Palm Pilot scoring

[CDavies]

I'm not a frequent poster on the forums..normally just lurk around. With this one I thought I might add my 2 cents worth. Before sticking my foot in my mouth I did a little research on this to find out what happened and who was involved. Part of what happened might have been my fault. At a break in the action (lunchtime) I went out and downloaded the scores from the palms at each stage. When I did this I also checked batteries...would hate to have a battery die you know. When I did this I neglected to put the palm back on the stage number that it was being used at. When the RO's came back to the stage (not knowing that I had pulled scores) they pulled up the shooter and started scoring. Not until they got to the end of scoring the stage when the target count didn't add up did they become aware there was an issue. I also understand that they did everything humanly possible to keep the competitior from having to reshoot. Sometimes just can't avoid it. I have had to reshoot for less reasons. Reshoots are just part of our sport.

After researching this a little I found out who was running the palm. It was one of our locals and a person that is very familiar with the palms. He scores on them very frequently and is very good with them. So the conclusion I have come to was it was an honest mistake. I would like to say that I am so perfect that I have never made a mistake before. Maybe there are some of our shooters that are that perfect but it sure isn't me. This RO had been on that range for 7 days setting up and running this match in 105+ heat indexes. I'm sure that didn't have any bearing on this. Oh did I mention he was trying to make a living at the same time.

Looking at how the palms performed on the range during the match. The mistake referenced here and one missing score sheet were the only issues with the system and the hard working, dedicated and over heated RO's that were working this match. I would say that is a very low number for a 4 day match, 12 stages and 230+ shooters.

3 weeks before the Area match we did the GP/Iowa sectional championship on the palm system. There wasn't a single hickup at that match and everyone at that matched loved the system. Oh and some of the same RO's were working that match in the heat also.

I want to thank everyone that came to the match and I want to give a special thanks to all of the dedicated staff (RO's and setup crew) that stuck it out in that heat and put on a very good match.

Chris Davies

Match Director

Area #3 Championship

[Jim Norman]

One question that I have is: How do you get eh shooters and squads into the system? We don not pre-register and so we obviously do not pre-squad our monthly matches.

If only the same people show up each month, they should be in a database somewhere, but waht about the new people? What is a shooter has never shot Single Stack? Can the division be added at sign-up?

I can see this as a no-brainer so to speak at a larger match with pre-reg and pre-squad, but local montlys?

Jim

[wgnoyes]

Seems like the automatedscoringsystems.com website is down. Went to it looking for help. We list on http://www.uspsa.org/ezwinscore/palm/index.html how to set up a pc and palms with this system, but that doesn't cover help on topics related to [us]pss on the palm itself.

[CDavies]

Jim

We have found the best way for local matches is to have a time period for registration. We register from 8am-9am and the first shot is 9:15. If you are late or didn't call someone on the range to tell them you are coming you aren't in the match for the day. This also helps get people to the match early to help setup. We do throw in 10 walkon entries for the guy that shows up 5-10 minutes late.

Peter

By the way, I like the no zeros on the screen. Look forward to geting the updated version for that.

Chris

[Jim Norman]

Jim

We have found the best way for local matches is to have a time period for registration. We register from 8am-9am and the first shot is 9:15. If you are late or didn't call someone on the range to tell them you are coming you aren't in the match for the day. This also helps get people to the match early to help setup. We do throw in 10 walkon entries for the guy that shows up 5-10 minutes late.

Peter

By the way, I like the no zeros on the screen. Look forward to geting the updated version for that.

Chris

Chris, that still doesn't tell me how you enter the shooters. Also how many do you have and how many stages. How to enter a stage is yet another question as we on occasion make last minute additions or changes by adding or deleting a target.

Oh, and while I am asking dumb questions, are disappearing targets identified as such?

Jim

[CDavies]

Jim

The shooters are entered in EZwin score. We build the stages in the palms. We squad the shooters and finalize the stages the last 10 minutes of the registration period. At 9am. we sync the palms and down load the info to the palms and then start the match at 9:10. We have final scores 5-10 minutes after the match is over. She takes a load off the stats people. Noone has to take the paper score sheets home and spends an hour or two entering scores and making phone calls when a score doesn't add up or can't read something on the score sheets.

