I am an occasional user of Sailwave. Generally, I initialize all of the boats into SW, use it to determine and record fleet assignments, record race information, and record results. I do not, however, use it to record results in real time. It’s typical for us to have 30-50 boats out for an evening race and the “Sail Number” wizard is just a little to cumbersome when boats stack up at the finish – the process of typing in part of the sail number, transfering hand to mouse, selecting the correct boat, and then back to keypad takes a little too much time, particularly if you make a mistake.
We normally have a 4-6 fleets who start in separate starts, but who all finish at the same finish line. We record finish times for everyone and use fleet exceptions in the scoring program to manage PHRF versus One-Design scoring.
Given a blank slate, I wonder if a three-pane finishing window might be effective – right-hand pane full height listing sailno:boat:time for boats already finished, top-left pane a staging area listing boats approaching the finish, bottom-left pane listing all boats except for those in the other two panes. Mouse-only navigation – double click on any boat in either of the two left panes to record it with the current computer time in the right pane. Drag from the bottom left to the top left to stage several boats in advance of group finishing in close proximity, drag from top-left to bottom left to “un-stage” a boat, drag from right to either left to un-finish a boat.
Anyone already done anything like this?
I have seen Jon Eskdale’s Grand Prix Finishing. While it’s not what I’m looking for, it does demonstrate a successful approach to alternate finishing programs without having to hack away at SW. If there’s nothing out there, that’s a way I can hack something together in Perl.
This is strictly off-topic for a Sailwave forum, but at Budworth SC we are using a new home-grown system which builds on existing history of home-grown systems. The finish software also controls the sound signals and feeds a database system that calculates the race scores. However, our experience to date may be of use in your investigations.
Faced with decreasing experience and capability in members assigned race officer/scoring duty we wanted to simplify the task of recording class, number, time and position plus operating the sound signal. Like you, we have looked hard at the issue of several boats, in different fleets, sometimes racing on handicap, approaching the line together. We work off a list of entered boats and offer four options for ordering and selecting the finishers. Even then it sometimes takes a calm, organised scorer and an assistant to successfully finish a race.
A bit like the sail number wizard, enter some digits of a sail number using the number pad. That progressively filters the entry list until a sound indicates a unique boat has been identified, then click a finish button with the mouse (we found using the “enter” key led to too many “accidental” finishes).
The list of entered boats can be ordered by drag/drop to “set up” the finish, then those boats can be finished by clicking each row as the boats cross the line (if there’s a last minute change you have to remember to click the right row). We find scorers get too engrossed in ordering the list and may miss the actual finish!
As above, but the list is ordered by recording positions on the previous lap. This is a less time-critical operation so less stressful, and happens well in advance of the finish, but boats do change position on the last lap. The scorer can choose to record positions at the last mark to get a more up-to-date order.
“Hunt and peck” in the ordered or unordered list - last resort and slow, especially if the list has to be scrolled, but many inexperienced scorers only use this method.
As a rule, experienced users use method 3 for relaxed finishes and method 1 when it gets tight. Inexperienced users (and as this is season 1 most are inexperienced) tend to use methods 4 and 2 and find they spend too much time in the computer and miss things happening on the water.
Personally I would like to be able to invoke “expert mode” and use the “enter” key to finish in method 1 as that would mean I can keep my eyes on the course all the time. It takes time for eyes to adjust between looking at the bright, distant finish line and the dimmer, near, screen. However, the system has to be usable by whoever is rota’d as scorer and some of those are barely able to use a computer, much less use one “blind”.
And don’t underestimate the time it takes to write your own finish app when it has to be used by others - I used to set up an Excel sheet on the morning of the event to use myself, it has taken a year to write a system that anyone can use, Colin does a fantastic job and but for the need to control the start/finish electrics we’d probably use his system!
I am an occasional user of Sailwave. Generally, I initialize all of the boats into SW, use it to determine and record fleet assignments, record race information, and record results. I do not, however, use it to record results in real time. It’s typical for us to have 30-50 boats out for an evening race and the “Sail Number” wizard is just a little to cumbersome when boats stack up at the finish – the process of typing in part of the sail number, transfering hand to mouse, selecting the correct boat, and then back to keypad takes a little too much time, particularly if you make a mistake.
We normally have a 4-6 fleets who start in separate starts, but who all finish at the same finish line. We record finish times for everyone and use fleet exceptions in the scoring program to manage PHRF versus One-Design scoring.
Given a blank slate, I wonder if a three-pane finishing window might be effective – right-hand pane full height listing sailno:boat:time for boats already finished, top-left pane a staging area listing boats approaching the finish, bottom-left pane listing all boats except for those in the other two panes. Mouse-only navigation – double click on any boat in either of the two left panes to record it with the current computer time in the right pane. Drag from the bottom left to the top left to stage several boats in advance of group finishing in close proximity, drag from top-left to bottom left to “un-stage” a boat, drag from right to either left to un-finish a boat.
Anyone already done anything like this?
I have seen Jon Eskdale’s Grand Prix Finishing. While it’s not what I’m looking for, it does demonstrate a successful approach to alternate finishing programs without having to hack away at SW. If there’s nothing out there, that’s a way I can hack something together in Perl.
Like Ian, I used to use a system for starting & finish races.
The original system was called a MariTimer, which was essentially a
custom hardware solution that was available in the 1980’s; it could
sound horns to start races and printed out on thermal paper a time
when a button was pressed. This succumbed to death of custom-ic’s etc
and in the early 2000’s a replacement system, PROlog, was developed
at Datchet Water SC that was written in Visual Basic. PROlog was
able to sound electric horns for starting, provide at 30-seconds to
start a spoken message using voice synthesis and countdown from
10-seconds. The application was run on a custom built low power PC
run from a 12-volt battery kept charged by solar panels mounted on
the committee boat cabin roof. This application is no longer
available.
There are several solutions I have heard of available, the following
are the three I can remember quickly and I know run on a PC.
Committee Boat Suite (CBS)
[]
SprayEasyTimer []
RaceManager
[]
These may be of interest to you and others. As far as I remember
they all are able to produce a file that can be imported into
Sailwave.