RadarTech Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 JC Wren has an app that makes loading a nook very simple! Check out rootnscoreit.com I've seen it. But it's still a hack and it's still the type of thing that many people would take one look at and say, "Not me!" It may be a hack but it is a user friendly hack as opposed to doing it all manually which is the real hack!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Smith Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 It may be a hack but it is a user friendly hack as opposed to doing it all manually which is the real hack!!! What is simple for some is brain surgery for others. The old saying, "If it were simple, anyone could do it." has a corollary which is, "If you want anyone to be able to do it, make it simple." Nothing about electronic score keeping is simple. You have to modify a piece of electronic equipment and install a non-standard open source operating system created by geeks for geeks with documentation only a geek can love. You have to also be able to get data onto and off of the device. You have to be able to sync the devices back to a master, which involves setting up some kind of network. You may also have to interface the data with another piece of software using more non-standard software. Do you see where I'm going here? This isn't something that someone who isn't really comfortable with computers is likely to take on. Take a quick survey and see just how many people who are following these threads fall into the "novice computer user" category and I'll bet you won't find many. There's probably a bunch of people in every club that have the skills needed to make all this stuff work just fine. But getting those people to step up to the plate and be the responsible person for this is a different story. Maybe I'm wrong. Clubs are making this work. But what percentage of them are? What I am saying is that, if there were a source that could provide ALL of the equipment already set up and ready to go along with easy to follow directions, plus technical support then the percent of clubs using this could go up quite a bit. But that kind of operation is going to take money and staff and dedication to set up and maintain. It's not something one or two people should be doing as a hobby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 I understand your point, but EZWIN is going away. and there are good tutorials on how PS works, and there are clubs in almost every part of the country that use it.. Personally I have been , helping 2 other clubs with PS and questions and got help from another club initially.. There are folks out there that will make it simple... so making it sound difficult is counterproductive.. As an IT consultant full time, I don't see their being enough need to pay staffing etc to do this... It would be sporadic and most clubs will just handle it when they hear what the pro costs will be..... We just had a club in SC stop matches due to lack of volunteers only to have people step up and restart 1 month later, and I saw Fredericksburg, VA cancel a match for the lack of volunteers... People will step up when needed. I think you need to actually use rootnscoreit.com It was designed for the person who is NOT in IT.... and it works well... I won't say it is a for dummy's how to... But it's pretty close... For the network portion I will be writing a how to for Ken to put on the Practiscore website. It will be in the same mentality as rootnscoreit.com Simple WITH screenshots. Bottom line here-- you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink..... From the Jun 22,2013 BOD meeting min notes: Discussed the possibilities of offering entry level club packages up to complete major match systems to be available for purchase by USPSA affiliated clubs... So that has been discussed... and that is a Ken Nelson topic... anyway---- that is my 2 cents worth... Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Smith Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 I understand your point, but EZWIN is going away. First I've heard that. What do they propose as a replacement? If it's Practiscore, then we are back to the point that they will need to offer it and support it. Like you, I'm in IT support. I've been in computers since 1972 and find the the hardest thing is to write documentation that anyone can understand and follow. If it's to reach the average club, it's got to be completely packaged for turnkey operation complete with a master device and x number of slave devices, plus something like a little pocket router and maybe even a battery pack. And full documentation for the entire process start to finish loaded on a DVD and on a website. I spent 10 long years supporting vertical market custom software and you couldn't pay me enough to do that again. How do you explain to someone who wouldn't know what Windows Explorer is how to find an email attachment you sent when they haven't got a clue what a folder is or which one their attachments go into. <sigh> Perhaps it's just that I've been at this too long or perhaps its because I've gotten used to looking at things from a "computer illiterate" point of view, but I don't see a long term future for electronic scoring unless it can be packaged for non-technical people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 Go back and read the membership report and the thread about that... it was stated that EZWIN will be supported for 2014 but likely not after that...