RadarTech Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 I emailed them and posted a request for information on their website. It's been over a month and still no reply. I'm not real confident in a solution where you can get no details. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Yeah, if they want this stuff to be widely adopted, they have to be much more approachable. MSSC is a non-starter to me, especially with Ken saying he's going to have scoreboard features in PS later this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Yeah, if they want this stuff to be widely adopted, they have to be much more approachable. MSSC is a non-starter to me, especially with Ken saying he's going to have scoreboard features in PS later this year. Exactly.... With Ken being so open to ideas, and the level of communications I can't push/support/recommend/etc any app that is owned by an unresponsive organization. Several have professed to know so much about MSSC but no one has been forthwith with any details. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZackJones Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 It'll be interesting to hear feedback from Jay and others after the FL Open this weekend. It's my understanding they're using it again for scoring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 I got to experience the MSSC Scoring system as a competitor at the Florida Open this past weekend. It seemed like a pretty solid and user friendly system. I think they were using Samsung cell phones with extended battery packs strapped to the back of them. I didn't get a chance to actually hold a scoring unit myself, but they pretty much all looked the same to me. As a competitor I really thought that the review/sign off screen was nicely put together. It showed your stage time, target hits in green, and penalties in Red. I thought that having the shooting penalties (misses, no shoots, & procedurals) in red was a great idea and it saved my butt on one stage where the score keeper accidentally tapped the "Procedural" box on a couple of targets while scoring the stage. I was able to instantly see that it wasnt correct and request that the score be corrected before I signed. Once you signed the score and it was saved it was instantly uploaded to the main server and you could see the result on your cell phone via their website. They had a couple of TV screens at the range that scrolled through the overall match results for each division and that was cool because you could keep track of how shooters were doing as they progressed through the match. From a spectator perspective this is a really cool feature. From a shooters perspective I found it distracting and noticed that some of my squad mates were distracted by it as well and not working like they should. When you checked in for the match they gave each competitor a card that they could use to print out their individual stage results. That was a pretty slick feature. Simply place your card on the reader and it would print out your stage results quickly via a thermal printer. This made it very easy for me to verify my stage scores after completing the match on Friday before I left the range. After I left I used the MSSC website to track the match results as other competitors ran though the stages. This was easy to do and provided real time progression of the scores. This is cool because you can watch the match unfold as its happening real time. I am sure that the Universal Shooting Academy is leveraging this scoring system to better prepare themselves for the World Shoot coming later this year. Given the magnitude of that event, I can see a real time scoring system like this being justified. For a local club match or even a state or section size major match it would be total overkill and a significant drain on limited resources. I am not sure what the cost of something like this would be, but from what I seen, it wouldn't be cheap in equipment alone. Not to mention the 2 - 3 dedicated people needed to keep all of the gear running during the match. I don't see a local club match or level 2 major match being able to afford this solution without significantly increasing the entry fees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BritinUSA Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 (edited) Were they recording the scores on paper as a backup? I presume that the Hit Factor is also shown on the verification screen. Edited February 17, 2014 by BritinUSA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 Were they recording the scores on paper as a backup? Inpresume that the Hit Factor is also shown on the verification screen. No hand written scores. Once the scores were "saved" on the hand held it was uploaded to the master server and immediately available online or to print out. When you printed out your score it had all of the data points including the hit factor and your scribble of a signature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgkeller Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 MSSC makes synching androids/iPads a ridiculous choice for large matches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 MSSC makes synching androids/iPads a ridiculous choice for large matches. Ken posted a note earlier about an auto pull application... Sounds like it will work similar to MSSC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgkeller Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 MSSC makes synching androids/iPads a ridiculous choice for large matches. Ken posted a note earlier about an auto pull application... Sounds like it will work similar to MSSC Not without a wireless LAN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 MSSC makes synching androids/iPads a ridiculous choice for large matches.Ken posted a note earlier about an auto pull application... Sounds like it will work similar to MSSCNot without a wireless LAN Right! All these centralized solutions will need a data transport medium. And for them to be able to connect to a cloud or internet publish will require a ubiquitous full range wifi solution with an internet connection.... I totally agree. That cost could be high for some ranges! