Introducing the newest version of Sundial

[Pat Fairbank]

I'm happy to announce that there will be a new and improved version of Sundial, version 4.0, for the 2007 FRC season. I'm not sure which events it'll be available at yet, but there's a possibility it will be at every regional this year as well as the Championship.

What is Sundial?
Sundial is a web-based application that runs off of a wireless network at a FIRST Robotics Competition event. Teams connect to the network, plug in their team number, and then have access to a bunch of information, including:

• A countdown to the team's next match, which receives updates over the wireless network in order to stay synchronized with playing field operations
• A match schedule with the team's matches highlighted
• Detailed qualification match results
• Team standings

What's new in version 4.0?

• The Adobe Flash interface of old versions is gone, having been replaced with HTML/CSS and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML).
• Sundial will now generate PDF reports of the match schedule, results and standings (useful for printing out extra copies of the match schedule or a copy of the standings to bring to alliance selections).

Help me test Sundial:
I've got a beta version up at http://sundial.patfair.net; I'd appreciate any constructive criticism or bug reports. I'm especially interested in reports on browser compatibility, since I've only tested it on Firefox 2 and IE 7, and only at screen resolution of 1600x1200. (The data on there now is from GTR 2006, and is not entirely accurate since it came from the wrong scoring computer.)

I hope you like it.

- Patrick
Sundial Developer

[DanDon]

Wow Pat, I love the new features. Congrats on the great work!

Regarding compatibility, it works fine on Firefox 1.5 and 1024x768 screen resolution.

/dan

[EDIT]
I'll second what Art said about the font being too small from far away at 1024x768.
[/EDIT]

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Pat Fairbank

Help me test Sundial:
I've got a beta version up at http://sundial.patfair.net; I'd appreciate any constructive criticism or bug reports. I'm especially interested in reports on browser compatibility, since I've only tested it on Firefox 2 and IE 7, and only at screen resolution of 1600x1200. (The data on there now is from GTR 2006, and is not entirely accurate since it came from the wrong scoring computer.)

It's looking really good so far.

As for feedback, I see that the page automagically resizes itself to best fit your screen size. However, on screens at or below 1024x768 resolution, some of the font sizes are on the borderline of being illegible from a few feet away. Can you have the page automatically fill the entire page width (i.e. no blue areas on the side of the screen) on the smaller screen resolutions, so the font sizes in the schedule, match results, etc. pages can be a bit larger?

[Greg Marra]

This is really snazzy.

The right-most numbers in the countdown to the next match appear cut off on my computer. I am running 1440x900 Firefox 2. Attached is a screenshot illustrating the problem.

Otherwise, this is super duper cool. Will you have a version for teams who are scouting in the stands? It seems like getting rankings and match lists and all of this, on a laptop, would be extraordinarily useful for scouts.

[Lil' Lavery]

Works with Safari 2.04 as well

[chris31]

I found the font really small for 1024x768 screens. However if you full screen your browser (F10) then the text becomes readable.

[Adam Richards]

/worship Pat

Great Job Pat! The interface looks absolutely incredible.

On a related note, did Sundial run at all last year?

[Matt Krass]

Originally Posted by GTR Regional

FIELD STATUS
Running 89435 minutes late

Yikes! They better get moving...

Seriously though, it's very nice looking, and it's working fine here at 1280x800 with Firefox 2 (ver. 2.0.0.1).

I am impressed.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by Adam Richards

/worship Pat

Great Job Pat! The interface looks absolutely incredible.

On a related note, did Sundial run at all last year?

I think I remember seeing it at GSR last year.

[ewankoff]

wow ... what a great utility. extremely useful for in the pits and in the stand.

i would really love this for the NJ regional

[DanDon]

Originally Posted by Adam Richards

/worship Pat

Great Job Pat! The interface looks absolutely incredible.

On a related note, did Sundial run at all last year?

It definately ran during some of the Championship, although it was also down for portions of it.

[Conor Ryan]

Neato! I'm a big fan of Sundial and I've loved using it in the past. What would the requirements and the steps needed to set up a server at an event?

[Carmine Rizzo]

This was a great resource in Boston, I agree bring it to NJ

[SamC]

Originally Posted by Adam Richards

/worship Pat

Great Job Pat! The interface looks absolutely incredible.

On a related note, did Sundial run at all last year?

It was up at the Phoenix regional and maybe the Los Angeles Regional as well (don't really remember...)

[lukevanoort]

It appears to work fine in Firefox 2.0 RC3, IE6 (actually an IE tab inside of FF), K-Meleon 1.02, Opera 9.02, and SeaMonkey 1.0.5 all on Windows XP 5.1.2600 and looks fine at 1680 X 1050. The only issue I see is the "Number of times your team has accessed the server" counter. Since it appears to count pageloads, the number can be somewhat misleading. (Apparentally 1114 had accessed it 649 times at the last time I checked)