Discussion: Route-Gadget for Australian events?

An event isn't complete until I've uploaded my route somewhere. I'm having trouble 'completing' the recent Oceania and Hobart Shorts carnivals because there seem to be no RG-type servies available.

I've uploaded Oceania long to 'The Beaten Track' but all it gives me is my GPS trace on satellite image and, apart from a W45, no one else has up-loaded.

:(

Yeah it's a common problem. The Beaten Track relies on someone uploading the map, which doesn't often happen - results are pulled from Eventor. RG relies on someone uploading both the map and results. You need a dedicated team!

At least you have results. Our last weekend's event hasn't yet appeared anywhere.

Routegadget was an option we considered for both series, and I certainly would have liked it to be available, but in the end we just had too few people to make it happen.

Orienteering Australia has routegadget already set up. How hard is it to upload the results and maps?

Are you volunteering? Clearly no-one else has.

there is a Routegadget site set up on the OA website for major events :

http://rg.orienteering.asn.au/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi
(not sure about the links on the OA site itself)

Great to hear from you Rockman.

@Tobby - for an event where the planner and the results person haven't prepared for RouteGadget and nobody has Java installed then its more work to correctly upload and align the controls than to install RouteGadget.

More info ?
There would be a good chance that either the results data or the course data is in the wrong format and a chance that frustration with negotiating Java security would make you give up. To fix the results data you may have to massage it or get the results software and generate the results in another format. To fix up the course data, the worst case scenario is that you have to use something like PurplePen to recreate every course.

Sometimes it all works like clockwork and it takes less than 10 minutes to upload an event. But as rockman would probably tell you, there is a fairly high rate of exceptions to deal with.

That's been my experience too. ATM there's something wrong with my federation's RG installation that the webmaster can't fix. Old events are there but new ones won't load properly.

I appreciate there are often technical issues, but I do feel RG or similiar (TBT) provide a very important dimension for post-race analysis.

When I was a boy I used to draw my route on my map the evening of the event. When I returned to orienteering, I was delighted to find that not only could this be done digitally, on-line, but you could also compare routes with others - perhaps the only way to properly assess the splits.

It's not just a bit of fun. It's a tool for analysing and thus developing technique. It's a development issue.

Almost all clubs in the UK provide RG for Level C events (district) and above, regardless of numbers in attendance (for level C, as low as 150); sometimes RG is provided for local events as well, with less than 50 competitors.

It's not a matter of numbers, but whether you set up to provide it. It doesn't seem to have become part of the culture in Australia yet. I hope to see this change.

Parkino I agree with your sentiments, and wish that more people would use Routegadget. If you think about it, almost all the orienteers you (and I) know draw their route on their map (or always used to). So why don't they all use RG, which is much simpler (especially if you have a gps) and readily allows route comparison, not to mention real time playback?

A quick survey of Jarkko's Index will show that rarely do more than 20% of orienteers use RG, even for major events, and the average number of RG routes for any event worldwide would be around 10-12% of the runners.

Here in WA RG is no longer available, we only have The Beaten Track (developed by a couple of Sandgropers), and while our previous usage of RG was pretty low, that for TBT is even lower.

Personally, I've never understood this low usage of RG, and I found it particularly frustrating not to find the routes of many of my competitors at major national events.

What can we do? Better promotion could be a start. Survey people to find out why they don't use RG/TBT?

@ Simmo Here in WA RG is no longer available

Why is this? I thought the OA RG was available for everyone

Jim - I should have said 'for WA events'. We had our own RG host, but no longer since TBT. There wouldn't be much point someone else posting our events on the OA RG site as well, although in retrospect it would have been useful for us to do that for last October's Oz Champs Carnival.

Java issues caused a significant disadoption of RG. The latest version is much improved and has escaped java to javascript. But it seems the damage has been done. Pity. 2D Rerun is fun but no substitute.

The new version of RouteGadget is so much better. If you haven't seen it, take a look at the new user interface from one of our recent events: http://www.slow.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#133&cou...

I certainly think it's worth pushing again if you can.

FYI, that's not the new version of routegadget.

Drawing/upload ratio peaked about 6..8 years ago, 20..30% was normal. Back then there was no DOMA or quickroute or 2Drerun and java still worked. Then it went down to 5% because there was alternatives and most could not get java working. Now when Java is not issue any more its back to 15% here.

