (might have to try that and see what happens, though...). Limited memory, limited to Android 2.1 (4.4.4 is the current version), 800MHz processor, and now (grrrrrr) limited availability. I'd love nothing more than to design a custom tablet that meets our needs, but works better than these cheap Chinese garbage tablets.

I disagree. The problem now is that there is no effective way for a competitor to validate the scores that were entered. It's much more difficult for a competitor to review the scores on the device than on paper. First, there's pressure (overt or not) to get the next shooter up, since the last shooter can't review the scores until entry is complete. Second, they're usually always presented with the summary screen. If the competitor thinks he's scored 2-A on target number 6, rather than glancing at the score sheet before he signs it, it now becomes much more of an ordeal. Handing the device to a competitor to review the scores is questionable. Unless an RO is riding herd 100% of the time, the competitor has an opportunity to "fix" their scores. Does it happen? I don't know. Has it happened? I don't know. If I'm using an iOS device with local scoring logs enabled, I can review for any edits. That doesn't exist in the Android version, and likely won't for some time. I've seen plenty of times when scorers forget to save the last score of the last person on a stage. Luckily, back-up sheets have covered that for us. In fact, for major matches, I've had discussions with several people where we've come to question if using PS is the best thing to do. When a score is committed to paper, it's generally pretty easy to tell if it's been tampered with. With PractiScore, there's a large degree of trust. While there is an "approve" button on the iOS version (maybe Android also, I can't recall offhand), it's not really the same as a signature. It does, in theory, mean that the competitor has looked at their scores. However, see paragraph #1. There's no check by experienced scoring staff. There's a limited version of checking for missing scoresheets, but it's not yet as good as what EzWinScore provides. I think where PractiScore really shines is local matches. Now I don't have to spend 3 hours on a Sunday entering 600 scores, and dealing with the un-totaled columns and rows, poor handwriting, missing times, and the like. But at an L2+ match, where staff checks score sheets for completeness, legibility, the shooter gets a copy, the possibility of data entry errors, and everything else that goes on, it wouldn't bother me greatly if paper scoring were used for that. For L1 matches, I never want to see a scoresheet again. The L1 and L2+ matches are different worlds, and for the L2+ matches, considering the amount of work we still have to do for a match, I'm not adverse to using traditional methods for that.

I think that could be workable. Although I have no say-so what-so-ever, before I felt really comfortable with the idea, I'd want to see what exactly we the members get out of the deal. I'd also want to see everything placed in an escrow so that USPSA retains rights to everything should something untowards happen. Questions would be thing like is this money buying development? First or second tier support? Education? Unfortunately, one of the things we run into as we get into more complex systems is that it requires a different set of knowledge and skills. It's pretty easy for people to figure out scoring on paper, and entering scores into EZWS. It takes a little bit more skill (not much, but slightly more) to post activity reports, and produce reports for awards and such. If you start talking about using multiple computers running EZWS to score a large match, it can become downright nightmarish, and I'm not sure I'd try that myself (too many horror stories from Bill about what can go wrong there!). With PractiScore, now you're talking about being able to deploy an application on to one or two platforms, networking, a little bit of knowledge about iOS and/or Android, and other odds and ends. The most important skill, IMHO, is being able to first recognize you have a problem, and then being able to resolve it. I can't sync my iPad with the Android stage devices! Hmm, is that a network issue? An issue with the Android version of PractiScore? What's this error message mean, exactly? How do I fix it? CAN I fix it? Do I have paper backups in case I can't fix it? Did I miss the signs of something going wrong? Were there any signs? As any system gets more complex, it takes a more specialized skill set, especially when things go wrong. While most people love the instant results that PractiScore can give you, it's frustrating the comparatively small number of people willing to score a stage. Sometimes we solve that by forcing it on someone, and watching over their shoulder. Their big fear is messing something up (which, of course, they potentially could). But hey, there's a bunch of ways to trash a stage, a match for a single shooter, or an entire match. Deciding to score your L2+ match after you've successfully scored your first small local match is a recipe for disaster. So before PractiScore is fully accepted by the USPSA community, there has to be a certain quantity of people willing to teach others, support them, and get them comfortable with the ins and outs, what can go wrong, how to avoid those problems, etc. Somehow, it seems what started out as a fairly concise reply has (again) turned into rambling. I picked a bad day to stop snorting N320.