Steel and Disapearing targets are identified in the palms. It knows that the DS targets have no penalty misses. In the palms steel has to be scored first and the disapearing targets last.

Another note. The palm won't let you enter to many or to little hits on a target or stage.

[CDavies]

We have 4 stages and 30-50 shooters for a local match.

[Peter Cunningham]

Mr J Thompson - You are right - apologies re 'concerned with the almighty dollar' was wrong of me to say. Australia is not speaking Japanese or eating rice thanks to you blokes coming over here to save us, where many suffered and died. I humbly back down on that statement - sorry.

When I wrote that I had to cancel flight arrangements I had just confirmed to get to your Nats and was really disappointed.

I offered to help, but the MD informed me that they were full up and inferring that they couldn't wear the cost of putting me up as range staff in a hotel etc.

I was elated to have psyched myself up, then dumped.

Some blokes have asked for more details, so I responded with this. Should explain it all.

PC

I thought these manuals and the Tutorial would be the best way to explain things.

What I would do is to first read the main Tutorial - it walks you through the basic steps from when you first get your Palm to the basic functionality of using it on the range.

You will notice as you read, that the program does a LOT more than is being used at the moment.

The reason this extensive functionality is not mentioned yet is that I discovered that telling people what it does actually has them in disbelief, so I stick with the utter basics.

In time and with familiarity, people will want to explore the other functions and change will be progressive.

The first priority was to achieve full functionality with EWS - which we provided Rob in the form of an interface, but that has been superseded and EzWinScore now has full two way functionality for handling scores and data.

The second was to then prove it on the range - which we did over here and in PNG years ago. Since then some 'tinkering' and fine tuning happened with Rob Boudrie (always TOTALLY impartial) and for some years now, nothing of a major nature has popped up as a problem. Lloyd (who comes from New York) and I went to a LOT of trouble to make the best use of 'real estate' to make it clear to use, and tested it extensively ourselves to rid bugs BEFORE we released it.

During all that we asked people for feedback for improvements or bugs, and the most recent one was to replace the "0" with "_". Thankfully this was only about 4 hours work (for a change!) It is MUCH better now. A big thanks to whoever made the suggestion - I think it was George Jones.

The way this all works is like this:

1) You can use this at any sized match - World Shoot or an afternoons shoot.

2) You can run a whole match completely and generate accurate scores in literally 3 seconds or less in your hand on the day - and if a PC with internet is not around - just return to the PC at night and sync with EzWinScore to make it all official. That means - normal practice shoots, right up to shoots with over 1000 shooters can be handled easily, either standalone in your hand or with a PC.

3) One main advantage is that the program creates a master list of all your club or regions members. You do NOT need to be continually re-entering shooters for every match - just select who is there on a day from the list and go shoot. When you finish, save the file as "abc member list_xyz date" and Presto - backup. Similarly, all your match scores can be handled the same way if you want to save them for reference.

Heads up on marketing for you fellas:

As I've said before - I couldn't sell $10 for $5.

I have searched for ways to improve our sport by cooperation on a wide base, but our total membership is in fact so small that it does not warrant the cost of developing something to improve it - or if it was done, then the development costs will result in a high unit cost. How best to recoup that has been and is the dilemma.

Here's the 'cunning plan' - I GIVE he program and source code to USPSA for free.

Each member contributes $15 per annum for the full and unlimited use of the program, anywhere (much like an anti virus or firewall package annual use / update cost)

This allows us to continue with maintenance and improvements, and not discriminate against small clubs, and also eliminates the cost issue that people raise, and eliminates the hassles I have with licensing, so it's a win win situation for all.

I wanted to get to your Nationals to present this, but it's very costly for me to get there from here, and nobody offered help (eg - range staff accom and tucker) so yesterday I've had to kill arrangements I made when I was told 'no'.

