Discussion: Geco, a new software for management of O' events

Here comes the first beta of Geco 1.1, a new software for managing orienteering races. Geco provides the essential features to handle small to medium events with a minimal setup.

http://geco.u7n.org

Why another software when there are already many alternatives?
- Well first, Geco was designed to handle Orient'Shows (see there http://www.wcup2010.fr/orientshow/gecows_annecy201... ), for which we had trouble when using standard softwares.
- Second, I find the current user experience rather dull in most O' softwares and I was eager to make something new, nice to learn and nice to use.
- Third, in line with the above spirit of trying new things, I want Geco to lean towards a modular and extensible platform for o' softwares. I publish the project in open source so that anyone who feels interested can take a look and build upon the current work. https://bitbucket.org/sdenier/geco

What features?
- multiplatform: tested with Windows and Mac, to be tested under Linux
- SportIdent only for now
- simple UI to discover and use
- on the fly registration with automatic import of competitors from an archive
- automatic course detection from punch traces
- accurate punch checking algorithm (developed for the orient'show to match MPs in butterflies) - could be a good match for the Billygoat too?
- and more features described here http://geco.u7n.org/geco/sevensteps.html and here http://geco.u7n.org/geco/features.html

For those who don't mind hearing a bit of french, there are a few screencasts which show the essential parts of race management with Geco. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4B1B64CB88...

As said above, this is still a beta, so take this opportunity to test and give your opinion. Things are never perfect in softwares. Also I don't really know the specific orienteering terms in english so my translation may not be the best. Comments welcomed!

Download link (include program, doc, sample data)
http://bitbucket.org/sdenier/geco/downloads/geco1....

And finally, I must add many thanks to Martin Flynn of Ór fame for providing his library to read SportIdent e-cards.

Thank you for posting this. i run an orientshow style event and I find the set up on our existing event software to be somewhat tedious! I will certainly be trying this out.

Interface looks very nice, Simon. I'll have to steal some SI gear and have a play. :)

Can't get it to start on my Win7 machine - I've thrown you a bug report.

Thanks for the early comments, always nice to have some feedback.

Regarding Win 7, I am not surprised you found a bug in the detection of COM ports: I only have a win xp pro virtual machine to test the windows code (I work on Mac), so I rely on beta testers like you to do some trial by error :) I will keep you updated in the bug report.

Free?

Wow!

Small change for the website url (previous host closed the doors)

http://geco.webou.net

Feel free to post your comments, I would like to go past the beta soon!

[The previous topis was here but is now closed, so new topic:
http://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/me... ]

Geco 1.2 is released. It now explicitly handles different formats for orienteering races: Classic inline, Orient’Show, and Free Order, as well as a custom and experimental format for the Raid Orient’Alpin. Also included are IOF XML export for results, new calibration process for the LiveMap, first german translation... To see the full list of changes, check here : http://geco.webou.net/geco/whatsnew.html

Direct download link http://bitbucket.org/sdenier/geco/downloads/geco1....

Please remember that Geco is open source. Currently I'm still the main contributor (so I can't satisfy all requests) but as shown above, Geco can be stirred towards different formats. So feel free to test it and imagine new ways to perform your computer-assisted organisation!

(threads merged)

Is there a working link for this? My installed version is Geco 1.3, but I don't see any way to "check for upgrades".

Geco created a bunch of files and immediately quit (application windows disappeared, but the Java processes were still running, seen in Windows Task Manager). When I restarted it, it was not able to understand that the directory it created contained an event.

The webpage says "service est suspendu".

Yes, sorry for the lack of update, but lately everything is changing at the same time with the start of Geco 2 development. Geco 1.3 is reasonably the last in the 1.x series.

So the new website for Geco is here:
http://sdenier.github.com/Geco/begin/index.html
(the old website is no longer active because the service changed its free hosting policy). I haven't yet updated the URL in a number of place (like here http://o-wiki.net/index.php?title=Software#Competi... ) so feel free to talk about it and update it yourself.

The development now happens at github
http://github.com/sdenier/Geco
and here
http://github.com/sdenier/GecoSI

BTW, if you want to know where Geco is heading in 2.x, there is the readme
http://github.com/sdenier/Geco#readme

Unfortunately, Github stopped its file hosting service just before the move so file download (for beta and release) is still on Bitbucket:
https://bitbucket.org/sdenier/geco/downloads

That's it for the (short) update

Sorry, the readme is here http://github.com/sdenier/Geco/blob/master/README....

@Tundra/Desert: can you send me the gecoerror.log file created in the same location as the jar file? As well as the content of the directory. Which java version are you using? On which OS (Windows 8, OSX 10.8...)? Please post an issue on github or send a mail on my google account (simon.denier)

yes, it crashes - problem on my system was that it assumes serial library is 32 bits, while my system is Win 8 64 bit.

