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Topic created by skolins on Sun Oct 13, 2019 at 9:04 pm
Thank you to Sharon Siegler, Steve Aronson, and Petr Hartman for organizing today's event. Physically challenging terrain for both the course setters and the participants. If you didn't do the sprint, definitely check it out when it goes up on route-gadget - the course made nice use of a twisty trail in fairly good woods to create some interesting route choices.
For those on courses affected by the non-beeping controls, a little post-event diagnostics revealed the issue. When the kit was programmed some of the controls were accidentally set up as start controls rather than normal controls. If you have a chip that has not been cleared and you try to punch a start box the box will not beep or record your presence, so this is what was happening when people visited the non-functioning controls. However, if you are using SI air and run by a start box the chip will beep and will over-write your previous start time with your new start time. This is why some people using air chips had start times after they had run half of their course!
Good news is none of this was any hardware issue with the kit. The controls have been re-programmed and are good to go. The results will be corrected so people do not have mis-punches. Still figuring out the best way to do this for making route-gadget work well.
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Reply by DaveUrban on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 7:58 amThanks Sam - can you think of any practice or procedure changes to minimize this reoccuring?
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Reply by hughmac4 on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 8:30 amNothing to make Routegadget work 'well', but you'll probably have to create 2 events: 1 with all of the courses that weren't affected by the issue (if there were any), done 'normally', and then one with all of the courses that were affected by the issue, set up without split times (manually), and then folks will have to be responsible for getting their GPS track to hit the controls properly. It helps if the map is georeferenced, which is not normally needed / part of the procedure if splits are available. The old way! :) Let me know if I can help with that.-H
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Reply by camperpat on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 9:16 amthanks for a great Orange course. I have heard it isa difficult job to come up with a course that always has a catching feature etc. Well this course did! I had route choices, trail or srtaight up or down the hill, hand rails. and VERY SORE KNEES! THANKS FOR A FUN DAY. PAT AND BOB
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Reply by rgbortz on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 10:05 amBut all the controls were checked 0ct.4 and the readouts confirmed that each control was assigned the number they were supposed to have. What is the explanation for, specificaly, number 72 not beeping or flashing even if, somehow, it was programmed as a start station ? Reprogramming happened due to sprints but all controls were to have been put back to normal functions. I believe that happened, but if something slipped through then we simply need to be more vigilant in double checking all controls are functioning as needed before putting back in to service for regular events.
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Reply by skolins on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 10:33 amEvery control did have the correct number, but some were not programed as the correct type of control.So for example, number 72 was programmed as a start station with number 72 rather than as a normal control with number 72 (all of the controls, including start, clear, check, finish, registration and download have numbers - usually the "non-numeric" boxes get control numbers under 30 so they do not conflict with the control numbers).Start stations (and check stations) are set up so that if you try to punch the box with an e-stick that has not been cleared then the station does not beep or record your presence. This is a nice way to stop people from going out on course without having cleared their stick.So when people reached number 72 (programmed as a start) having already punched other controls on the course they no longer had a cleared stick, so the "start" station #72 would not let them "start" so did not flash or beep.After re-programming it might be good to clear, check, start, punch all of the controls, finish, and then download the results. That would be a quick check that everything is working OK. Don't need to set up a special course - use any course on any event. You will have a lot of extra punches but can read the download to see that everything was recoreded OK.At least these were accidentically start stations and not accidentally clear stations. Then you would have gotten a beep and deleted your entire course!
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Reply by Steve on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 10:49 amSam, if you do try to punch every box as a check, you will need a high capacity e-stick, since there are more than 36 flags to check, or do the boxes 31-60, and 61-90.
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Reply by Steve on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 11:28 amSam, If box 72 was programmed as a start box, that explains why the early runners had problems, but when I replaced it with 89, which was covered with a paper 72, why did it continue to mispunch?
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Reply by rpboehme on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 12:25 pmAfter a certain point (startwise), the "new 72"'s were coming in fine on the Green course, as were the "new 70"'s on the White course - there were clean runs and no corrections were needed. It get less "exciting" at the computer as the day wore on. There was still chaos on the Orange, Red and Blue courses due to the punch situation on those courses.
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Reply by rgbortz on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 6:35 pmThis thread doesn't need to go on forever but I would like to know what the issues were on Orange, Red and Blue for my own store of information going forward and being able to assist with the resolution of possible future issues that future e-punch operators may come up against. Anyone involved with these issues please reply to me via my personal email.
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Reply by Steve on Mon Oct 14, 2019 at 9:21 pmRon, we are assuming what happened to control 72, it was stolen and we can not review it. The three controls that did not work on orange and red were all programed as start boxes. therefore we assume that 72 was the same.Please check Sharon's notes from when we looked at the boxes. I beleive that all of the bad boxes are the ones we replaced. I also beleive that we replaced the controls with the recently refurbished start and finish controls that you said had just been sent from Vadim.Just a theory.