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZackJones Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 No doubt MSSC sounds like it has some great features but one common downside I'm seeing is that it's overkill for clubs. While PS isn't perfect it's affordable and from what I've seen at our club the members prefer it over paper scoring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgkeller Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 What is the cost to put a wireless LAN in an eight bay range? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZackJones Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 What is the cost to put a wireless LAN in an eight bay range? It's all going to depend on the range. For example our range has power at each bay so for us it would be very cheap. We'd just need WiFi access point and then extenders as needed. Other ranges where they don't have power at each bay would have to come up with a different solution. RadarTech knows this WiFi stuff so perhaps he could chime in with a cost estimate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DHTampa Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 From another shooters perspective, with no computer techie background, the MSSC system was great. Show up, sign in, get your card and go shoot. No sheets to worry about or old school sticky labels. This was 21st Century scoring at a truly world class event. Don't see it being practical or cost effective for a club. PS still seems to be the best for that venue. It is good to see other options for the sport which will hopefully drive greater innovation and competition for the best products and services for big matches and club matches alike. Would love to hear some feedback from the RO's about the learning curve and ease of use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktm300 Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Would love to hear some feedback from the RO's about the learning curve and ease of use. I worked stage 4 all weekend. The system was very easy to learn. I have used PS in the past and it was also easy to learn. I think the data entry interface was pretty nice. You picked a shooter from a list and there was an equipment screen to check off, my guess this comes from IPSC as we just blew by it. The next screen was the overview of the stage and where you put in the time. Once the time was put in (or not if you wanted to pre score some targets) you hit a continue button and that took you to a screen with 6 boxes on the screen A C D on the top in green, M, NS, P on the bottom. There was a + on the top of each box and a - on the bottom. At the top there was a save and continue button. You tapped the + to add an A C D M NS, or P and there was a comments box at the bottom so you could put in notes like FTE for the P's. We had a lot of those on stage 4. Putting in notes did take some time but scoring targets was fast. Once you score the target you hit the save button and do the next one. At the end you pull up the signature box, show the shooter the score, and you are done. The first couple of shooters I did went a little slow as I kept forgetting to press the save button and it won't let you put in extra hits. Stop, slap forehead, press save, score the target. It was pretty simple to add extra P's if you were not careful to keep your little finger off the screen. I did not have that issue but one guy did, twice that I know of. Very simple to go back to find the problem, and fix it. Nice it was P's as it is pretty easy to remember if you had any and if you did how many. In bright sunlight the screen got hard to read but you could do it. The device, I think it was a Samsung Note, was a lot faster than a Nook in processor speed. It should be as you can buy 6 or 8 nooks for the cost of one. The device did have an extra battery pack on it. We were getting new ones at lunch each day. I never saw the battery go below 45%. The screens on a couple of them were pretty scratched up but the worked fine. I did notice towards the end of the match the save times were getting a little slower. Not sure if that was because we were in the jungle or if the system was slowing down. I think I was waiting 4 or 5 seconds at the end of the match where at the beginning it was 1 or 2 seconds. Of the 350+ scores where we had a language barrier for about 40% we put in we put two on the wrong name. It took a couple of minutes to fix that issue. Pretty much grab something to write on, write down the score, key it back into the correct name, clear the score off the wrong name. One was a guy where the RO went up to him, asked him if he was the "insert name from device" and he said yes. When we got done and he was somebody else. He just wanted to shoot. We did not have a scoring re-shoot all weekend. I would have liked a way to "fix" the shooting order so you would not have to go back to the piece of paper the squad handed you with their order on it. It had a nice feature that looked at the time and if it was way high or low asked you to look at it before you saved the score. Twice I did not get the period in the number so 23.68 turned into 2368. Pretty easy to fix. We did have a few people take over 100 seconds to run the stage, one over 140 seconds and it asked about those as well. We had some DQ's on the stage and it had a nice interface for entering them. You had a drop down list of the rules and got to pick the correct one for the situation. We had one of those get messed up and I am sure I put in the correct rule as I sat there with the RM and did it. Not sure what went on there. I would like to see hit factor on the last screen. It did have a "stage" record time display if you were the fastest on the stage in your division so far. To me that would have been better if it was hit factor based. Our fast time was not the best HF. Overall it's a nice system. Like a lot of people have said it would be expensive to get set up to to run it. Just start with the 25 or 30 devices at (I am guessing at the cost) $300 each. They were using a nice notebook as a "server" and then the cost of getting WiFi to each bay, the cost of the printers and paper, then a few monitors. There were at least 4 if not 5 people from the company setting up devices etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euxx Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Thanks for a detailed write up from your first hand experience. You've mentioned that you also used PS. I am curious, which app you find easier to work with, especially when entering target hits? I am somewhat sceptical about one target per screen approach used in MSSC... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktm300 Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 One screen per target was very fast in MSSC but part of that was the fact that the device was fast. On PS I find getting to the next page of targets a bit cumbersome as it always seems to come up in the middle of an array and it's has been a bit slow on the nooks. Switching from time entry to scoring targets was instant on these devices and it seems to take some time on the nooks. I have not used any other device so I can't say how fast it is on something like an iPad. Our stage had lots of missed targets so having the ability to mark each procedural with a description was nice but a bit slow. We had a couple of people were we had to "score as shot" because their gun puked and we just did a description on one like saying that all the procedural were FTE. Not sure if I answered your question but I can say I think we were as fast or a bit faster with MSSC on these devices as we would have been on paper. I feel like running PS on nooks it is a small amount slower than paper. I think that has more to do with the device than the software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Wifi on a range is a big discussion with lots of variables. Disclaimer : I do wireless implementations for warehouses as large as 1million square feet with enterprise grade commercial equipment... I'll try to not get deep in the weeds. When covering an area with wireless data there needs be an understanding of a few elements: 1. Coverage vs usable signal. (Think about your car radio, at what point is the static ok and when is it too much) 2. Size of area to be covered. 3. Client count 4. Type of devices to use wireless 5. Data performance needed (if you need a trickle then weak coverage may work, but if you are polling clients constantly that may not work) 6. Budget ($75 to $300 for devices plus power etc) 7. Environmental and facility --don't put a microwave next to the ap!! Or a cordless phone!! 8. Power for equipment-- do you have it close or will you need an electrician? 9. Interference problems or possibility (cell tower? , radio station? ) So with all that said the rule of thumb is 150-300 foot radius of coverage from an ACCESS POINT. That is increased or decreased based on building and line of site blockage. Berms will reduce coverage as will tin roof covered buildings, cars, vans, connex boxes, trees vary based on foliage. Client count is a big consideration also. Wireless is a shared media on many cheaper access points that create slowdowns for over 20 clients per ap. Some can only handle 8-12 users... The last thing that is concerning is the actual client. Some clients/tablets have been radios than others and can use a weaker signal. So after these details, if all you are doing is PS and 8-15 tablets and you have line of sight and you are less than 600 feet with an omni antenna it is possible to cover a small range with 1 AP..... After that you go to a mesh repeater design where AP's talk to each other and then Provide service to clients around themselves.... In the end the only real way to know is to mount an AP and walk it to make sure you have coverage. But even that has drawbacks. It may work today but 2 months from now when Jerry and ted and roger are all parking their F350...right in the way...... It stops being so good. I hope this makes sense that 1 size/design does not fit all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euxx Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 (edited) One screen per target was very fast in MSSC but part of that was the fact that the device was fast. On PS I find getting to the next page of targets a bit cumbersome as it always seems to come up in the middle of an array and it's has been a bit slow on the nooks. Odd. I'm pretty sure using a Down button on Nook gets you exactly to the next target. Switching from time entry to scoring targets was instant on these devices and it seems to take some time on the nooks. I have not used any other device so I can't say how fast it is on something like an iPad. Odd again, because time entry is on the same screen on Nook and you can start tapping target hits right after you entered time (the keypad goes away on its own). Our stage had lots of missed targets so having the ability to mark each procedural with a description was nice but a bit slow. We had a couple of people were we had to "score as shot" because their gun puked and we just did a description on one like saying that all the procedural were FTE. Not sure if I answered your question but I can say I think we were as fast or a bit faster with MSSC on these devices as we would have been on paper. I feel like running PS on nooks it is a small amount slower than paper. I think that has more to do with the device than the software. You did answered it. Thank you. Also thanks for working at the match. While I was shooting on Friday afternoon Walter was running the scoring device on stage 4... Entering penalty and DQ reasons been in the list for PS for some time, but other things been getting in a way... Edited February 18, 2014 by euxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktm300 Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Could be a training issue. Also the last time I used PS at a match was at GA State last year. Memory @ 55 is getting a little less accurate than it used to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 "Odd. I'm pretty sure using a Down button on Nook gets you exactly to the next target." Really! Okay, have to try that. (Hell, there are still people who think those vertical ridges on the bezel are purely decorative!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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