Slow scoring system at regionals
 

Has anyone noticed how slow and unreliable the scoring system is this year?? At Canada teams had to wait up to 5 minutes to wait for the computer to scroll through (at a rate of 1 team per 4 seconds) the rankings! There was often about 50 people as a result all bunched around a TV, blocking traffic around the pits. Can't they speed this up? (not to mention keep it from crashing)

You need to understand that there are numeous portions to the scoring system.

Among these are the following:

1. Refs - These individuals need to examine and evaluate the field, determine what is in play and what is not. Additionally they need to agree on all aspects of what they see. There is no replay or review (even with SOAP).

2. The FIRST Staff and Volunteers - These individuals need to review the refs report and post it to the system. This year this means also posting it to the FIRST Website too. Hence they may need to establish connections to the server in the FIRST HQ. This could cause a bit of a delay.

3. There is the nature delay that may appear from waiting.

Now I can not speak for the Canadian Regional, but they try hard to make everything move quickly. I know that in Canada their are less expirienced Volunteers and thus it may of taken a few more minutes to get the system write. So give them a chance for they will improve with time.

Joel
FIRST Volunteer and Network Designer for Championship

i was at the NYC Regionals and i noticed the same thing as far as the scoring and rankings are concerned. The "mini - scorer" displayed on the big screen out by the field wasn't used at all during the matches and the scorer / ranking lists located in the pits were working at a fairly slow pace making walking in the pits felt like a day walking out on 34th. st or times square. I guess all that really counts was that it was accurate and useful for teams when it came down to seeing where they ranked and the "you choose the team" game for alliance picking.

the rank-scroller was insanely slow, but the in-game-scoring system was MOSTLY accurate, though having the judges hand off the final score on paper seemed counter-productive when they had the mini-scoring program already running.

I found out why (at least one reason) the pit scoring system kept crasing.

The database used to hold the scores and such is hosted on one of the laptops by the field. This laptop's OS is Windows 98 (First Edition) and this OS can only support one network connection.

After each match, they have to dail-up to some network to post the scores. This causes windows to ignore the local area network.

The scoreing display in the pits has to keep updateing itself from this laptop, but it is unable to do this when the laptop is using its dial-up connection.

Thus the scoring system crashes.

Yeah...The pit scoring system could have been MUCH faster than it was, but the fact that they even HAVE an in-game scoring system for the audience to see is incredible IMO.

The one thing that I'm still wondering about is that Microsoft is a sponsor, and they are only using 98 first edition.

Not to mention that since it starts with 1st seed at the top, you only have a couple seconds to read who's on top. Kinda annoying when you're trying to look over people to read the QP differences and all... And then at the end, the last seeds are shown... all the way until the last one is at the top. You know what I mean if you've seen it.

Yah I dislike the scoring system in general. It cost my team a regional already see my sig for further details.

They were talking about the screen in the pits that displays rankings, etc. I agree that it was way too slow, and there is already a thread on this...

Cory

Depending on what was sent to any given event, this is usually not the case. The way I was set up at Great Lakes was as follows:

Server: Win2K laptop running filemaker server and NOTHING else
FTP: Win98 computer running filemaker and a continuous connection to Earthlink for results uploading. No problems noted at GLR caused by having LAN and dialup connection simultaneously.
A/V: Win2K laptop running Flash timer/real time scoring app and Filemaker.
Pit: Win98 computer with only LAN connection to server.

My experience is that most of the problems with the pit connection were not caused by the dialup connection interfering with the LAN, but rather the router/hub used for the network being somewhat sensitive to power fluctuations, as well as defects being introduced into the VERY long LAN cable running from scoring to the pit. I know that last year, one problem was caused by our LAN cable getting pinched in a doorway.

That was the config at philly.

from what i learned in cisco networking all cables including cat 5 are only as good as the length there cut at while including the amount of times it could get squashed or various pinches. have u tried using a repeater located close to half the length of cable to capture the entire signal and resend it.