Budget to go to Practiscore

[sperman]

If we're dreaming, let's go ahead and make it an iOS device so we don't have to worry about 2 different programs.

[jcwren]

If we're dreaming, let's go ahead and make it an iOS device so we don't have to worry about 2 different programs.

Yeah, well, I don't think Apple even sells iPad covers that cost less than $50.

[JFlowers]

We did our first match with Practiscore this weekend. While I can't say we did not have issues and did not learn some things, for the most part everything worked and the issues were more management related than software related. We used 3 of the Goggle Tablets and one Kindle Fire (one on each squad) and an iPad as the master. We would have had scores and all up within hours of the match, but we had an issue with missing USPSA numbers (in the old system, not in Practiscore so we had to look them up) and then a personal issue which pulled the MD out of town.

Overall, I think it worked well. Next month it will work better as we solve the management issues.

[bp78]

The regular Nook Simple Touch definitely seems like the "perfect" device. They seem to survive all abuse except being left in the cold. Our first Practiscore match, a February match, and we left them in the truck overnight. All 11 fully charged NSTs said dead-battery with 100+ competitors assembling around us in the morning. We fired up the truck, set the heater to max and turned on the seat warmers, shortly thereafter, all were ready to go with the batteries mostly recovered. We've done a few Nook Simple Touch Glows, they're great for night matches but are definitely less reliable. We have to reboot them more often.

http://squadsignup.com/the-tough-little-nook-simple-touch/

As far as wifi goes, we see some of the same issues with NSTs not auto-reconnecting. Although we've never had an issue manually reconnecting by simply tapping the icon up top & selecting the wifi network.

For a big match, we hung a dd-wrt flashed router, running on 12v batteries, about 35ft up in a tree to keep several stages connected. To get better range and a more reliable connection we found these wifi router settings helpful: (wrt54gs router) Essentially these settings take the router down to the most basic function without much overhead. We also do a half-C network, I assume it helps the devices "find" one another quicker. mask 255.255.255.128

• No crypto
  
• B-only
  
• 1-2 MBps Rate
  
• Burst = off
  
• 200 mW radio output
  
• 3218 ACK Timing
  
• Afterburner = off
  
• Auto Preamble (check using SHORT)
  
• DTIM = 9
  
• Beacon = 150ms
  

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Advanced_wireless_settings