The ideal solution as I see it would be for IPSC to dump their WinMSS and use EWS that Rob informs me now handles all the IPSC divisions. True international grading would then exist. If that were the case, then the $15 per annum could be reduced to $5 per annum, which is peanuts money to an individual.

The result is that our sport suddenly leaps ahead and has dynamic scoring to match our dynamic sport. I've seen the results of this in South Africa where with proper announcers, the sport is seen as FUN and is lively - thus we gain members and promote ourselves. That's my wish.

Anyway - I've bored you with this for too long - here are the basics (attached). Naturally I have these on a CD that has a FULL and more detailed tutorial in Powerpoint, but it's a large file so I won't send that.

Check out the TUTORIAL first and let me know what you think.

Feel free to pass this along to others.

THANKS

Be happy

Peter Cunningham (Ph: +1418-246545 Australian Eastern Std Time, 6hrs 'behind' LA)

[tpcdvc]

So am I reading this correctly???? Each member of the USPSA gives 15 dollars? So with 16,000 plus members in the USPSA we are talking about 240,000.00 dollars?

[Peter Cunningham]

Sorry - I meant to add;

I have closed down my website (www.autoscoringsystems.com) for a number of reasons - mainly because it and the paymate thing was costly to run and keep updated, and most people contacted me direct anyway.

PC

[EZ Bagger]

So am I reading this correctly???? Each member of the USPSA gives 15 dollars? So with 16,000 plus members in the USPSA we are talking about 240,000.00 dollars?

Per year, in perpetuity.

[Nik Habicht]

Unless --- since Peter was talking about a drop to $5/member if IPSC also adopts EZWinscore and Palm Scoring --- that $15 figure was based on the IPSC cap of 2000 shooters. (IPSC cap = the maximum number of shooters a region pays for on an annual basis.) Then we'd be talking about $30,000 ---- which might be fairly easy to raise through a small bump in activity fees.....

$240,000 --- I'm pretty certain that would be out of the question, based on figures I've seen over the years. That would seem to be around a quarter of USPSA's annual budget......

[Jim Norman]

Unless --- since Peter was talking about a drop to $5/member if IPSC also adopts EZWinscore and Palm Scoring --- that $15 figure was based on the IPSC cap of 2000 shooters. (IPSC cap = the maximum number of shooters a region pays for on an annual basis.) Then we'd be talking about $30,000 ---- which might be fairly easy to raise through a small bump in activity fees.....

$240,000 --- I'm pretty certain that would be out of the question, based on figures I've seen over the years. That would seem to be around a quarter of USPSA's annual budget......

That would equate to about $2 a member across the board in the USPSA. I would not have trouble with that amount.

Jim

[moverfive]

Unless --- since Peter was talking about a drop to $5/member if IPSC also adopts EZWinscore and Palm Scoring --- that $15 figure was based on the IPSC cap of 2000 shooters. (IPSC cap = the maximum number of shooters a region pays for on an annual basis.) Then we'd be talking about $30,000 ---- which might be fairly easy to raise through a small bump in activity fees.....

$240,000 --- I'm pretty certain that would be out of the question, based on figures I've seen over the years. That would seem to be around a quarter of USPSA's annual budget......

That would equate to about $2 a member across the board in the USPSA. I would not have trouble with that amount.

Jim

No, peter is talking more towards that $240,000 amount per year, every year. When trying to buy the software, he is still asking for a per user fee per match on top of the cost to purchase the software.

Here is the bottom line: the software is just flat out awesome, it is very easy to use, and it makes the scorekeeper's life much more pleasant. But peter spent a lot of money developing this software and unfortunately there isn't a big enough market out there for him to recoup his funds without charging a hefty price per unit. That is why he keeps making the statement about not able to sell a $10 bill for $5.....a price level that most clubs could afford would not come close to covering his costs. So peter is trying to work a deal through USPSA and IPSC to get all shooters to contribute to this software.....and I highly suspect that $2 per USPSA shooter each and every year is not what he is after.

