Agee / Race Day Scoring Setup on March 31st (Webinar)

[Coach Hammersmith]

Looking forward to this. I’ve recently jumped on board with Race Day Scoring, and I’m excited to see how the transition, with Agee as the middleware, will help streamline workflow.

I’ll be tuning in on the 31st, but I wanted to reach out beforehand to see if anyone here already has a template for setting up each race. I assume Brian has been working on his presentation for the webinar, so perhaps he may be willing to share his inputs in advance.

Thanks, and looking forward to learning more.

[William Sanchez]

I'm a big fan of Agee. I still use it a lot. I've used Agee with RD Scoring all last year. Setting up the stream between the two is easy. Learning RD Scoring had a little bit of a learning curve coming from Agee, but once I bit the bullet for scoring, it got easier each time.

I like having Agee as middleware/backup/public display/DSLR camera trigger whilst RD Scoring handles the participant data entry and edits, scoring, and push to results. I also like being able to automatically bring in streams from other computers with Agee like a separate start or finish, or splits via a onedrive folder. RD Scoring just scores them as they come in automatically which each sync. I use way more data on my cell phone pool, but it's worth it as the races get bigger and more complex.

It's hard to just give a barebones template, but one thing I will say is Agee can be easier in some situations. As the races become more complex in scoring with teams, custom scoring settings, race series, then RD Scoring becomes a little more flexible in that regard. Watch Agee's webinar and the RD Scoring Quick Start on YouTube. 

My team and I walk through each bold section to set it up

[Brian Agee]

Here is the link to register for the webinar tomorrow: https://info.runsignup.com/webinars_events/agee-integration-with-raceday-scoring/

Last week was super busy and I didn't have much time to prepare, but I think it went okay. When we closed out of the video feed on my side to start the recording I guess I thought it would be an audio only training session. So everyone will have to overlook my fidgeting... :)

[William Sanchez]

You were great! I’ve used this setup all year long. Believe it or not, I learned something new (old setting). I have been using the backup folder saving to a onedrive folder (one for each laptop), but I didn’t realize (pay attention) to the fact there was a live scoring folder option in settings!!

I love the new orange coloring and learning more about the reads outputting whether you have participants or not. 

I figured out a hack to trigger RSU Race Timer Mobile photo from Agee but it’s just that, a hack. PTDB software watches the little green man. When he flashes, it pushes the mobile app photo trigger button on a mirrored android. It would be great to have ART issue a volume up or down command over Bluetooth to the android or iPhone. That would trigger a remote photo at finish read. Kind of like a Bluetooth trigger remote. Would be a home run of an integration! Wish listing. 

Great job, and have a great rest of the week!

[Brian Agee]

Thank you! Stuff like that is nerve wrecking of course, so I'm sure I could have explained things slower and with more clarity, but I'm happy with how it turned out. For those that missed it, you can watch it on YouTube here:  https://youtu.be/1e1SQDOLGm8?si=Al8zYuFx0IUajIx5

The orange coloring has actually been there for a while, but it only works if you set the value shown below in the Edit Race page. Here is what I set for the Marathon I timed last weekend. It was a very hilly course, so even if a professional marathoner came to this small race, they probably wouldn't finish under 2:10.

As for the Mobile Timing app, that's a very creative "hack". :)

I've always wanted to use something like an IR beam (like a garage door sensor) to trigger ART to capture a finishing time (which of course can trigger the camera too), ART just needs the "Space" key sent like a keyboard input. This is all the USB plunger is doing that many of you own.

You'd think this would be fairly easy and inexpensive. Just need IR sensors, maybe an Arduino or something similar that can act like keyboard input to the PC when the beam is broken and send the "Space" key. Of course the controller used probably needs to be throttled to only send one space command every 0.5 or 1 second so that it doesn't send 500 "Space" keys for each finisher that crosses. So it can't be trusted to capture the exact number of finishers like a volunteer manually pressing the spacebar for each finisher, but it could be set up as an automatic photo capture system for DSLR and the Moible Timing app.

If we can make the beam break (or ART) trigger the mobile timing app then that would provide a much easier and less expensive backup system that can be easily reviewed during the race, from any device that can access the event page, if a chip is missed since those photos are going up to RunSignUp automatically. Obviously the assumption is that you have your photo setup where it can see the finisher's bib # and the finish line clock in the photo. I purchased some desktop phone holders last year so that I can use the Mobile Timing app to capture photos at my races while I'm watching the chip timing system, you can see some examples of the photos I took with the Mobile Timing app on page 47 when you click here. So if I can have ART automatically trigger the mobile timing app then I'm all for it!

[Brian Agee]

Actually, an easier and cheaper solution would be if the mobile timing app had a "stationary" mode that allows you to draw a rectangle in the field of view where finishers will cross. If the app sees any significant activity (not just flags blowing in the wind) in that rectangle, then it blasts off a bunch of images. My Wyze cameras allow me to do this, but who knows how much work that would be for RunSignUp. Would be cool though, because then the phone is all you'd need.

[William Sanchez]

I'm pretty sure runner detection is in the works for the app. 

[Soren Larson]

This is actually in our roadmap for Mobile Timing - we are working on the drawn field and AI motion/body detection that will take a photo whenever we detect a body in the drawn field. We're also working towards integrating this so that a photo is captured when a read is detected.

[Steve Hudson]

Well done in the seminar, Brian ! I am intrigued as to the implications of using ART as Middleware.

Is it an understanding that RDS, in this case, is responsible for the ultimate race results ? You did say any changes within the race should be reflected in the ultimate 3rd party software. 

But ART has the tools to make changes and ultimately reflect the final result as a CSV. Is this not what the ART user would want to achieve? Further, having the ultimately correct database within ART, means the 3rd party could use the exported CSV from ART as the definitive result. I’m intrigued how the relationship between ART and RDS works, with regard to the correctness of the race result.

Adding a time into ART manually due to a non-read or amending a time gets appended to the Live Export, so at least the runner can get a Kiosk printout…but, am I correct in thinking, the 3rd party would also see this amendment ?

Certainly, I believe, if the ART user performs a ‘swap’, this does not get reflected in the Live Export. There may be other cases where the Live Export does not reflect a change…do we need to know these ?

There are usually very few changes/additions required while timing in ART and an immediate memo to oneself is done. And, I guess, also conveyed to the 3rd party operator (if not oneself !). So any duplication of effort, I would suggest, ought not to be onerous.

Or should the ART user, having made notes, not touch any aspect of ART time addition/amendment until post race, should he/she wish to have a definitive set of results ? If so, then the odd one or two runners would simply not get a correct Kiosk printout - but, hopefully, they would have approached the ART user to confirm a problem.

Appreciate some guidance/experiences please.