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sperman Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 I think you will have a hard time getting ALL clubs to switch over to electronic scoring, and we shouldn't force them in that direction. I do think that PS needs a PC interface that allows you to enter scores manually, like you can in EZWS. Until that happens, I don't see them retiring EZWS. They may try, but I think there are enough clubs that are using paper scoring that there will be quite a bit of push back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 Good point Scott... This might be something that will require a MD poll by Kim... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 (edited) It may be a hack but it is a user friendly hack as opposed to doing it all manually which is the real hack!!! What is simple for some is brain surgery for others. The old saying, "If it were simple, anyone could do it." has a corollary which is, "If you want anyone to be able to do it, make it simple." Nothing about electronic score keeping is simple. You have to modify a piece of electronic equipment and install a non-standard open source operating system created by geeks for geeks with documentation only a geek can love. You have to also be able to get data onto and off of the device. You have to be able to sync the devices back to a master, which involves setting up some kind of network. You may also have to interface the data with another piece of software using more non-standard software. Do you see where I'm going here? This isn't something that someone who isn't really comfortable with computers is likely to take on. Take a quick survey and see just how many people who are following these threads fall into the "novice computer user" category and I'll bet you won't find many. There's probably a bunch of people in every club that have the skills needed to make all this stuff work just fine. But getting those people to step up to the plate and be the responsible person for this is a different story. Maybe I'm wrong. Clubs are making this work. But what percentage of them are? What I am saying is that, if there were a source that could provide ALL of the equipment already set up and ready to go along with easy to follow directions, plus technical support then the percent of clubs using this could go up quite a bit. But that kind of operation is going to take money and staff and dedication to set up and maintain. It's not something one or two people should be doing as a hobby. Rootnscoreit gives you a dedicated scoring appliance. Period. End of story. No other rooting system gets you the same thing with such a ridiculous level of ease. The most difficult part of rootnscoreit is actually creating the microsd card itself. Maybe someone could step up and offer a pre-genned rootnscoreit card for the cost of materials and postage. We are in all likelihood going to write a white paper or something after Area 6 on how to use Practiscore following our method to score major matches. We need to create a similar paper that documents the process flow for the regular Lvl1 club match. Hell, we here in Georgia have held Saturday seminars on modern match scoring using practiscore and ezwinscore, if for nothing else so that others are cross-trained and any one of us stops being a single point of failure for an entire match. Anyone could attend. And you don't have to modify the hardware itself. You don't have to interface with the operating system itself. You don't have to read the geeks' operating system documentation. And beyond rootnscoreit itself, there is no non-standard software used in the process flow of scoring a match. At least not the way we do it. And as far as complexity is concerned, scoring a major match with paper scoresheets using a multi-system master/slave(s) environment in ezwinscore with network-attached storage for passing export/imports about and printing to shared network printers doesn't exactly qualify for the Apple "It Just Works" mantra. You gotta have your head screwed on straight for that, too. Hell, if you're doing it with paper and pencil and a calculator, you have to have your head wrapped around the hit-factor match scoring methodology, which itself is no picnic. Look, computers aren't easy. Hand-held or laptop, they just aren't. Especially if you're completely, abjectly computer illiterate and don't even understand folders and email attachments. In such a case as that, you can either make the effort to learn the concepts of basic computer usage (the skills you gain will take you beyond scoring a match), or we just need to find another way for you to help run the club and move our sport along. Edited February 17, 2014 by wgnoyes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 Go back and read the membership report and the thread about that... it was stated that EZWIN will be supported for 2014 but likely not after that...... Supported is one thing. Still in use is quite another. I do believe USPSA STILL has a couple of clubs that MAIL IN paper activity credit reporting! Drop support on ezws all you want; people will still be running their matches with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Go back and read the membership report and the thread about that... it was stated that EZWIN will be supported for 2014 but likely not after that...... Supported is one thing. Still in use is quite another. I do believe USPSA STILL has a couple of clubs that MAIL IN paper activity credit reporting! Drop support on ezws all you want; people will still be running their matches with it. Very true! It will interesting how it all plays out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken N. Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Few thoughts... - I've been hunting up the perfect device for USPSA to bundle, and haven't found it yet. So I've been focusing on making glare less of an issue, with the 1.6 jitterbug changes The Nook both frightens and amazes me. I've pinged Alibaba (electronics mfg portal) for a custom e-ink pure Android that we can specify, but no joy. It may be we do a Kickstarter, like Earl, to gen up enough $ to have them build it. - PS does fine with paper. Consider it an easily portable paper scoring device. See the FAQ page about data collection on paper, and data entry on one or more tablets - the switch isn't really to tablet, that is a waypoint. It's to cloud with tablet as data collector. I could have written the end all instant scoring system based on my fully interneted wifi'd range, but the goal wasn't that, it was to help stats guys at all clubs. So every thing we do has the unconnected range at the root, and we scale up from there. Last year I scaled up cool stuff at my home range and selected betas around. And now we are going full up to what we call PS Web 2.0, the goal of which is to make MD's incredibly efficient, and to build community around matches, clubs and competitors. I'm stoked because PS web 2.0 dev starts tomorrow. It automates pretty much everything a competitor, match, or club needs to do...wherever they are, whatever they are looking at. P.S. The over weekend PS website issues have been diagnosed. And we have worked around it. It was us, more precisely Wordpress and how we used it, that was causing massive multiplier of database hits when users hit refresh/reload. Amazon then did what it was supposed to - protect the system, alas only from itself (-:PS Web 2.0 uses an entirely different architecture, more modeled after Instagram or Dropbox and will scale up without intervention or stress.Ken N. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken N. Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 You've seen it but did you actually try it? It's crazy-easy to use. It's no harder than installing ezWS, or updating Windows XP. Just different. Russ and I did 23 Nooks one afternoon at work, most of that time was just charging Nooks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZackJones Posted February 18, 2014 Author Share Posted February 18, 2014 I do think that PS needs a PC interface that allows you to enter scores manually, like you can in EZWS. Until that happens, I don't see them retiring EZWS. They may try, but I think there are enough clubs that are using paper scoring that there will be quite a bit of push back. So do I. That's one reason why I asked about an API being available. I'd love to get my hands on the source for EzWS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Honestly--- if a data dictionary was available EXCEL could be use as a data entry device and a little macro function create the data format needed to upload the scores... Excel is a great tool when used to it's limits... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Smith Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 (edited) And beyond rootnscoreit itself, there is no non-standard software used in the process flow of scoring a match. At least not the way we do it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you root a Nook, you have to then install a new OS front end like the older ADW launcher. The new rootnscoreit may do all that in one step but it's still hacking the Nook to change it from a book reader to a more open Android device. I had no real trouble doing this (once I got unconfused last year this time over which process to use) and applaud anyone who can make the process simpler. But hacking voids the warranty which is something that, by itself, is going to stop a lot of people in their tracks. The only thing I am saying here is that for electronic scoring to become the norm, then this whole process needs to move out of basement workshops and into the mainstream. There's way too much stuff here that is dependent on an assumption of capability. Too many instructions that are dependent on an assumption of prior knowledge (e.g. "Turn left where the old school house used to be.") And, to the second point, "At least not the way we do it."... No offense but, we don't do it that way and I don't want to do it that way. It's not that what you do is bad, it's just that what works well for you may not work well for others. There's a lot of this sort of thing involved in all this as well. Edited February 18, 2014 by Graham Smith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sperman Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Few thoughts... - PS does fine with paper. Consider it an easily portable paper scoring device. See the FAQ page about data collection on paper, and data entry on one or more tablets Ken N. I guess I'm getting old, but I want to sit down in front of a monitor, with a keyboard and a numeric keypad. I find tapping on the face of a device to be much slower than using the keypad. I also only want to enter the totals, not have to score each target individually. Hopefully all clubs will switch to electronic scoring, but until that happens we either need to keep EZWS