Any chance of a Javascript UI for routegadget management ?

routegadget administration is the point where we are short on experience/volunteers in Australia, so making that easier may make people more likely to volunteer to do it, rather than spend their time complaining about somebody else not doing it.

I concur with simmo re low use of RG and I think the solution is for interested individuals in each club to promote and train their members in its use.
Here in Victoria we don't have a general culture of use of RG, or loading of RG data files as one of our event management tasks.
Not all Event organisers have the skills to load up RG data, and the event computers containing the event result files are frequently taken away from the organisers on the day at the completion of the event . If they don't know to copy the files they can't complete the data uploads. And the required course/map data is typically created by the course setter and not available to the organiser unless requested.

@ Oxoman, Doesn't RG use XML results, therefore the same file that we use for Eventor?

There are some of the aussie maps on 3drerun, although i can't get it to work on my pc.

@ Oxoman, Doesn't RG use XML results, therefore the same file that we use for Eventor?

It did last time I used it.

My problem with RG was always that to put an event up you needed the courses (from the setter), the map file (often from another person) and the results (from a third). All three files had to arrive in a timely manner, because if RG went up as much as 2 days late then you got zero routes anyway. Even when I was mapping convenor and had that, you still had to chase setters (who were tired from collecting controls and didn't give a crap about RG) for courses.

My main purpose for building TBT (other than "ooooh look a shiny web API *poke poke*" because I'm a web geek) was to uncouple that process. I could upload the map before the event (except for new maps/major events, obviously), and then anyone could upload the results to Eventor and bam - event online. Even without the map you can still use it to review routes versus other people.

Of course it still relies on people uploading routes, and that's always been the core problem with the whole thing. Jagge and I can build all the shiny tools in the universe, but orienteers as a group are still terrible at computers. :)

In my opinion, and that is all that it is... I think that DOMA makes mores sense to a lot of people.. the reason that a lot of people used to draw on there maps was for learning but also archiving of maps. Now doma does the archiving really really well, where as RG isn't the best at that. Quickroute and doma are pretty simple to use and anyone can upload things without the need for a results file. 2drerun provides some really good analysis tools in a variety of different options.

Routegadget has a place and purpose. It also probably does somethings better than other pieces of software out there but I think it is easier for me to keep all my maps and routes in the one spot.

in DOMA can you compare with where other people went?

The purpose of uploading routes is to learn, particularly for course setters. Problems with the shift to DOMA-
1. Fewer people are loading to DOMA than used to load to RG. It only includes those who run with GPS devices. At least there was some value in drawing your route on RG. The splits helped allocate speed according to leg.
2. Only one person has to upload a map, not everyone who uploads their course.
3. Finding related routes from the same event is much messier on 2DRerun.
I think there would be value in reviving the RG culture.

1. Fewer people are loading to DOMA than used to load to RG. It only includes those who run with GPS devices. At least there was some value in drawing your route on RG. The splits helped allocate speed according to leg.

I went through a few years' worth of RG events from when I ran WA's system, and found an average of ~10% of routes were hand-drawn, with the rest being GPS. Given the inherent unreliability of hand-drawing where you went (unless you know exactly where you were at all times) I never really saw the point.

I would think there's a pretty strong correlation between people serious enough to bother uploading/drawing their route, and people serious enough to buy a GPS.

Hand drawing a route is good enough to show a route choice and a general area in which a mistake was made and so is god enough to help analyse another person's race.

The new version of RouteGadget is so much better.

It's my first look at RG2 and the whole UX is very good. Some very useful and improved functionality, although I spotted some areas for possible improvements.

Very good UI for the Left bar. It is much easier to get a race overview and to switch between events. I also like analyze feature start at: By controls.

I've not found a function how to set the course dot speed.

Possible improvements:
- On/Off button for courses in race window or to have "Full tails" and "Length" hidden by default so you would need to select one option before you are able to "Run" the race. Less clicks in case you first select also courses under the results tab by mistake. I realized that I have to unmarked each course first.
- Is it possible to see "All my courses" at different events? To have a personal profile.
- Possibility to have a feature to select "runners" to see at which events we ran the same course.
- A feature to see selected static routes for each leg. It would be a great help in case organizer/course setter decide to make an analysis after the race with few comments. I'm always interested to know what was the course setter best route on tricky legs. In practice it is very rarely to get a course setter post race analysis with his/her thoughts about the courses. These analyzed legs could be used also for teaching juniors or for the article about the race.