And another problem I would have with charging each and every member (or anything similar) for this software - we have already bought it (as have other clubs and individuals) and we don't need to buy it again. If the software will benefit a club, then the cost of the software is worth the money. If the cost is prohibitive....then your club is probably not big enough to truly benefit from it.

[shred]

I am completely against a perpetual fee for the SW, especially if shooters and clubs aren't using it (like our for example; scores usually ready before the props are put away 30+ shooters. On a free PC).

Peter spent what he did and that is what it is (I remember at the time telling him that he was going about it in the most expensive manner), but it doesn't change the fact that an equivalent system could be created for far less than $200K as a one-time payment, including maintenance.

[JThompson]

I am completely against a perpetual fee for the SW, especially if shooters and clubs aren't using it (like our for example; scores usually ready before the props are put away 30+ shooters. On a free PC).

Peter spent what he did and that is what it is (I remember at the time telling him that he was going about it in the most expensive manner), but it doesn't change the fact that an equivalent system could be created for far less than $200K as a one-time payment, including maintenance. .

I agree with Shred on this one....

[Ed K]

The System:

I RO'd at area 3 using the Palm system. My stage (10) had very few issues with the system. The one that presented the greatest challange was a walk on shooter. With the help of our 3rd RO, who was a local shooter, we entered the competitors info in a matter of minutes. I do like the system, but I believe that there are a few bugs that need to be ironed out.

I don't like that you have to score steel 1st, and disappearing targets last.

The palms took the hot weather well. I'm wondering how they do in the rain, snow, and cold temps. In MN we do shoot year round.

The Cost:

As the stats person for our club, I don't mind spending an extra hour or so weekly transfering paper scores to the laptop. We get 20 - 30 shooters for our Wednesday evening league.

As far as the cost is concerned. If it is to become the "official"scoring method for USPSA, it should be a BOD decision, and I'd hope that they poll the sections prior to making such a large financial commitment. At this point I too am against the continued payment to the software developer.

[Jim Norman]

Just to get all out in the open I have a question that I am sure has been asked, but not recently. I know I asked it a while back, but have lost the reply.

How much does the system cost to implement at the club level?

Assume that the club runs a regular 7 stage match every month.

What is the cost, if any for an individual license for the shooter so that he can simply download his own scores.

What equipment is everyone currently running this on? Palm IIIe is obsolete, unless I am mistaken. All the current models are rechargables, not battery units. and all the present models are color which is hard to read. ( IN know my M130 is a pain)

How many Palms does one actually need to run a match? I am assuming that there needs to be one per stage and one master, plus a certain minimum number of spares.

Jim

[Bret Heidkamp]

Is this still "on" to be used at this year's Open Nats? I'm pretty excited to see this in action, it sounds great. Peter, a big THANK YOU for developing this.

My two cents:

1) I think anything to help stats at matches is great. The mountain of paperwork normally associated with stats is astounding, and we all know too well how fun it is waiting for final scores to be posted to check your HF's and points spreads.

2) On a local level, anything to help staff focus on the match / course vs. playing scorekeeper I view as a benefit. I'd rather have those people out on the range having fun with the rest of us than sitting in the clubhouse for most of the day entering scores. Plus, who really wants to aspire to doing that when the current stats people rotate out? There are not really that many people that want to do stats, but I suspect there are many that wouldn't mind printing finals and troubleshooting if scores are already entered.

3) I am all for a continued payment to the software developer. This is the only way programs get updated, and migrated to future platforms. The Palm may not be around in 5 or 10 years. Our rules or scoring may change. We may think that including Steel Challenge scoring (if it's not in there already) would be a great thing. This is the only way we can help make sure the software will be there when we need it. $5 a year? $15 a year? That's not enough to have an impact on anyone in this sport, I should think.

Refusing to pay for development and future expansion / platform migrations will unfortunately get you exactly what you pay for. Not much.

