Discussion: E-punch handling success stories needed

We @ BAOC recently got to understand that we are spending too much time and effort to support E-punch God.

Therefore, could you, please, share cases of successful and effortless use of the E-punch?

What are the software, money, equipment and volunteer time/qualification needed? What are the best Price/Quality ratios?

In spite of the state of the economy I would lean in the direction of higher monetary price but better quality and less volunteer time involved

Thank you in advance

I am sure others will provide info, stats etc. as to cost/benefit. But here is one less quantifiable (but nonetheless significant) benefit. I think using SI, especially at local meets, helps to improve the perception of the sport as a 'real sport' - a timed, competitive, athletic endeavour, vs. the perception of orienteering as "boy scout compass game". Simply the fact that we are using such technology brings us into the 21st century, and helps to put us up there with x-c skiing, road running, triathlons etc.

Talk to Valerie Meyer. She is the Epunch Guru.

WCOC and NEOC have pretty good local meet setups.

We solved this problem by buying the SI schools kit.

Course setter does not need to interact with the Si software. They concentrate on the controls in the forest.

Before competitors start they fill in their details on a results slip (minus result of course) and put this up on the starter board under the correct course. This is our check of who is out on the course.

The course setter merely connects the printer box to the intelligent SI download box and turns it on before the first finisher comes in.

The competitor downloads into the SI station after finishing and receives a splits printout.

Competitors use their splits printout to put their results on their result stub and shift it to the results board.

After the event someone uses SIME to download the full results from the download box and post them on the web as results.

If the course setter obliges by sending the condes file the the splits file from SIME can also be loaded to routegadget.

This procedure retains the advantage of technology seduction referred to above. In fact, it appears much more seamless and technologically sophisticated than the inevitable issues that arise with computers on site. It does away with the following issues:
Occasional course setters needing to learn to use programs such as OE.
The need for a computer at the event.
Networking if more than one computer is used (almost inevitable with enter on the day)
The need for power supplies etc.

Thanks. This is good for the beginning.
Let me fine-steer discussion in the right direction.

First of all, E-punch is used, no questions. No need to emphasize the importance.

The essential "optimization needed" part I'm talking about starts @

= Competitor registers before the run allowing name be typed out and associated with e-punch number, allowing to avoid misprints and handwriting reading later.

which is one step earlier then

> The competitor downloads into the SI station after finishing and receives a splits printout.

= Download after the run...
Equipment? procedure? Backup? Reliability?

= Postprocessing at home, any way to make it in no time?

How many volunteer* hours your SI related procedure takes?

The key is whether you want to code check at the event or not. If you don't care about code checking at the event, then using the printer that just prints splits is fine and you have a very simple system - no computer needed, no need to enter names into a computer, etc. You can check codes by looking at the splits, but not everyone will look carefully and report accurately. And, to post results on-line, someone has to type in names after the event if you aren't going to do it at the event.

Code checking at the event requires a more elaborate setup and requires a knowledgeable person to man the computer for the 5 or so hours that a local event lasts (ours usually start at 10 which means someone needs to be setting up the computer at around 9:30 and courses close around 3). Although 90% of the time the data entry is routine and anyone could do it, the few times there are problems you need someone around with some experience. What this means unfortunately is that a few people get stuck doing the work all the time.

Our setup for local events is simple: one small laptop, a portable battery and a thermal printer.

Code checking at the event: if the splits printout doubles as the results display (as suggested by Invisible), eagle-eyed fellow competitors will soon point out any mispunches.

Probably the biggest improvement for me running the sportident computer was an XML import file of the courses. We use Condes for course setting, and it can generate this XML file that saves a lot of fussy mouse work in OE.

> Equipment? procedure? Backup? Reliability?
Equipment: as stated earlier, the SI school system.
http://www.sportident.com/media/public/pdf/SPORTid...
Backup... for our local events the backup is the handwritten results stubs. We have used the system for almost two seasons with no need for backup yet. For larger events we use OE like many others, and the schools training set acts as a low impact splits printer and backup. The only issue is a limit on the number of competitors it can store. I think 500.
Reliability: Far more reliable than our experience of other systems.

> Competitor registers before the run allowing name be typed out and associated
> with e-punch number, allowing to avoid misprints and handwriting reading later.
SIME uses a standard file which links SI number with name etc. These are linked during post processing. New runners are typed in at this stage. And ideally added to the standard runner-SI file.

> Code checking
is done post event during the SIME download process. You have to add a text file taht lists the codes per course.

> Volunteer time:
I take this to refer to SI specific time. Our boxes are permanently programmed to the number that is stuck on the box. They are set for training mode rather than competition mode. The stands have no numbers. That means you just grab the correct box, and any stand/kite. the course setter doesn't need to go near a computer. The new time is the post processing. 1 hour volunteer time, but depends on size of event and volunteer experience. I

>Reduce post-processing to zero.
I have had an initially less than successful experiment with the latest version of OE2010 which has a 'register on download' option. Someone else may have had more success than I. When it works for me as it is designed to work, the post processing time will be further reduced. As far as I know, the perfect system has not yet been invented. It will:
1. Register entrants on download, looking up their name, or automatically storing them for later correction. (OE2010 does this, but not for me yet).
2. Constructs courses based upon the data available from downloads and allocates to these. (The software in the schools SI kit does this)
3. Produces all the required output, including dealing with classes if required. Once you start worrying about age classes, our system is too simple to cope.

