View Full Version : Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
Since last year's notifier (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128773) is not running this year, I decided to make my own.
championship.evanforbes.net (http://championship.evanforbes.net)
It works for any phone number that can receive texts in the USA or Canada.
I made it rather quickly, so if anything goes wrong or you have any questions just let me know.
ThunderousPrime
08-04-2015, 22:45
Thank you very much, I signed up and there were no bugs for my Andtoid phone.
MaGiC_PiKaChU
08-04-2015, 23:20
seems to work in Canada! :D
seems to work in Canada! :D
Excellent, thanks for testing.
Looks good. Might want to redirect port 80 to port 3000. Simple to do with iptables.
Looks good. Might want to redirect port 80 to port 3000. Simple to do with iptables.
Thanks. Port 80 is already in use by the guy who owns the server unfortunately. Is there any way around that?
Thanks. Port 80 is already in use by the guy who owns the server unfortunately. Is there any way around that?
Sure, with virtual hosts this is not a problem. Is this node.js? You can run alongside nginx or apache by setting up a virtualhost that proxies to node.js. Lots of info on Stack Overflow about this depending on your exact configuration.
Sure, with virtual hosts this is not a problem. Is this node.js? You can run alongside nginx or apache by setting up a virtualhost that proxies to node.js. Lots of info on Stack Overflow about this depending on your exact configuration.
Yes it is node.js. Thanks for the information, I'll look into this more tomorrow if I have time.
Requiring a team number is sort of weird. My team won't be attending CMP this year (I'll be there volunteering though), so I just put in a bogus team number that will.
What usefulness is having the team number?
Requiring a team number is sort of weird. My team won't be attending CMP this year (I'll be there volunteering though), so I just put in a bogus team number that will.
What usefulness is having the team number?
In the text message it will tell you which division that team is in. Whether or not that's useful... I don't know.
Team numbers for teams that aren't registered are still accepted and will get a generic divisions are out message.
Looks good. Might want to redirect port 80 to port 3000. Simple to do with iptables.
It turns out at my university port 80 doesn't allow outside connections for some reason.
Fun stats: There are about 280 people signed up to be notified so far from 172 different teams.
Small update:
With almost 600 people requesting notifications, I was concerned about the amount of time it will take to send all the texts. It takes 1 second per text, which would mean the last people wouldn't be notified until ~10 minutes after I received all the divisions.
I went ahead and added a second phone number so that the notifications can be sent in ~5 minutes. This means you may receive the notification from a different phone number than was used to send your verification code.
Is ~5 minutes fast enough?
MaGiC_PiKaChU
14-04-2015, 01:14
Small update:
With almost 600 people requesting notifications, I was concerned about the amount of time it will take to send all the texts. It takes 1 second per text, which would mean the last people wouldn't be notified until ~10 minutes after I received all the divisions.
I went ahead and added a second phone number so that the notifications can be sent in ~5 minutes. This means you may receive the notification from a different phone number than was used to send your verification code.
Is ~5 minutes fast enough?
you mean to tell me i have to wait 5 minutes? yeah i guess :rolleyes:
The High Roller team motto is "It's not enough"... :) But certainly appreciated!
Consider offering email as well? With something like SendGrid (https://sendgrid.com), you can probably push out all the emails nearly instantly. And if you ask users to provide their carrier, you can use the email-to-SMS gateways offered by most service providers (this seems like a fairly comprehensive list (http://martinfitzpatrick.name/list-of-email-to-sms-gateways/), but I'm sure offering just the major US options would be fine).
I'm guessing you're using Twilio for SMS, which unfortunately does have that rate limit for non-shortcode SMS. This could serve as a fallback for users who don't provide an email and/or don't use a cell carrier with a supported email to SMS gateway.
The other Gabe
14-04-2015, 02:07
I'm liking the random quote generator
The High Roller team motto is "It's not enough"... :)
I went ahead and added a couple more phone numbers for good measure. Now we're at ~3 minutes. :D
Consider offering email as well?
I considered it, but decided against implementing email notifications to keep the system simple, based on the amount of time I had to make it.
I'll probably add it as an option next year.
Gweiss96
14-04-2015, 13:56
I went ahead and added a couple more phone numbers for good measure. Now we're at ~3 minutes. :D
3 minutes until what?????
3 minutes until what?????
3 minutes from the time divisions are released to the last text notification going out.
Sorry for the alarm!
AdamHeard
14-04-2015, 14:04
3 minutes from the time divisions are released to the last text notification going out.
Sorry for the alarm!
That is 2.973 minutes too long.
Abhishek R
14-04-2015, 14:11
3310 demands .25 seconds or less ;)
Thanks for this!
Austindock7
14-04-2015, 16:20
I'm liking the random quote generator
Yeah team 3507 really enjoyed creating some of them. I enjoy the 50% chance your pit is in Houston!
Kyler Hagler
14-04-2015, 16:31
3310 demands .25 seconds or less ;)
Thanks for this!
I signed up pretty early... Hopefully I get my message under that time! ;)
I signed up pretty early... Hopefully I get my message under that time! ;)
I should have added some micro-transactions: "Donate $0.99 to Ubotics to put your phone number at the top of the queue"
Kevin Sevcik
14-04-2015, 16:57
I should have added some micro-transactions: "Donate $0.99 to Ubotics to put your phone number at the top of the queue"Monetizing your poor design choices? I dunno, I think that ventures into Worse Than Failure (http://www.thedailywtf.com/) territory...
Monetizing your poor design choices? I dunno, I think that ventures into Worse Than Failure (http://www.thedailywtf.com/) territory...
Sure, it sounds bad now but next year when the design is improved the shareholders will force me add an artificial delay to encourage more donations anyway. :)
nick4130
14-04-2015, 17:34
This is Great!
Kevin Sevcik
14-04-2015, 18:12
Sure, it sounds bad now but next year when the design is improved the shareholders will force me add an artificial delay to encourage more donations anyway. :)Sounds like a job for Speed Up Loops (http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop).
Here are some post division release stats:
912 division notifications were sent to people from 349 different teams. Teams 195, 148, and 469 had the most people notified with 15, 14, and 13 respectively. The last person to sign up (from team 74) did so 3 minutes before they received their division.
Timeline (Central time):
~12:31 First divisions released
12:33 First notifications sent
12:53 Last notifications sent
Because everyone loves graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/cXzaFqE.png
The biggest limiting factor was the rate at which divisions were added to the usfirst.org website.
There was also a small bug that delayed the last 9% of notifications by about 7 minutes. Luckily I was at my computer and was able to fix it quickly.
So, to improve for the future:
Let people choose if they want to be notified when their team gets a division, or when any team gets a division
Add email notifications as an option
Increase division data acquisition speed
What else could be better?
BBray_T1296
15-04-2015, 21:29
I got the initial notification when I signed up but (still) haven't received my "divisions are out" notification.
I got the initial notification when I signed up but (still) haven't received my "divisions are out" notification.
Interesting. If you PM me your phone number I can look it up and might be able to see what happened.
BBray_T1296
15-04-2015, 21:50
Interesting. If you PM me your phone number I can look it up and might be able to see what happened.
Sent with the verification code I got
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