4) I for one, look forward to getting rid of paper score sheets, and anything we can do to increase the appeal of our sport to newcomers and spectators is important. Too many times I been out practicing and had a potential new shooter walk up to me, then seen their eyes glaze over and enthusiasm for the sport wane when explaining there's more than just time involved to them. I don't even do that anymore. Now I just say scores and time are important. It would be great if I could say "your final score is right there on the Palm when you're done, so you can compare how you did with your squad" instead of "you'll be able to see and compare your final score when stats calculates everyone's HFs at the end of the day"

Sorry for the ramble.... I just think the Palm system sounds awesome. Unfortunately I have never had the opportunity to use it.

[Rob Boudrie]

Yes, this is still on for the nationals. Staffing, equipment, and logistical arrangements are all in place.

The proper way to handle walk-ins is to configure several in EzWinScore, use them with a "Walkin" name in the Palm, and change the registration data in EzWinScore. The Palm Transfer window in EzWinScore contains an option to automagically generate walk-ins in blocks of 10 with two clicks (create and confirm). Manually adding a competitor to the registration in the Palm, and concurrently doing so in EzWinScore, is an inconvenient an possibly error prone process. The EzWinScore "missing scoresheets" page has a checkbox "remove noshows" which will mark all competitors without any entered scores as "removed from match", so removing the no-shows en-masse is a single step operation.

As to financial support from USPSA:

1. I do not expect handhelds will ever be mandated - even if the software were free, it's not going to fit every club's needs.
   
2. If you have an opinion, relay it to your Area Director. I suggest doing so after the nationals as that will provide the ultimate proving ground for this system.
   
3. Although I am a director, I will not be pushing for USPSA funding. I have free copies of the software for personal use, and for use at my home club, as part of the testing effort so it would border on a conflict of interest if I got up before the board advocating expenditure of membership funds. Besides, the real proof is convincing the non-technical membership and people on the board, not the computer weenies.
   
4. USPSA would receive an escrowed copy of the source code in the event of any payment form USPSA (the "over my dead body without it" factor kicks in - but I know Peter agrees with the concept)
   

[tpcdvc]

Is this still "on" to be used at this year's Open Nats? I'm pretty excited to see this in action, it sounds great. Peter, a big THANK YOU for developing this.

My two cents:

1) I think anything to help stats at matches is great. The mountain of paperwork normally associated with stats is astounding, and we all know too well how fun it is waiting for final scores to be posted to check your HF's and points spreads.

2) On a local level, anything to help staff focus on the match / course vs. playing scorekeeper I view as a benefit. I'd rather have those people out on the range having fun with the rest of us than sitting in the clubhouse for most of the day entering scores. Plus, who really wants to aspire to doing that when the current stats people rotate out? There are not really that many people that want to do stats, but I suspect there are many that wouldn't mind printing finals and troubleshooting if scores are already entered.

3) I am all for a continued payment to the software developer. This is the only way programs get updated, and migrated to future platforms. The Palm may not be around in 5 or 10 years. Our rules or scoring may change. We may think that including Steel Challenge scoring (if it's not in there already) would be a great thing. This is the only way we can help make sure the software will be there when we need it. $5 a year? $15 a year? That's not enough to have an impact on anyone in this sport, I should think.

Refusing to pay for development and future expansion / platform migrations will unfortunately get you exactly what you pay for. Not much.

4) I for one, look forward to getting rid of paper score sheets, and anything we can do to increase the appeal of our sport to newcomers and spectators is important. Too many times I been out practicing and had a potential new shooter walk up to me, then seen their eyes glaze over and enthusiasm for the sport wane when explaining there's more than just time involved to them. I don't even do that anymore. Now I just say scores and time are important. It would be great if I could say "your final score is right there on the Palm when you're done, so you can compare how you did with your squad" instead of "you'll be able to see and compare your final score when stats calculates everyone's HFs at the end of the day"

Sorry for the ramble.... I just think the Palm system sounds awesome. Unfortunately I have never had the opportunity to use it.