New RG made things a lot easier with a GPS trace, but I used to hand draw before that - it might not have been as accurate but it was still pretty useful. I think it's got a place, but there has to be a culture of using it.

Here at DVOA we have a dedicated results volunteer (speedy), and a dedicated RG volunteer -- me! I inherited the 'system' from our old RG fellow Doug Sevon (yay Doug!), and that's all of the history that I know. ;) We try to RG every event, and I think last year we managed to do all but a couple of particularly difficult ones (no digital map, no results, messy results, wonky files, wonky formats, etc ... but I did manage to (sort of) RG The Stumble ... and wish more had uploaded to that after how long it took for me to figure out a good way to do it!).

Prior to an event (ideally) I try to send an e-mail to the course setter and request the final OCAD file and Condes file beforehand (for local races, promising not to peek), so that when they're done with the event they can just relax and beer up/have their nervous breakdown.

After the event the epunch team, or event director gets the results file to speedy, who does some cleanup, posts to AP & dvoa.org (for results and rankings calculations), and gets the SI results CSV to me for the RG bit.

If there's already a map in our RG, I export the courses from Condes, and upload everything to RG. If I need a map I export a raster from either Condes or OCAD, depending on which looks better to me, and then upload everything to RG.

Total time is generally between 15 and 30 minutes, well worth the effort. The biggest hassle is georeferencing a map for an event which I didn't go to. If I was at the event, I have my GPS track to use, and can usually get the map pretty spot on. If not, I usually use mapmyrun.com to create a road course, then export that to GPX to use for the georeferencing, which works surprisingly well (if there are roads on the map) but takes a bit more time.

We (unscientifically) average something like 20-30% uploading, mostly on the advanced courses, mostly the faster runners. I like the idea of some training and outreach: getting it in the heads of our newer and younger (particularly) runners that RG is one of the best FREE tools that they have available for post-race analysis. And watching the synchronized race can be priceless. ;)

Huge thanks to Jagge for this awesome, free tool!! The 2014 updates -- particularly the javascript integration, nicer dots and tracks, and touch features -- are excellent. The incredible (once again free) support and advice keep me hooked on RG! Someday we WILL use the livetracking.

So find a single club volunteer to set up and/or maintain your RG site. If you have event process documents (How Tos), get the RG bits into them (if you don't, create them!). If you're running results at the event, remind people to upload! And if you're an RG volunteer like me, try to get the event posted within a day.

The weak link is having one person. I was that one person once and I sort of lost interest. Not my best moment, but it happens. Maybe a new year etc.

Sounds like our results person for the summer series. When the regular person went away, another was quick to put up his hand ahead of the rest of us then promptly forgot to put up the results!

I second everything hughmac says, particularly huge thanks to Jagge, it is an awesome tool.

I have non-orienteering mates who nevertheless understand the concept of the sport, and even they love watching RouteGadget replays from time to time.

"So find a single club volunteer to set up and/or maintain your RG site."

And there lies the challenge! Persuading the clubs to provide the people to support RG.
I quickly tired of taking the initiative of chasing other club's officials to provide information for events in which I had no involvement. We have one RG site for the country.

It still comes back to persuading a majority of the orienteering community to put their routes in RG. It's no wonder that volunteers give up their role as 'RG setup/maintenance person' sooner or later when less than 10-20% of orienteers make use of the facility.

it has to be there before you get people to use it though.

@undy Any chance of a Javascript UI for routegadget management ?

RG2 includes a javascript manager.

Don't get too hung up with the "no-one draws their route" argument. Routegadget is about a lot more than that. For everybody that draws a route there will be a lot more who have a look at the map or the courses or how other people did a leg. A lot of those won't even have been at the event. Plus it is a really useful historical record.

As has been recognised, the critical thing is to get the event set up as soon as possible after the event, and then provide obvious links to it from the results page. Yes it's a bit painful to chase the necessary files, but then just about everything involved with putting on an orienteering event is painful in those terms.

Simon (as in Maprunner, RG2 developer)

Any chance of a Javascript UI for routegadget management?

Sorry, I missed that question. Yes, it exists in RG2. I also wrote something for the original version during Christmas holiday. All of the features are not there like the mode of setting event up only with splits (without course setting file, mode where you point map location for each control code mentioned in splits file and start & finish and it then makes courses out of that), there is just that basic calibration of control file on js UI (but now with rotation). There is also other features done, some sort of support for iof xml3, route choice distances are back, live tracking app for android and such. Some of them are made by me, some by friends (and users getting bored of slow progress ;). Just some testing and polishing is needed.

