RSU Sync with shoddy internet connection

[Christopher Regan]

I timed a race yesterday where it was raining and my starlink was being finicky. I ran into an issue where one of the runners who signed up that day wasn't marked as "checked in" in RSU. So when they came through the finish I saw they didn't have data. So i tried to do a sync with RSU but because of the slow internet connection the sync was taking too long and it blocks the software from doing anything until it either finishes or errors out.

This caused me to miss multiple runners because it was sitting there blocked waiting for the sync.

Can i request a fix?
1. Run the sync in a separate thread and do the update once the data has been received.

2. Have some way to cancel the sync if it's taking too long.

3. Shorten the timeout, I don't know what it is but I was frozen for minutes.

I finally had to just kill the software because I was missing too many reads.

[Brian Agee]

How big was the race? I haven't had this issue and I don't remember others reporting it, so it must not be common, but I'm sure there are ways I can try to improve it. Next time I can get a an hour or two to focus on development I'll do some digging and implement all three recommendations. I totally understand not wanting anything to interfere with capturing results, so I'll see what I can do.

[Christopher Regan]

This race had 205 and ~166 that "checked in". I've definitely had this issue in the past, always when the internet connection was established with the router but the actual internet was super slow, but never this bad. Once you've clicked sync on the race page (having the Time Race screen minimized) it gets into that state where it's waiting to hear from RSU you're hosed until it finishes at the moment. My main issue was I had no idea how long that was going to be. I know to wait till I had no one in sight to try to do the sync but wasn't expecting it to take this long.

I'm also gonna implement streaming from a webcam to another laptop with OBS to record. It'll be my 2nd backup compared to my normal cam but this way I could stop this one and review real quick if needed.

Thanks Brian!

Christopher

[Eric Fritz]

I've also encountered this and been meaning to make the same suggestion.  Both with very large race 2000+ participant 5K and with small 1-200 participant 5K.  The 2000+ race had a seemingly good internet connection and you could see that it was updating, it just took 30-60 seconds to re-download everything and it missed several runners that were finishing at that time.  I was timing with another ART timer and he had a completely separate setup and ran into the same situation.

The smaller race was likely a poor internet connection as I was using my phone.  It was a similar situation where it seemed to hang on the update and I ended up killing the app as I was losing finishing runners.

I also "think" that this may occur sometimes with pushing results to RunSignup but I've not done a lot of testing with that and I could be just dreaming that.   I'll try to do some actual testing and see what I can figure out.

Eric

[Christopher Regan]

This used to occur with pushing results to RSU but i believe its been resolved in more recent versions of the software. I haven't had issues with it in months.

Thanks for replying Eric so that I didn't think I was crazy :)

[Ted Finch]

Perhaps you are expecting too much from ART if you are doing all this on a single PC.

Consider how much data has to be transferred for 2000 results for the upload process which is also dependent on all the components of an internet link over most of which you have no control. Meanwhile you want ART to run un constrained.

If you have one PC dedicated to Race Timing then other activities should be on a second PC. For example the Kiosk display is designed to run on a second networked PC. Kiosk will make a copy of the primary backup database and then use that locally for the Kiosk display.

I don't use RSU but have my own results site and uploader. My normal set up is to run the Upoader on a second PC that runs Kiosk and also has internet access. If for any reason the internet access does not work then the main Race Timing is not compromised.

A development would be to see if ART in non Kiosk mode could pull in the backup database from the primary back up and then the second copy of ART could do its upload to RSU or what ever without impacting on the Race Timing.

I appreciate that the RSU connection may be a  two way process but perhaps a  second separate PC could still cooperatively write back to the main database. 

I hope this helps

Ted Finch

Keep it Simple Timing