Here is the problem Bret. IMHO it is a bad decision to make everyone contribute to system that will at best be used by a small number of clubs. Even if the software was a so called free down load (we all paid for it) the club still has to buy the palms. In our case the palms cost about 1000.00 dollars. We bought 10 of the 3xes for the stage palms and two titaniums for the master and the back up master. We are now down to 7 3xes and that is why you buy extra stage palms. I was the stats guy for our club until recently and was instrumental bringing them on board and teaching myself how to run them and others as well. We justified the cost because the way our monthly matches are run we sometimes have more that 100 shooters and it took sometimes 4 hours after the match to score. So in our case was a good investment. But the vast majority of clubs in the US have less than 30 shooters per match and this system would not be a good idea for them (IMO). I scored matches for a long time the old way and if we had less than 40 or so competitors I would not have suggested we get the palms.

Furthermore, if we were going to charge 15 more dollars to members (AND I AM AGAINST THAT!!) there are many better ways to spend that extra money. For example, the USPSA bought the steel challenge. I think a lot of clubs would like to shoot more steel challenge stages but don't have the funds available to buy the extra steel needed. That would benefit the shooters way more than software that maybe at best 10% of the clubs would even use. But again that is not right for the clubs that already have the steel. Is it?

[Carmoney]

In our case the palms cost about 1000.00 dollars.

Perfectly functional Palm IIIEs can be purchased all day long for ten or fifteen bucks apiece on sites like eBay. I know this because I still use them for my work calendar. Won't the scoring software work with those?

[Bret Heidkamp]

tpcdvc,

Thanks for explaining. I understand your point better now. Most of our matches are 35 or so shooters, sometimes up to 65. So the palms wouldn't be good in that situation? Are they overkill or ??

So that I better understand the analogy of charging for something to be made available to all clubs, did USPSA pay software development fees for EZWinScore? Or was that done by the programmers pro bono? Do we give it to the clubs - or do we charge the clubs when they decide to install it?

[Nik Habicht]

I believe I was offered a copy of EZW when I became a match director five years ago; I know I was offered one when I became Section Coordinator earlier this year.

I have no idea who writes the code, if or how they get paid.....

EZW is available in the USPSA store for $25.00 I believe....

[tpcdvc]

tpcdvc,

Thanks for explaining. I understand your point better now. Most of our matches are 35 or so shooters, sometimes up to 65. So the palms wouldn't be good in that situation? Are they overkill or ??

So that I better understand the analogy of charging for something to be made available to all clubs, did USPSA pay software development fees for EZWinScore? Or was that done by the programmers pro bono? Do we give it to the clubs - or do we charge the clubs when they decide to install it?

Well, I can only speak for our club. But at say 35 shooters a month the work load is not bad for the score keeper and totally doable. So, for a club that shoots 35 guns a month before I would spend the money on the palms I would probably rather spend it on props, steel, swingers, drop turners ect. The success of a club is really about how good the stages are. Heck the success of a level II or III match is based on how good the stages are. It certainly not about how much time/hassle you save the stats guy. But once you start to triple that amount of shooters at the club level you are going to start to have a real tough time finding a guy to do all that work every month. So that is why it made sense for us.

I'm not sure who paid what for ezwin or if it was pro bono. But every club I know uses the program and it is pretty well thought out and easy to use and we didn't have to raise membership fees to pay for it. So to my knowledge it benefited every single club. And if we did pay we are certainly not paying a usage fee for it year after year after year. The USPSA owns it. Also, I think you get a free copy when your club gets its affiliation. But as Nik said at the worst it only cost 25 bucks anyway, and it runs on any pc that practically every member in your club already has.

And then there is this. How many people do you know still use a palm pilot? I have not used mine for years. I think they will most assuredly go the way of the cassette tape. While I'm sure we will get many years from ours (buying reconditioned ones on ebay) I wonder how viable that platform will remain. The blackberry and the Iphone has really replaced any need for what the palm was intended. So, why would the USPSA drop that kind of money on a OS system that in all likely hood will be totally unsupported and eventually disappear? Writing this type of program for tablet pcs seems much more viable.