I thought that original RG is dead. Nice.

Being dead is a poor excuse for not keeping on living and evolving. I worked last winter a little with it to get rid of the java, also added some features, like mouse over things, gps track auto calibration by splits, tails, direct links to animations (to be used in social media / embedded on event's web pages). I never bothered to add those to java version because developing java applet any further had looked like waste of time since 2005 or something. I replaced applet with leafletjs library to make it work on pads and phones and old IE browsers right from the start. People behind lefletjs keep on taking care of most of the issues with different platforms, so I could minimize my work and focus on O related stuff only. So you should be able to draw your route or upload your gps track with your phone/pad.

This is already outdated but here is youtube walk-trough of changes I had done year ago, after working with this for about a month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5osiINZFdSo

As a avid user in the past I'd love to see a rebirth and revival of interest for RG at our events. For beginner, recreational and master runners is probably the best tool for course analysis. I'm interested to translate it. How to start?

Just to clarify - I think I understand, but I may have this wrong, so its possible others were/are confused too:

The original RouteGadget is still under active development and a java-less UI for managing it is impending (fantastic). The not-so-new any more UI for users is illustrated in the video.

There is another version of RouteGadget, named RG2, written by Surebridge, which is compatible with existing RG datasets and is all java-less.

[BTW Surebridge, I figured out that I've known your bro for many a year via work, but never stuck my brain and your surname together before to make the connection]

I know that some of you use Ór to generate results. It is possible to get Ór to automatically add an event to RG with almost no work for the results guy and no need for a dedicated RG guy.

When importing courses into Ór before an event, the user has the option to also import the blank map as a jpeg and very easily calibrating the controls onto it. At the end of an event, Irish users use the Internet -> Upload Results menu to add the event to our results system. If the map was imported, this also adds the event to RG.

For non-Irish users this is not perhaps very useful. However, the URLs that Ór uses to upload the results are configured in OR.csv so it would be easy to point them to upload scripts on your own website - assuming you have a PHP (or other cgi) enabled website.

If anyone is interested in exploring this, I should be able to give you an idea of what your scripts would need to do (I use PHP).

Martin

Hi Martin,

That sounds great - some of the local clubs here already use a modified Or.csv to point at a different Live Results facility. If I can peek at your PHP, we could do the RouteGadget thing and probably upload to Eventor (our results system).

Cheers,
Andy

Simmo, for the TBT system we are trying to make it easier and easier to get the GPS routes in, if the person uploads to eventor or attackpoint and there are result sin the system tbt will bring in the route, we also have the ability to upload directly to TBT but this still needs some work before its brought in for the orienteering events which have places to upload already.

I think its just a matter of making it more known people can use it - I would guess a fair number of people have a gps of some type they just dont upload it. it is the 1 step further of oh dear I have to plug this into my computer and upload to get this on the site - I am really not interested.

Reducing that barrier to entry will actually see more reporting of GPS and better utilization of these systems.

As for the setup regards TBT/RG both require map upload and result upload. TBT can do this process separately and calculate the routes based on results and splits. either way that takes effort and whilst TBT removes some of ti - it still requires vol hours to do and when youve got low usage the question becomes why.

So in my mind we should be really pushing out the use of gps devices at all events and encouraging people to upload then you may find some higher level of interest.

Signs at start and finish saying start and stop your GPS and remember to upload against your result in eventor would eb a good start.

Usage is an issue - from 125 competitors this weekend, we have had 7 people upload to RG. I'm pretty sure that about 50-60% of people took an illegal route, so maybe we can expect them to not upload or draw their routes.

(I don't have a GPS watch, but my birthday is later this month)

I think also that the splitsbrowser integration within RG is much underappreciated.

undy perhaps we should have the link to RG from eventor (I don't know if this is possible) rather than just from the club page. If we managed to persuade more people to pre-enter then emailing then maybe we could email them with a link to the results and routegadget. Could we have something in the ONSW newsletter? wondering how many people don't know it exists/ perceive it as too difficult/ don't care. (n.b. some of those who don't have route on RG do have GPS traces on AP)

if the person uploads to eventor or attackpoint

Wrong, the AP upload ability stopped working way back in September.