I came across what sounds like a similar problem with Ór when people started to use 64 bit machines. I think the problem was that they were using a 64 bit Java JRE but the RXTX libraries I distribute with Ór were 32 bit. The simple solution was to install a 32 bit JRE and make sure that it was used when running Ór.

I suspect that a similar approach would work for Geco.

Martin

I'll give it a try.

But it makes it difficult to use on wider scale - this kind of problems should be re-solved during installation.

OK, thanks for the heads up. I will release a "special" win/linux 64 bits release for Geco 1.3, just replacing the RXTX libraries with the 64 bits version.

For the record, the Mac OS RXTX library is a universal library (i386, x86_64, ppc) and it works for me in 64 bits as my current JRE is a Java 6 64 bits. So my guess is that it should work too in windows/linux - no need to install a 32bits JRE.

That means people would have two options: download the classic release or, if it doesn't work, download the 64 bits release (or the other way around). Yes, not optimal for the end-user, but it's a common option these days.

Java - it's the way of the future, they said. Compile once, run anywhere, they said.

:)

Well, that last statement is still true. They just forgot to tell about packaging for different platforms :)

Anyway, I took some times tonight to build a new 1.3 relase with 64 bits drivers for both Windows and Linux. However, I could not test the changes in this version as I have neither of these systems at home: so if some people could download it and try it, that would be great to confirm the problem is resolved.

http://bitbucket.org/sdenier/geco/downloads/geco-1...

And thanks again for the heads up!

Well, it helped. Started on Win8 64; didn't try with master unit to read e-punches - later in the evening.

Confirmed it's functional. Reads punches. Prints splits.

Good! So it's working on Windows 8. Apparently for Linux (Ubuntu), there are some problems. So I will dig into it.

The one thing I noticed is master station USB connect/disconnect event is not properly handled.
- apps does not detect insertion if already running
- apps crashes when master station disconnected while in reading splits mode (Competition)

The crash when the master station is removed is caused by a flaw in the RXTX library that Geko & Ór use to access the COM port. RXTX is an open source project and is not updated very often. The problem should be solved in the next release but it may be some time before this happens.

Maybe it's time to switch to the new SportIdent master stations with HID interface, one problem less.:)

Which new sportident stations have HID interfaces? The new BSM8s use the same SILabs part soldered onto the pads that have always been on that board right?

I didn't look into details, but saw info dated ~2 months ago on their development forum. They even offered some discounts on new stations.

Oh, well that looks like crap. Not a CDC driverless serial port implementation, but a custom HID device that will require more complex software to communicate with the device. If they rewrite the whole protocol so that more of the complexity of reading chips is done by the station, it could be worth it, but I'm guessing it will be the same commands, just done through a HID interface.
They do say they are going to publish a software stack for communicated with them, but .NET/windows only.
What they should have done years ago was published a canonical reference library for low level communication with the stations, as open source C code.

That was the message:

SPORTident equipment is constantly extended by new features. We are aware of the unpleasantness of distributing drivers when you want to install a device on your computer. We have improved this situation already by publishing the new driver version 6.6 that adds support for the latest Windows version and also is completely signed to increase comfortness, safety of the customers and ease of installation.

The future of SPORTident devices is drawn by changing over to a
new USB interface that makes use of so called Human Interface Device
class (in short HID). HID is a common interface for low power and
low speed USB devices and supported on all major operating systems.

The big advantage is that you no longer need to install drivers when
you want to use your SPORTident device at a computer. Also the complex
and annoying handling of virtual serial ports (VCP) is gone. The device will be recognized instantly and is ready in no time.

Software applications need to be aware of such devices, so you might
want to take this change on the hardware side to improve the hardware
interface of your application to include support of HID devices. We
will support you with updated documentation and tools for the
.NET Framework on Windows platforms. Also the new
software of SPORTident, including the Reader library (and Frontend)
will learn how to talk to SPORTident HID devices. SPORTident Terminal
is already able to work with HID since version 2.14 and is available for download in the forum.

We will launch the new concept by publishing two devices that include
HID interface. This will be the SPORTident USB HID - RS232 converter and the new SPORTident BSM7 USB HID master station. Both devices will be available from now on and we will give you a discount of 50% according to the list price for the devices with ordinary VCP interface. This is a special offer for developers to get in touch with the interface and to have something to play with.""

Guess what else isn't supported by Java...!

you kidding?

HID drivers in Java.
Now you need a platform specific library to do the HID communication. Yes, serial requires that in the form of rxtx, but at least that is already written and works reasonably well. Is there going to be one java SI HID library? Or are we all going to go out and have to write and support or own?

Since I haven't seen the new hardware I can only guess how it is implemented, but I'm going to guess that they upgraded the processor to one of the newer MSP430s with USB builtin. Once you go down that route, why not just implement a CDC serial port instead of a HID device? Then no drivers are required. I've done that with a small STM32 before.