Regatta software
Jens Brandt
found vas:
Racetrak at http://www.racetrak.com/
NZ Rowing at http://www.rowingnz.org.nz/rowman/row_home.htm
Is that the only regatta software in the world?
There must be a lot of "home made" regatta software out there!
/Jens
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Henning Lippke
>
> There must be a lot of "home made" regatta software out there!
http://www.stoebehh.de/regawin.htm
Zak Wood
used for all regattas in South Africa...
It's a full database of all rowers in the country, and handles entries.
There's an upgrade on the way which gives regatta organisers more
flexibility as well.
www.regatta.co.za (You can't see much without a log in, but will be able to
look through the crews, regatta draws, etc.)
Cheers,
Zak
"Henning Lippke" <use...@sculling.de> wrote in message
news:ap6ick$s5cj9$1...@ID-122207.news.dfncis.de...
Silver Fox
>
> I have been searching software to manage a regatta. The only software I
> found vas:
>
> Racetrak at http://www.racetrak.com/
> NZ Rowing at http://www.rowingnz.org.nz/rowman/row_home.htm
>
> Is that the only regatta software in the world?
>
> There must be a lot of "home made" regatta software out there!
Unfortunately there is no money in it. It takes thousands of man hours
to create a full working regatta software system and naturally everyone
wants software for nothing so the market for regatta software is small
and hence the reason why the worlds not flooded with regatta software.
Silver Fox
David Biddulph
news:apg9s8$lpt$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
> What exactly would be required for regatta software?
>
> Presumably an automatic method of creating the draw.
>
> Splitting it up into a file listing the draw in time order another in club
> order and yet another in boat category.
>
> What else is needed?
>
> Alex
The main difficulty is to produce a timetable taking account (to the extent
whuch the regatta organisers feel appropriate) of doubling-up (of
competitors & of boats).
--
David Biddulph
Rowing web pages at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/david_biddulph/
http://www.biddulph.org.uk/
Ewoud Dronkert
>Presumably an automatic method of creating the draw.
>
>Splitting it up into a file listing the draw in time order another in club
>order and yet another in boat category.
>
>What else is needed?
Head vs. multi-lane (2-6+); myriads of categories; online entry;
multiple starts of crews, individual rowers, coxes and boats; entry
fee and fines administration; weigh-in administration; scheduling
officials (starter, umpires); TIME-KEEPING (also starts going on while
races still underway); network enabled with a central database;
results publishing, also to the web; very very intuitive interface.
And no cost, like Silver Fox said.
alexorig
Presumably an automatic method of creating the draw.
Splitting it up into a file listing the draw in time order another in club
order and yet another in boat category.
What else is needed?
Alex
--
Captain of Boats Magdalene College 2002/3
www.magdaleneboatclub.com
www.paperairplanes.co.uk - former yahoo website of the week and bbc radio 2
site of the day
www.cocktailmaking.co.uk
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
"Jens Brandt" <JensB...@NOmail.tele.dk> wrote in message
news:MPG.1820c6f98...@news.kmd.dk...
Stuart Jones
I spy a 4th year degree project/Open Source collaboration project ;-)
Ewoud Dronkert
>I spy a 4th year degree project/Open Source collaboration project ;-)
Whatever happened to the java project of Katy, or to ms. Cameron for
that matter?
Edd Edmondson
> Head vs. multi-lane (2-6+); myriads of categories; online entry;
> multiple starts of crews, individual rowers, coxes and boats; entry
> fee and fines administration; weigh-in administration; scheduling
> officials (starter, umpires); TIME-KEEPING (also starts going on while
> races still underway); network enabled with a central database;
> results publishing, also to the web; very very intuitive interface.
> And no cost, like Silver Fox said.
Network capabilities, including results publishing to the web and by email
are trivial to include if you pick the right language. The interface needs
a good designer rather than a good programmer. Pick the right data
structure at the start and the head vs multilane thing is also barely an
issue. The only tricky bit is a way of sorting out the start order in my
opinion.
A lot of the other stuff, like weigh-in administration and scheduling of
officials can be done the old fashioned way perfectly well, and is also
functionality that can be added at a much later date.
I think thousands of man hours is a gross overestimate if you can overcome
the issue of deciding the start order.
--
Edd
Stuart Jones
news:apgpli$buk$1...@news.ox.ac.uk...
> Ewoud Dronkert <nos...@invalid.info> wrote:
>
> > Head vs. multi-lane (2-6+); myriads of categories; online entry;
> > multiple starts of crews, individual rowers, coxes and boats; entry
> > fee and fines administration; weigh-in administration; scheduling
> > officials (starter, umpires); TIME-KEEPING (also starts going on while
> > races still underway); network enabled with a central database;
> > results publishing, also to the web; very very intuitive interface.
> > And no cost, like Silver Fox said.
> thousands of man hours is a gross overestimate if you can overcome
> the issue of deciding the start order.
Depends if you want a highly-polished commercial-standard product, packed
with every feature that everyone wants, fully tested. Or something that is
free, and looks and feels like it, with limited features and bugs......