Also it is a bit of a pain for me at the moment. Currently I have to upload to Garmin Connect (a process that invariably takes between one minute and two hours for no obvious reason), export the trace then upload to AP. After that I have to wait for the results to appear on Eventor before uploading to there also. Generally I forget after the results come out, more so this year since the Joondalup results took a week to appear so that killed my enthusiasm from the first event of 2015!

Also there is currently only one map showing (from three events) and despite it telling me there is one route on it, there are no routes. There are also no courses on any of the three events, which kind of defeats the purpose.

@jayne - there is a global (except UK) RG index.

Thanks for the heads up on AP GPSs.I think its possible to grab other peoples GPS from AP and put them into RG (I quite like drawing Jock's routes on RG.... may do that later).

We probably need a notice at the event - I thought I'd put something on the results printout, but maybe not.

I *might* have just uploaded Cath's...

I put mine up myself just now (sorry for the delay!)

I feel there may be some reticence to do so as it will show where people really went!

@tRicky I fyou don't want to use garmin connect try using the "Training Center"

I used to have Training Centre but issues with the Garmin (really - I cannot believe the Garmin would have issues!) prevented it from working. It was only with a fix from a friend who was more technologically savvy than me that I was even able to upload data to anywhere anymore. As it is, I have to manually pair the thing with the Ant Stick every time I want to upload and heaven forbid if I try and upload twice within the one session!

Regardless, manually upload to GC or TC makes no difference to the eventual outcome. I cannot upload directly from the Ant to AP anymore so still have to export a file from somewhere to somewhere.

I still use ant agent!

Ricky, I have spoke to Paul about having a direct import from GC to TBT and its a potential item but as I have been in Sydney no ones been hounding him to make said improvements :P

As far as I know the AP import is still working - it dont know if it is design to work for WA metro events as they dont have split results...

Okay, it didn't work for any of the national carnival events either. Juffy said it was something to do with the proximity of events to each other or some rubbish.

no its because it was created as 1 event rather than separate events - location proximity probably could have played a part too.

Either way the import is still be working as its intended. There are events which auto ap import wont work for based on how those events are setup (e.g. metro and carnivals).

I had a 405, it worked. Now i have a 310XT and have to pair each time and upload the gpx. It's very annoying

anyway back to RG....

I am the administrator for the for the Orienteering NSW Routegadget site , which has nearly 450 unique events dating back to 2009, with almost 5500 routes entered. The events range in level from International (WMOC2009) to local street events ( mostly from my club - Newcastle Orienteers), and also MTBO events and state level rogaines (even the trial of presenting a local Parkrun).

I agree with the comments by hughmac⁴ earlier in the thread, although the work flow is slightly different. I also agree with the following comment by InvisLog, about the weakness of dependence on one person. In my case I was fortunate that other NOC members were able to pick up the load while I had a major time-out for medical reasons over the last 3 months. The trickle of events from other clubs dried up, partly because I was not pestering event organisers for maps courses and splits results.

After this experience I intend to make sure that the management of the site is spread around, so that more clubs are using Routegadget for displaying the results of their events, under their own control.

One significant change would be for Eventor to include the option of displaying a link to the relevant routegadget site (and event) with the results, rather than just with the event information which I believe is still the case. Once the event is over people are interested in the results (in various forms) and the event information (start lists, how to get there etc) is not the obvious or appropriate spot for a link to another form of the results.

As the user of Cath's old Gamin 310 for 3 or more years, it has taken me around Europe and worked well. It did not like the Hobarts Shorts storm and got some moisture in it but now seems happy to be back in Paerth.

However for mystery reasons it stopped working with Firefox Browser a few months ago, many re-installs of drivers, browsers ant agents (whatever they might be) etc and it refused to work. Then found that it works fine with IE so I upload in IE and then use Firefox for any other internet activity, some of which is private until George Brandis gets to see my metadata.

RG accepts links to gpx files, so if you can get your route to AP or GC you can copy-paste gpx link to RG instead of exporting file and uploading it. This approach should work also with iphones and ipads (or so I have been told).

BTW I just posted a new version with those changes I mentioned here some days ago.

As to people uploading routes - a fair share of orienteers makes some errors, and perhaps they just don't want their routes out there. They may use a GPS. but it is perhaps a personal choice to keep their route to themselves.

I thought we were all proud of our errors! Aren't they the subject of most post-race boasting?

Certainly you won't find much of 'I did that leg particularly well' on AP logs. Most reports are about the mistakes and lost opportunities.

Yep that's what post-race discussion is mainly about "Yeah it was okay but I made a 10 second error here..."

