2017 Regional Results

[Saj5DJ]

I'll have a look into the MSReg side Trav. And ditto what Daniel said, efforts are very much appreciated.

[Fentin_fury]

Originally Posted by Saj5DJ

Know Quentin and Mike W put a run in too.

we did - I have video!

[Fentin_fury]

Originally Posted by Daniel

Trav, more than anything I feel bad for you. It's already a lot of pressure on your shoulders and you shouldn't have to deal with constant software issues as well. Just wondering what/if more can be done to alleviate the issues and make things easier for you and the timing crew. Because in the end, without you guys we don't have a regional series and we (all) need to keep that in mind.

Thank you for all the time and effort you put into this Travis! We don't give you nearly enough credit!

agreed!

[MartynD]

Originally Posted by Daniel

Trav, more than anything I feel bad for you. It's already a lot of pressure on your shoulders and you shouldn't have to deal with constant software issues as well. Just wondering what/if more can be done to alleviate the issues and make things easier for you and the timing crew. Because in the end, without you guys we don't have a regional series and we (all) need to keep that in mind.

Thank you for all the time and effort you put into this Travis! We don't give you nearly enough credit!

Seconded

[Snizzoop]

Originally Posted by Travis

Someone needs to look into motorsports reg to figure out how to limit registrations to valid class & super class combinations. Currently it's possible to select an invalid combination, such as S-STX instead of ST-STX. It takes 5-10 mins at the start of each event to sort that stuff out.

Someone who wants to be involved in the future should install the axti.me demo (or whatever you want to try) on the laptop & configure it to run with our beams & display*. I'm not willing to do that myself. It's a few hundred bucks so some due diligence should be done before making a proposal to buy it.

We have enabled this for the TLMC events. I just looked, and it seems that we only had it enabled for the non-regional TLMC members at the last event. I've modified it for the next events so that non-regional TLMC and non-TLMC members will be forced to choose the correct class. I'll see what needs to be done to get it working for the regional competitors.

So far, I'm not impressed with the support from Axti.me. It's supposed to be easy, but we're having issues.

[sjd]

Originally Posted by Snizzoop

So far, I'm not impressed with the support from Axti.me. It's supposed to be easy, but we're having issues.

We are. I had been pretty happy with Axtime until our last event when it would not allow us to class or register people like at our last event. We're lucky we use the Race America AC4 so that we get times electronically. So when it works, it works really well which it did most of last year with the exception of getting the wireless results working. It

Support has been a pretty big issue. The guy who created Axtime is in California and also has a startup that just got funded so that takes up all of his time. When I have been able to get his attention, the support is good. Just not what it needs to be and the documentation is really lacking.

[Travis]

results for event 4 are up.
google drive

[Snizzoop]

Are the results from event 4 final...have they been tidied up?

[Travis]

Event 4 results haven't been tidied up yet. Neither has event 3, really

[Snizzoop]

Sorry, I actually meant event 3.

[buurin]

We are not alone:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Autocross/c...e_live_timing/

Originally Posted by Travis

Someone who wants to be involved in the future should install the axti.me demo (or whatever you want to try) on the laptop & configure it to run with our beams & display*. I'm not willing to do that myself. It's a few hundred bucks so some due diligence should be done before making a proposal to buy it.

*You won't appreciate how bright the display is until you've turned it on indoors!

The programmer in me wants to get another project under my belt!

Originally Posted by sjd

We are. I had been pretty happy with Axtime until our last event when it would not allow us to class or register people like at our last event. We're lucky we use the Race America AC4 so that we get times electronically. So when it works, it works really well which it did most of last year with the exception of getting the wireless results working. It

Support has been a pretty big issue. The guy who created Axtime is in California and also has a startup that just got funded so that takes up all of his time. When I have been able to get his attention, the support is good. Just not what it needs to be and the documentation is really lacking.

Maybe it's time we look at some fully open-source solutions as well?

So far I've seen two:
fsTimer(.org) is custom developed for a charity human race and is too far off from our needs.

Then there's this: https://github.com/tahosa/openracer-python
Runs on Python, Django, node.js, the first two I'm currently taking a course on.
However there is no code to talk to any timing gears as far as I can see.

[Cliff96]

Originally Posted by buurin

Maybe it's time we look at some fully open-source solutions as well?
...
Then there's this: https://github.com/tahosa/openracer-python
Runs on Python, Django, node.js, the first two I'm currently taking a course on.
However there is no code to talk to any timing gears as far as I can see.

There is also a guy out west - Dina pointed me to his setup when I was still running the series and looking after the timing gear - Murray Peterson who wrote a timing system, mjtiming - according to my emails from the time, but can't seem to find them on the web anymore - looks like shaw retired the hosting, and a search doesn't find anything current.

The problem, is really maintenance/updates/support.

Open source would be nice, but there needs to be enough of a community to support it - with all the different timing solutions over the years, they start out great and then the author looses interest (either in advancing the software to run on current hardware, or they don't have the time, or there are too many features added in without a re-write and things get buggy - see axware a year after axtime.me was released.) I honestly think there isn't enough money to be made to make it someone's full time job (dev at the start, but support later once it's feature complete), which is what it needs to do it right. I'd think the best option for making a difference is to offer to help with someone's project that has already started or is in use already.

The big problem is testing, as evidenced by my axware experience - you can have the gear all setup in the basement, and it will be flawless, but once you start running cars, and errors happen - that are hard to reproduce, they can really hurt and take away from the event, and are the most important to avoid, so not an easy place to learn when you have 50-100 people standing around when a glitch happens.

But don't let all that discourage you, talking to the hardware isn't that complicated, I got some stuff running on an arduino a few moons ago. Look for the race america documentation, it's all there for their displays and timing units. I don't know if you can wireshark a serial connection, but the communication protocols aren't complicated, and shouldn't take much effort to reverse what isn't already documented. The wireless links use zigbee radio's which are open source, so if you wanted to see that side (but doubt it'd be needed) I think it'd be possible too.

[suzukablue]

Murray pinged me asking to post this link - he's waiting for someone to approve his request to join the forum - its for his software:

http://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bye...3o2dmxncWdWTEU

[Travis]

Updated with results from events 5 & 6.

Updated with Pax and Class points - probably FUBAR at this point.
The files are called "membership*" you'll figure it out.

Please check the following:
-Val's points went in to the right class for each event? He drives so many different cars that he has the unique honour of having 2 regional entries in the membership list. What class are you in this year, Val? I'm going to delete the other one.
-people's class is right?
-people's car description is right?
-missing regional entries?

[buurin]

I now have a crude script that the beams can talk to; the protocol save for one quirk is as documented. Next is figure out how to drive the screen and Live Results. By the way, I can't get Live Results (I downloaded straight from axtime) to run properly on my Linux laptop.

And apparently the $700 Axtime software wants to take beam data and drive the screens all from one serial port. For that a custom splitter is required, although it's not hard to rig up. Still, takes points away from Axtime.

And I'm (and Murray?) not the only one who toyed with the idea of rolling our own timing software. Some clubs in the States did this too and from my googling even willing to give it away, but those mentions are from a few years ago and no longer current.