Getting something that good does take a lot of time...
Neil Wallace
news:q8mnrucro3m2tqr21...@4ax.com...
Katy is not on Usenet any more, having left Uni.
Shame that. Number 1 poster for some time.
Still, I get to meet her 2 weeks today!! Might even wash my socks and comb
my hair!!
Neil
Edd Edmondson
> Depends if you want a highly-polished commercial-standard product, packed
> with every feature that everyone wants, fully tested. Or something that is
> free, and looks and feels like it, with limited features and bugs......
> Getting something that good does take a lot of time...
Keep it to a limited feature set and it's not that hard to get it
relatively bug free. Is it really worth having a piece of software that
does everything for you at a regatta though? You really only want it to do
the draw, track results and make them printable and available on the web,
and that isn't all that hard.
Put it this way - doing draws by hand is hard work. Doing weigh-ins isn't.
You'd want a program for one but it'd be more trouble than it's worth for
the other.
And I take offense at the idea that free products can't be fully tested,
must be full of bugs and can't be of a professional standard. ;-)
--
Edd
Stuart Jones
> And I take offense at the idea that free products can't be fully tested,
> must be full of bugs and can't be of a professional standard. ;-)
Did I say that? I certainly didn't mean it... Apache, Bind, PHP, MySQL,
phpBB, etc, etc, etc...
alexorig
standard. Entering the weights by hand into a database would be very easy
too.
Database management and operation is very well understood by a large number
of people and we are talking about quite a small and fairly easy job once a
method of creating the draw itself is completed.
Of course full automation would be fairly tough. At the marlow regatta I was
talking to the http://www.mikrotime.com/rowing/ people. They do a superb job
of full automation for results. All it involves is a person clicking a
button at each timing point and taking a digital photo (to recognise who was
in which position), then writing in which crew goes with which click (ie
crew number) and the computer does the rest then sends the information in to
their central database which outputs the results in the desired format.
2km of wiring is a problem but apart from this the system is perfectly
simple and fairly replicable if someone should desire to try.
The slowest part of the process appeared to me to be the umpires trying to
check the results against their own.
Of course I am only a physicist with a very very basic knowledge of FORTRAN
(whimper) and PERL (only for web text databases really) so I post out of
chat with some compsci's and an engineer I know and I am probably not acting
as a great interpreter in either direction.
Alex
--
Captain of Boats Magdalene College 2002/3
www.magdaleneboatclub.com
www.paperairplanes.co.uk - former yahoo website of the week and bbc radio 2
site of the day
www.cocktailmaking.co.uk
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
"Edd Edmondson" <eddedm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:aph0ec$ek2$1...@news.ox.ac.uk...
Edd Edmondson
Jonny Taylor
>> multiple starts of crews, individual rowers, coxes and boats; entry
>> fee and fines administration; weigh-in administration; scheduling
>> officials (starter, umpires); TIME-KEEPING (also starts going on while
>> races still underway); network enabled with a central database;
>> results publishing, also to the web; very very intuitive interface.
>> And no cost, like Silver Fox said.
> opinion.
on RISC architectures which I suspect wouldn't take much modification to do
what is needed here. I won't bore everyone with the details, but I have
knocked together a quick explanation which can be read at:
<http://users.ox.ac.uk/~univ1526/Scheduling.html>
Come on - someone with time on their hands could do something about all
this. I won't name names, but can think of several people immediately :-)
Cheers
Jonny
Carl Douglas
>
>Katy is not on Usenet any more, having left Uni.
>
>Shame that. Number 1 poster for some time.
>
>Still, I get to meet her 2 weeks today!! Might even wash my socks and comb
>my hair!!
>
Carl
--
Carl Douglas
Neil Wallace
"Carl Douglas" <ca...@carldouglas.co.uk> wrote in message
news:I+n4hAAp...@rowing-cdrs.demon.co.uk...
Isn't that what all good umpires do??
Neil
bayberryfarm
their own.
Rick Butt-Coach Lyme/Old Lyme
James R.I. Worrell
> 2km of wiring is a problem but apart from this the system is perfectly
> simple and fairly replicable if someone should desire to try.
Enter 802.11 ... :-P or similar ...
> > does everything for you at a regatta though? You really only want it to
do
> > the draw, track results and make them printable and available on the
web,
> > and that isn't all that hard.
Actually you would be amazed and what can be thrown up at you ..
Take running the draw for example. A national champs (australian nationals -
the web site - nationals only - which I help look after) has something like
1200 competitors, nearly 500 races over say 6 days. Seeding of crews,
different draws for weather conditions, time trial format just in case ...
that is a fair bit of code. And of course officials expect a redraw to take
a couple of seconds at the click of a button. :-P
Then there are things like dead heats, protests, withdrawls (so the final
might be consolidated) etc etc .. there are a myriad of variables and events
that effect the final draw/results. Race times can vary - they may want to
shift the whole programme an hour here or there ... weather gets in the way
... races get consolidated, re-ordered etc. And of course athletes and
coaches are accessing all this from their hotels and expect it to be right
24x7. Fastest qualifiers through .. you name it.