At the Bendigo end of year event its not the championship placings that everyone waits for. Its the Black Crow and the Noodle Award. Nominations for the Noodle Award are made based on GPS traces or split times. The winner has their name engraved on a particularly spiffing trophy (topped by a handful of plastic noodle in perpsex). In recent years running tops have emerged recognising the winner of the award with an image of the route on the back along with the caption "Don't follow me. I won the 20XX Noodle Award". Out in the forest this can be very useful information.

This is awesome. If we did it in NSW this course would offer some good contenders: http://garingal.com.au/gadget2014/rg2/#456

and what's the Black Crow...?

Black Crow is a longstanding Award for orienteering related stupidity. There are many nominations each year and the winner is decided by public vote. A good example is the organiser who drove off after the event towing the toilet back to town whilst someone was still sitting. [Note someone stopped the driver before he got too far]

With regard to that NSW link, not much quality talent there. Most of our nominations come from events at Kooyoora or Mosquito Creek. The latter specialises in long bland legs pointing into multiple shallow parallel gullies. Here is the first winner's achievement on the infamous Mosquito Creek. It was submitted under a pseudonym on course 1.
http://www.bendigo-orienteers.com.au/gadget/cgi-bi...
Other winners have included taking 40 minutes on a leg that should have taken 2 minutes (kooyoora) and again taking much of an hour to not find the first control (kooyoora).

And between Jayne, Alex (Golfer) and myself on course 2, I think we'd have a worthy winner.

Leepback won an Explorer Award for this effort on ( and off) a simple streetO map a couple of years ago

Absolutely. Whether celebrating wayward navigation or analysing route choice, RG (and others) add to and extend the enjoyment of an orienteering event. I really miss them over here. I would also love to be able to use it as a coaching tool while I am here in Tassie.

If you can get the course/map files and the results files in one place, uploading to RG et al isn't - usually - that hard. Back in the UK, DVO manage to publish within two days, frequently on the same day, of the event. In fact, we take pride in it and, I believe, consider it part of staging the event, regardless of up-take.

It could and probably should be done through or by Eventor as this seems to be the emerging event information and result publishing platform here.

I opted to preserve the old UI layout mostly because I thought users would not need to learn anything new, they would already know how to use the gore functionality. I believe many users never noticed there was no applet any more - what they saw is just some additional features but the old ones were still there and in same places as before. And they knew how to use it. And I'd say that is one of the reasons route drawing/GPS track upload ratio went here so soon back up to level it was some years ago. Also it may have made it straight forward and fast for me to implement it all.

H70 sprint last weekend:

Sensational finish !

parkino TBT runs from eventor as soon as results are published - if you upload your route to eventor all runs on tbt
the exception is the metro events as nation wide they are entered into eventor differently so we never made support for them

brycec, yes, I saw that and I entered my route for Oceania Long, but OT hadn't uploaded the map/course files so all I could see was my dot proceed across the google earth images

Having not set up an event on the latest version of RG, I thought the answer to this question might encourage me to get into it again.
Is there an option to upload a map and courses but set a release date at some time in the future?

TBT you only have to upload the base map file once once the base map is uploaded it stays in the system forever an is reused for all events in the area. The software automatically generates courses of splits - the more courses uploaded will improve te accuracy of the generation generally but 1 good track is enough to generate courses.

The exception is the metro series as they are manual punch and scatter for that we require a file of the control point locations (Paul knows this bit far better than I do) .

Invisible, you can set up RG on your own computer for personal use. You could preload the files for an event and test them, then use the RG option of copying an event to transfer the event to the server after the final splits files are available.

The exception is the metro series as they are manual punch and scatter for that we require a file of the control point locations

Not for the Sydney series surely with its futuristic punching that's ahead of its time.

well the issue is ricky - they dont update the results in a fashion that we can use the spltis so same issue haha.

Not sure if Paul would be able to generate all the controls off the splits data on a scatter - might be possible but not really sure - think it would still be a manual upload of control points.

rockman. Sounds like an inelegant solution to me. I seem to remember being able to do an embargo release on DOMA?

TIL - it sounds like a secure way of doing it to me.
If its supposed to be secret at any level, putting it on the internet is not a good idea. I mean what if the courses for a world cup race were published online before the event by accident ? That would be terrible.

what if the courses for a world cup race were published online before the event

Didn't that happen to a World Cup event last year in Portugal?