around or have that functionality duplicated in PS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadarTech Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 (edited) Graham, Until you have loaded a nook via rootnscoreit.com you will not understand. A person can take a nook fresh out of the box, insert the sd card, turn on the nook. It welcomes you to the installer, asks you to press NEXT, then it installs the new nook image (B&N ver if needed) then says remove the card, reboots runs the install. then you put the card back in and press next and 3 min later you have a rooted NOOK... WITH PS and other APPs installed..... If you can install a kids game on a PC, you can use rootnscoreit.com You as the user don't crack the nook, you need no more knowledge than putting a memory card in a camera after the SD card is created. and even that is no more difficult than reading some instructions. I'm sorry you can't understand this, but it really is that simple.. No advanced 40 years of computer experience needed, no doctorate in rocket science etc... Just the ability to read, and the desire to move past a hangup saying the process is so complex no one will do it...... Edited February 18, 2014 by RadarTech Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZackJones Posted February 18, 2014 Author Share Posted February 18, 2014 I guess I'm getting old, but I want to sit down in front of a monitor, with a keyboard and a numeric keypad. I find tapping on the face of a device to be much slower than using the keypad. I also only want to enter the totals, not have to score each target individually. Hopefully all clubs will switch to electronic scoring, but until that happens we either need to keep EZWS around or have that functionality duplicated in PS. I don't know that age really plays into it but I'm with you. I've entered complete matches in EzWS/EzSteel and those same matches in PS and I'd prefer to do bulk data entry on the desktop. Now that the iOS version supports steel Challenge I'll try entering scores using my bluetooth keyboard and see if things work any better. I have found using a stylus with the tablet helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 ... P.S. The over weekend PS website issues have been diagnosed. And we have worked around it. It was us, more precisely Wordpress and how we used it, that was causing massive multiplier of database hits when users hit refresh/reload. Amazon then did what it was supposed to - protect the system, alas only from itself (-: ... Practiscore.com is a wordpress site?! I never would have known! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 (edited) And beyond rootnscoreit itself, there is no non-standard software used in the process flow of scoring a match. At least not the way we do it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you root a Nook, you have to then install a new OS front end like the older ADW launcher. The new rootnscoreit may do all that in one step but it's still hacking the Nook to change it from a book reader to a more open Android device. Fixate on the terminology if you like, but rootnscoreit absolutely takes all of the geeky propeller head stuff out of it. I had no real trouble doing this (once I got unconfused last year this time over which process to use) and applaud anyone who can make the process simpler. But hacking voids the warranty which is something that, by itself, is going to stop a lot of people in their tracks. ...And we're really worried about the warranty on something that's exposed to gunfire all day, gets dropped in the mud, rained on, baked in the sunlight, and gets tossed into a range bucket with nails, staples, and paint cans at the end of the day and costs $79 MSRP and usually far less than that? I don't think so. Plus you can use the self-same rootnscoreit to easily restore the device back to factory state at any time. The only thing I am saying here is that for electronic scoring to become the norm, then this whole process needs to move out of basement workshops and into the mainstream. There's way too much stuff here that is dependent on an assumption of capability. Too many instructions that are dependent on an assumption of prior knowledge (e.g. "Turn left where the old school house used to be.") That's what rootnscoreit is for, to take all the systems programmer stuff out of the equation. And, to the second point, "At least not the way we do it."... No offense but, we don't do it that way and I don't want to do it that way. It's not that what you do is bad, it's just that what works well for you may not work well for others. There's a lot of this sort of thing involved in all this as well. ...But you could do it our way. Our way works. We do it multiple times every month. Once we write it up and demonstrate the advantages, you may want to do it that way, at least until PS Web 2.0 comes along. Edited February 18, 2014 by wgnoyes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Few thoughts... - PS does fine with paper. Consider it an easily portable paper scoring device. See the FAQ page about data collection on paper, and data entry on one or more tablets Ken N. I guess I'm getting old, but I want to sit down in front of a monitor, with a keyboard and a numeric keypad. I find tapping on the face of a device to be much slower than using the keypad. I also only want to enter the totals, not have to score each target individually. Hopefully all clubs will switch to electronic scoring, but