Tracking results is also an interesting proposition. Running splits on say 8
lanes with up to say 3 races on the course at any time. Races get out of
order, restarted etc. Then add your time trial contingency for good measure.
Tracking of false starts, disqualifications, scratchings. Composite club
rulings, age cut-offs ... frankly it is a wonder these things work given the
amount of manual work (currently).
A proper "FISA" results system is a LOT of work. Main reason I haven't
written one. It also needs the support to be effective of a national
organisation - you need discrete and verified names, birthdays etc to make
it truly powerful.
Imagine taking and processing by hand the entries for an event like this ...
putting in the data for it. Tracking entry fees, crew changes, reimbursing
deposits - that is what a system should be capable of! You are right - it is
easy - just a huge task.
Check out:
http://www.rowingaustralia.com.au/Nationals2002/Core.asp
That is a bit of a "hack" job - an amalgamation of systems to put the data
out. FAR FAR from perfect ... still about 20,000+ lines of asp/html/sql. It
is not a patch on what I have described above.
"Version one" took me about 4 days to write the bulk of it ... didn't
sleep - it was about 11,000 lines and I was still writing code during the
event ...
http://www.rowingqld.asn.au/Nationals2000/Core.asp
And the "official results" come from a separate system. The names are parsed
by forms - the data also comes from the results system ...
> Doing weigh-ins isn't.
True .. to an extent. If athletes are issued a national id card with a photo
database - at least who's who can be verified. Then comes bar code readers
etc. Automatic withdrawals due to weight failures is a nice feature. Also
have to consider substitutions. (Then there are a heap of substitution rules
to worry about)
Weighing boats - same goes there ... which riggers was it weighed with ..
yada yada ...
> > And I take offense at the idea that free products can't be fully tested,
> > must be full of bugs and can't be of a professional standard. ;-)
Mine are full of bugs :-P nah not quite - but perfect code is never
possible in projects this size - you are always fixing something.
I've personally written at a rough stab half a million lines of code for
database apps. Debugged applications about twice that size ... it's
expensive to properly verify and fully test code - and that assumes you know
what you had to write in the first place :-P
Oh ... then of course there is weather data eg :-P
http://www.rowingqld.asn.au/Nationals2000/Results/RaceViewer.asp?RaceID=397
Peter King
levy on entries.
Pete
Jens Brandt
I'm not sure that I got what I expected. But I can see that there are a
marked for at well working and cheep regatta system out there ;-))
The system I have seen are either not good enough or they are too
expensive to use.
The result off my question will be the solution that I will make my own
system.
/Jens Brandt
www.aalborgroklub.dk
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nan...@hotmail.com
Before you develop any software, there are some packages out there. I have
been looking for and investigating an end to end regatta management software
for a few years now and have pieced together a good solution. For about 99%
of the actual regattas out there, this is your best solution if you want to
an automated, ease of use tool that limits your volunteer base as well as
provides timely and accurate information.
Registration Software:
Use www.RegattaCentral.com It's a web based software package that you can
configure your events, all event details as well as billing information per
event. It allows users to actually enter events themselves and takes the
burden of entering in data off you the race admin. In addition it allows
users to change or adjust thier entries based on a timeline (or entry
window) that you set for that race. It also allows them to view and print
their own invoice for submitting on race day or before if you desire. It's
a FANTASTIC package and not very expensive.
Race Day Management:
Use www.RegattaMaster.com It's a very good application that was designed for
two purposes, the first purpose is to manage your team, assuming you are a
coach. The other purpose is to manage a race. It can take an Import from
Regatta Central after your entry window closes. Then you can set up your
race using features like auto seat entries into actual races, adjust race
centers based on preset or custom centers of individual races or groups of
events. Then you can also use it to calculate results. This is a very
slick feature that requires Much LESS timing volunteers at the finish line.
We used to require about 7 or so volunteers to time a race, now we can get
by with about 3 and we improved our results collection and post our results
before the crews get off the water. This system also handles race
progression and is super for output of results to the web. I prefer this
package to www.RaceTrac 2000.com because Race Track does not have the timing
features (it requires you to use traditional timers at finish line). Race
Trak is more of a report generator vs. RegattaMaster is more of a complete
race day managment system. There is also Lynx Systems which is a good tool,
but similar to RaceTrac in it's limitation. It is more desinged to give you
a visual image at the finish and give you a time. It does not work well w/
the progression system or reporting system as does Regatta Master does.
These are just SOME of the many features available in both applications. I
would recommend checking them both out. If you have any questions feel free
to contact me or the two vendors above. I have been using both packages for
end to end regatta managment for several years and it has been an excellent
combination to make the race organizer's life a lot easier.
- Sean
seant...@eaton.com
Pittsburgh, PA
Three Rivers Rowing Association
"Jens Brandt" <JensB...@NOmail.tele.dk> wrote in message
news:MPG.182c56a7e...@news.kmd.dk...