I don't think it will matter for the level of event I am talking about. I think the exposure risk is less disutility than the utility gained from immediate availability after the event. When I organise my next World Cup event I will learn from the Portuguese experience (though I believe it was another country that contributed the error).

Hi Rockman, great to see you here!
Thanks Jayne for the rg upload, it has been on my to-do list.

I think Jayne was keen to see your routre given your one second win.

yeah I wanted the me v you replay! we seem to show all the available route choice. been interesting to see what would've happened had it been mass start.

okay, let's get pragmatic:

jagge/bryce, anyone, once the necessary files have been obtained, how difficult is it to upload to RG/TBT, would you say?
if you have auto-download, for example, how difficult is it to get the necessary results files, would you say?

I don't believe it is difficult as a rule, but I am not the one who does it for my UK club, I couldn't say for sure. There's some labour involved, of course, perhaps that's the issue.

Tbt is automated directly with Eventor - once the initial map tiles (base map no course) have been loaded which can be done prior to the event, there is no further intervention required (assuming the results files/splits are normal). - when a result is uploaded and a GPS added control points are calculated by the system.

For metro events they may have to be an extra step which loads the control point locations into the system but this is very simple it just requires the data.


. In short it's not much effort we just need base files sent to us I turn to tiles - then people just need to upload the results to vent or like they should be and competitors either upload there GPS to Eventor or to ap and job done.

See post 8 in this thread.

In the last three years, there have been very few cases where RG hasn't been up-loaded within 48 hours, we're running RG and RG 2 alongside each other, looks like we have both installed:

DVO RG
DVO RG 2

Parkino, note your RG version is 8 years old and lacks most features and it doesn't work without every viewer installing JRE's and making security configuration changes.
http://www.derwentvalleyorienteers.org.uk/results/...

I'd suggest hiding, removing or upgrading it, some fist timers may end up trying it and thinking that's the thing one is supposed to use. And finding it hopeless and never trying again.

thanks, Jagge, there were two links : which one were you referring to? Or were you referring to both?

It's not my call regarding upgrading. It certainly would be nice to have more features, but I'm also aware that it has been functioning very reliably for a long time and available for use often the evening after the event - this was my point

I found that loading events (if there were no glitches) was measured in minutes. But solving technical questions is measured in months.

Jagge, I have discovered that my difficulties seem to come from the course file. I have been able to load using IOF XML version 2 format but version 3 stops me at the fitting stage. I don't look after the RG installation, do you suppose it's not the latest version?

It is not supposed to work with v 3 course setting files. Even the latest version does not support it. Export is as v 2 and you are good to go.

So, this brings up an issue that I have run into when the map coordinates in OCAD are set to Real World Coordinates.

When set to RWC in OCAD, in Condes, there is an additional line for each control, called ControlPosition, exported with the IOF XML 2 course data.

example: ControlPosition x="277817.72" y="4336199.00"

This leads to the same RG fit issue that gruver ran into XML 3. To get the correct XML 2 in Condes, I have to use Paper Coordinates in OCAD.

This is where tbt is good as we don't need the points information.

Thanks Jagge, we've been running with very old documentation. Thanks also Valerie.

Valerie's problem was rotation, old version could not handle rotated coordinate system. You could not not rotate the control set when calibrating it on map image. This is fixed / changed, so both real work paper coordinates should work now with or without rotation.

The disadvantage of taking control positions from gps track coordinates using splits is controls never hitting the feature that well. I personally prefer controls being placed right and tracks actually hitting the feature.

The accuracy of the calculated placement is very good actually and it accounts for mis placements which happen.

brycec, in the absence of RG for Oceania/Hobart Shorts, I thought I'd give TBT a try. I uploaded my GPS trace for Oceania Long (non-elite) and have now obtained the map file ... but I can see no means of uploading the map file. It can't be done in the same place as the route, can it? I've registered, but nothing seems to have changed. The instructions link doesn't take me anywhere. I'm stuck.

If you send the map file to me (email in my AP profile), I can upload it - the automatic method is still a work in progress. :)

I liked the speech at the presentations after Saturday's event (from a well known WA orienteer :-) ):

"If you had a GPS, you can upload to The Beaten Track. Well no you can't because there won't be a map file."

Okay well known orienteer, if you send the course file to Juffy there will be one!

Why is it that everyone uses "a well-known WA orienteer" as a euphemism for Simmo?

Who is Simmo?