Eresults lite is commonly used here for local low key events. Usually they have one laptop with ecard reader and thermal splits printer. The same unit is used both for registering ecards before the run and for download after the race. So I show up, they read my card and ask "Are you Jarkko?" and I say "yes". They have O federation's database and own database of local runners and cards, so usually they know me an my card already. The I go to start, clear my card, run the course and download and they say "thanks". If I forgot to register they say "Jarkko, you should have registered first!!! You are Jarkko right?" I say "yes" and everything is fine.

Eresults seems to automagically create courses, assign runners to courses and checks punches. They never seem to ask that at download even if I forgot to register and course setter never have to type/read any courses/control codes in.

Usually one person is handling the computer and an other person is selling maps.

If there is on site results board there may be third person doing that. They usually give you paper card at register and ask you to write your name and class/course there. You carry that in your pocket and at download they take thermal printer printouts of splits, staple it and your card to result board string.

Eresults stores data in a flat text file and one guy wrote app for reading the data from there and sending results to web during the event, so there is online results at some of these events. If not, they just afterwards export results as html and publish them.

I have been working on an idea of setting up local wifi, setting apache on result laptop so people could browse result on site with they wifi handsets. This instead of paper result board, one person less needed, results are up to date all the time and no cell phone network needed.

Sometimes laptops are not used, you just write down your name, course and ecard number in a list. I guess they download data afterwards at home from mtr unit using eresutls and they have to go the list trough. But I guess they use same runner/ecard databases so they will have to type only new ones. But they have to check them all, they can't know if somebody had borrowed friend's ecard. More work I think, and no online results. If there is result board it sone the same way, you write your name on a card and they staple it with splits printout to result board. I think it may depend on who is organizing the vent, if there is no computer skilled persons they may do it without and do computer stuff afterwards. Or they do it without computers if they dont have shelter for the laptop. I guess it's good to have this two options (laptop/no laptop) just in case.

More about eresults lite
http://www.oriento.fi/en/node/7
it's free and it should supports SI these days.

Thanks for that Jagge. Seems to be closest to my dream software.

Note, SI support seems to be appeared about year ago. So guess it may not have been used much yet, and it might not work as smoothly as it could. But with Emit Ereults lite is used a lot and for several years, so I guess the core stuff is rock solid by now.

Ereuslts lite doesn't support rogaine/score, but it's been succesfully used for that by using a pyhton script for reading competitors data from eresults flat file and generating result with it on the fly. So eresult is used just for register/download/datastorage. AP members Shrek and A.Le Coq know more about that approach (and eresults too).

Have a look at http://www.sportident.co.uk/autodownload/ for easy to use software, which is free if you only have a small number of courses. Very user friendly.

Or even better…Ór ;)

Its free too. I guess most clubs in Ireland use it, it was developed there and has a bunch of features to automate the post processing for Ireland but it can still be used anywhere. It has probably the best interfaces I’ve seen so far, very clean and intuitive. Scandis seem to have a strange idea of a proper GUI, but a lot of that probably comes down to personal preference. (It looks like Autodownload is only free for 20 competitors, not the number of courses. I haven't checked it out anyway yet, but I will)

- It runs standard point to point, score-O and Scatter course. (Also in development are relay events it seems.) See resent discussion on Rogaine Software Suggestions. That topic goes on to discuss implementing a local database. The only issue with score-O is that it doesn’t secondary sort by time. So all runners with the same score tie for place and are listed in the order they registered. Apparently they don’t sort by time after over there.
- It behaves mostly the same as Jagge has described Eresults Lite, I could go on but just read the description http://orienteering.ie/wiki/doku.php?id=or:index
- The coolest thing is the SI simulator. It lets you see how it will handle different situations without having to have the hardware. Give it to some juniors or anyone who knows a bit about using a computer and a few hours to play with the simulator and read the help files and they will have mastered it and show you how to handle different situations in no time. Its very simple to use, and it’s free so you can give it to anyone who wants to learn how to run the epunching.

For bigger events its probably better to use the a for cost software system for their added features but free software has been used for A meets. For local events just use the free software, it has all you need and is easier to show new people how to use.

Also I fail to see where the occasional CS needs to go anywhere near the results software?

The XML file for courses. Condes isn't the only course software that makes the XML course file.
In Ocad Course>Export>Courses (XML)
In Purple Pen File>Create E-Punch Interchange File
You also need this file for RouteGadget

But back to the OT, I think that O-scores (Shura) is looking for the description of how other club do it that TIL and Jagge gave.

From the procedures from start to finish:
-Pre-Event
-Registration
-Data Input
-Download
-Meet results
-Post Processing
-Online Results

I too would be interested in what other clubs do in detail to efficiently process competitors and get them out on the course and results posted, and what it all requires in time, money, number of volunteers. Something I would like to know is how other clubs might handle large numbers of regulars that rent SI-cards, how do you set up a database for regulars that do have their own SI so you don’t have to enter all their info each time?

O-score, maybe if you described what BAOC currently does and what has been pointed out as time and effort drains, people could make suggestions.