until that happens we either need to keep EZWS around or have that functionality duplicated in PS. Highly desirable feature, but I'm not going there again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alma Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Few thoughts... - I've been hunting up the perfect device for USPSA to bundle, and haven't found it yet. So I've been focusing on making glare less of an issue, with the 1.6 jitterbug changes The Nook both frightens and amazes me. I've pinged Alibaba (electronics mfg portal) for a custom e-ink pure Android that we can specify, but no joy. It may be we do a Kickstarter, like Earl, to gen up enough $ to have them build it. - PS does fine with paper. Consider it an easily portable paper scoring device. See the FAQ page about data collection on paper, and data entry on one or more tablets - the switch isn't really to tablet, that is a waypoint. It's to cloud with tablet as data collector. I could have written the end all instant scoring system based on my fully interneted wifi'd range, but the goal wasn't that, it was to help stats guys at all clubs. So every thing we do has the unconnected range at the root, and we scale up from there. Last year I scaled up cool stuff at my home range and selected betas around. And now we are going full up to what we call PS Web 2.0, the goal of which is to make MD's incredibly efficient, and to build community around matches, clubs and competitors. I'm stoked because PS web 2.0 dev starts tomorrow. It automates pretty much everything a competitor, match, or club needs to do...wherever they are, whatever they are looking at. P.S. The over weekend PS website issues have been diagnosed. And we have worked around it. It was us, more precisely Wordpress and how we used it, that was causing massive multiplier of database hits when users hit refresh/reload. Amazon then did what it was supposed to - protect the system, alas only from itself (-: PS Web 2.0 uses an entirely different architecture, more modeled after Instagram or Dropbox and will scale up without intervention or stress. Ken N. The thread goes over much of the difficulty with dedicated scoring devices; however, almost every shooter has a device in his pocket or range back that likely has more horsepower than the nook and with so many potential scoring interfaces if the load could be shared then it wouldn't matter if one tablet, one, phone, or one whatever went down because someone else has a phone in his or her pocket. With the move towards using the cloud have you thought about ways to modularize scoring more so that an application on any smartphone could easily pickup where the last one left off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wgnoyes Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 I do think that PS needs a PC interface that allows you to enter scores manually, like you can in EZWS. Until that happens, I don't see them retiring EZWS. They may try, but I think there are enough clubs that are using paper scoring that there will be quite a bit of push back. So do I. That's one reason why I asked about an API being available. I'd love to get my hands on the source for EzWS. heh heh, no you wouldn't! I've seen it; and I don't understand it. Mostly because of the obtuse power builder IDE that makes even MS Visual Studio seem intuitive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euxx Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Take a completely scored area championship or nationals-sized match and load it onto a nook (note: Nook) and then try to do normal scoring-type things; you'll have problems. You yourself have written before that you tried this and had memory issues loading the match. Bill, we have been trough this before. I need somewhat more details than just "you'll have problems". It does not take long to create a bug report at https://practiscore.com/bugs/ attach your large test match there, outline exact steps to reproduce issue and state your expectations. Also, if you think it is slow, state how slow exactly it is (e.g. it takes 2 seconds to tap new score, it takes 5 seconds to open a scoring screen, etc). That would eliminate element of guessing on our side and we all will be on the same page. For the record, last time you brought this up was at the beginning of August and I've done several optimizations right then. You guys said that you'll provide me a test match that will show the issue, but I'm still yet to see it. ...Remember, the overwhelmingly preferred platform for the android version of practiscore when used to score a uspsa match is the nook simple touch, not xyz-brand of android phone or tablet. You are making assumptions, based on your own experience only. So, maybe it is, maybe it is not. While I am always making sure it works on Nook, I am seeing people using all kind of different devices to run PractiScore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZackJones Posted February 18, 2014 Author Share Posted February 18, 2014 heh heh, no you wouldn't! I've seen it; and I don't understand it. Mostly because of the obtuse power builder IDE that makes even MS Visual Studio seem intuitive. Actually I would even if it was ugly. It would give me ideas on what happens when you click this button or that one. I wouldn't try to port it just understand the behind-the-scenes of how things work in EzWS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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