Hmm....maybe we'll have to change it from "well-known" to "locally notorious"...

I don't like to swear on AP.

Everyone knows I'm in my dotage - I misremembered Bryce's contributions as TBT doesn't cater for scatter events. You could have corrected me tRicky.

it does just not in the same fashion as a standard event - it adds one more step in the process which is getting a file set in with the points locations/

I did correct you here. I didn't want to interrupt your speech on the day because it would have ruined the smooth flow you had going.

Anyway, the only three people who ever put their routes up did so regardless so we didn't really lose anything.

Of course there still won't be a map file if the setter/mapper doesn't send me them. :)

There is a map file for Sorrento on TBT; just no course file.

okay so I can see the map now and my route has been uploaded, but I can't find the button to press play ...

Runners normally appear on the bottom right side

Try now (you may need to use Ctrl-F5 to force your browser to refresh.)

What's with results with no start times, huh? *grumble*

That works http://thebeatentrack.org/map.php?id=1615

Yes, nice to see the trace(s) doing it's thing, especially at max speed with a long tail.

Yes! There it is. (There am I.) Thanks. And we return to Transit Flats in two weeks.

Yeah and now the map is up there as soon as results are available if you have your gps in AP or eventor you should get it coming across and generating your course for you :)

And, more important, it's there for others too.

(Might run-up at the coming events so the scale could be 1:15000)

It's also possible to use it for setting - I made another page a while back that uses the same tiles as the main TBT site, but adds the current GPS position from your phone/tablet and overlays it on the map. Add the photogrammetry of a potential map and you have a very useful tool for scouting new areas - I even used it it a couple of times when mapping to work out where the hell I was. :)

About the AnimLink feature. You can customize it a bit with URL parameters.

- "aID" is comma separated list of runners, you can use also star "*" to select all gps and drawn routes. Like this also those who draw their route after the link was made will show up automatically.
- "afrom" is the control animations starts from.
- "atime" is tiem animation begins, for example 120 will make it skip first two minutes.
- "aduration" is duration in minutes. For example if you show just one leg and it took 6 minutes you can have &aduration=6
- atime and aduration are handy for showing single mistakes.
- "focusid" can be used to select the runner map view gets centered. Viewer can change the runner map gets centered by clicking legend, so this is the one selected at start.

Examples, this picks everyone who has route, just leg 8, focused to Robert Fell, ends right after Robert leaves 8, zoomed out one step.

http://rg.orienteering.asn.au/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?a...

Here is example how to show only the best part:
http://gadget.yokuppi.net/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?act=m...

Hah! That was hilarious (in a feel-your-pain kind of way), Jagge. Nice details.

I feel like a celebrity

two misses in a row!

Confessional?

Night orienteering and old map with badly outdated path mapping sure results as a good live tracking show. I don't often participate Yökuppi live sessions as a runner, but when I do I try to do my best to entertain the audience. When aimlessly wandering around the mash I was painfully aware of the smartphone in my pocket.

I think wearing a GPS whilst on sprint courses is a good incentive to not go through OOB areas. It takes away the temptation if you know you're going to upload your route later.

And then if you don't upload your route (and usually do), people might start asking questions. That is, if they notice at all.

Right, with regular GPS you have the option to not upload ("I forgot to push start button/battery drained"). With live tracking the evidence is online. It was way too late to shut the damn device down when I was at the middle of that march without knowing where to go.

Hee-hee, nightmare.

Yeah that's one problem with wearing a GPS; you're more likely to be DQed than someone who doesn't (just ask Glenn Meyer about that).

Extra fitting points can solve any GPS embarrassment.

Maybe some are more likely to be DQed than others

http://o-zeugs.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/a-walk-into...

Let's put all our faith in electronics will we? NO! GPS is subject to all sorts of errors. Using it to disqualify people is a very sad development.

Hey, this is orienteering, not cricket. Surely people would DQ themselves if they realised they had crossed an illegal area/barrier?

O-ing, I wasn't saying it was infallible (nor that it should be used that way) although some cases are more obvious than others. The example above was more the fact the participant was carrying a GPS device rather than using it to show he'd gone OOB and I for one was not happy that the DQ came about.

I know nothing about rogaining or the incident to which you refer. I'm talking about the Tove incident - a minor wobble in the GPS which could easily have been a tech error and the seeming fact that some people thought they would lodge a protest about it.

Yep I agree and it kind of seems unfair in major events when some people have to wear trackers and others don't.