I'm not sure you all appreciate what the development cost of such a project would be. There's no financial incentive for USPSA to spend the $$$ to provide such an application. It would be nothing but a flat-out expense, and a support nightmare. Seriously, think about it. If you were sitting in the USPSA financial seat, what's your incentive to spend between a minimum of $250K, and potentially as much as $1M to write a multi-platform scoring program. Where's the return? Is it going to bring that much money back into the organization? We've got EzWinScore, and it works. Does it it give you instant results? Yes, if you have a dedicated stats staff entering scores as they're delivered. Can you generate reports? Yes, and in fact, a number of reports are only available IN EzWinScore. Does it run on multiple platforms? Kinda, if you install virtual machine software, like Virtual Box (free). So what exactly does rolling out a multi-platform scoring system give back for the money spent by USPSA? They already have a website that is (or can be) monetized. In fact, even allowing an alternative to EzWinScore is damaging a revenue stream. PractiScore is free because of the plans to monetize a different aspect of the PractiScore system. Ken & Company are sinking money into it because they believe the future revenue stream will recover the development costs. And do you really believe that anything that was designed by USPSA would have any real input from actual users? Complain as you might, a lot of user feedback has gone into PractiScore.

I can't find anywhere you can actually buy one. They don't exist on Amazon, eBay, or any third party vendor.

I'm not associated with NiftyBytes, and certainly don't speak for Ken & crew, but I believe all that's coming. There's one fellow who works on the iOS version, one fellow who works on the Android version, and a web person whom I don't think is full-time for PractiScore. NiftyBytes is funding PractiScore development out of their pocket, and the revenue model is based on some future plans. So, yes, there's a list a mile long that some of us who've been promoting PractiScore since it's inception would love to see. But with one person per platform, there's a limited amount of bandwidth, and there has to be coordination between the two platforms to keep everything working. You also need to be aware that until very recently, that even if PractiScore already supported uploading to USPSA, they weren't ALLOWED to, until the recent approval by the USPSA board.

Names should be properly capitalized and punctuated. It is The Right Way To Do Things. If you register in Shoot'n-Score-It, and use ssi2ezws to convert the match, ssi2ezws fixes those aberrant individuals that don't understand why a shift key exists on the keyboard. Or are long-time AOL'ers, and believe everything should be typed with the caps-lock key engaged. All caps is just *icky*.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

What Graham said, with one addition. If you're running a 32-bit version of Windoze, you're golden. If you're running a 64-bit version, you'll need to run cmd.exe to get a shell, then "cd \windows\system32", then "odbcad32". Otherwise, you'll get the 64-bit version of the ODBC administration tool, and you won't see any of your database names in the "System DSN" tab.

I actually have a couple reasons that I prefer leaving it at the stage. The first is that I always know where the NOOK is, so if it should drop off the network, I know where to go find it. The second is that I feel they're more likely to get injured by being carried around. Not everyone treats things they don't own as they would their own, and that, combined with people grabbing gun bags, carts, coolers, and whatever to move to the next stage leaves me with the feeling it's more likely to get damaged. The third reason is that if there's a stage configuration error, for instance, a stage actually having 12 pieces of steel, and the NOOK thinks it's 11, I only need to update one device, rather than chasing down each device and updating it (one of the very rare times I wish I could push changes to a device, instead of just pull. But there's WAAAY too much risk with push, and I'd never advocate that). As far as data loss for a stage vs a squad, frequent syncing does pretty much ameliorate that risk. That used to be more of a problem in the early days, before we all learned about having range-wide WiFi installed, carrying back-up pocket routers or a phone as a hot-spot. The only time I ever lost data was having a 0.9.something version of PractiScore on Android lock-up. The NOOK itself was fine, but something in the data confused it. It happened on the 2nd to last shooter on their last stage, and I lost all the NOOK data for that squad. Luckily, then, as now, I enforce using back-up sheets. So I had to rekey their data, but I didn't lose anyones scores. Kinda proud to say that since we started using PS, I have never shredded a match. I've had to go to backup sheets for individual scores when someone didn't press enter, or scored under a wrong person, but to date, I've never had to tell a competitor "Dude... Sorry, we lost your scores. Thanks for shooting!"

Sure about that, Bill? If the option is checked in the setup, new competitors will be added to the master names database, too.

I don't know why that button hasn't been removed. "Match Reset is no longer used. Click New Match on the File menu to create a new match."

Yes, one of the little joys of EZWS is that that import and export formats are completely non-interchangeable. If you can export it, you should be able to import it. How many stages do you have defined?