ANT — Organiser Handbook

An application for measuring time and recording answers at Trail orienteering timed controls. There is also a discussion forum. Registration is required to read or join in the discussion.

Competition preparation

Recommended approach is to prepare the general configuration (INI) file and the startlist on the web to ease as much as possible configuration of all devices. The file can be prepared either manually, or by an Excel macro (mail me), or by a download from preoresultat.se. Of course, you can configure all devices manually, being guided by the embedded help, however, it is quite a lot of work. The INI file example is selfexplaining (I hope :-).

If the INI file name or URL contains a charset (CP-1250, Windows-1252, ISO-8859-2 etc.), the application respects this charset, otherwise, it must be configured (on the device) before loading (if you use other charset than UTF-8).

The startlist (see example) is just a text file with one competitor per line, the relevant part of the line is up to the first semicolon. However, the startlist can be embedded into the INI file (which is the case of INI from preoresultat.se).

It is recommended to use equal-length start numbers (i.e. to use e.g. number 100 as the first one); it will help a lot the marshals to choose competitors by their numbers.

The version 4.4 introduced classes. If you have just one set of stations, you don't need them. If you have more stages, categories or qualification heats, you can make all of them as separate classes. In this case it is recommended to advice marshals to choose grouping of stations when activating them. This allows them not to select the class (i.e. Elite or A) before selecting a competitor — the startlist is combined, marshal selects a competitor and ANT chooses particular station according the class of the competitor.

It's strictly recommended to use paper answer cards handed by competitors as a backup and media for potential complaints. The marshals can rewrite recorded answers and time to the paper card. Try to explain them that such a backup is really necessary, that the main goal of ANT is to help them do measuring simply, without mistakes, with just a single item in hands...

Marhals and their devices

Please, explain the required permissions to marshals no to be afraid to install the application to their devices.

We strictly recommend to publish the configuration and startlist on the web prior to the competition (e.g. only a testing version of it) and to ask all the marshals to download the application and the configuration files earlier than on the day of the competition and really try using the application, namely solving the problems (preliminary start of timer, clicking to wrong answer button, choosing wrong competitor etc.). There is no time to learn it when measuring the competitor... If you don't have a competition web, you can send it to us and we will publish it on the ANT web.

If you prepare a phone book of the organisers, mark the devices used for measuring. You may instruct all to use them in emergency cases only and to prefer using of SMS.

You should test transfer of result data files from the devices to your IT center. Size of the files is approximately 100 B per competitor. You can use:

• uploading to a web server (your own, preoresultat.se, or the ANT one) by WiFi or mobile data channel (this data transfer adds approximately 1 kB of data)
• Bluetooth transfer from marshal's device to your computer (it's supported as one of the upload modes)
• file transfer using a direct USB connection of the phone/tablet to your computer (sometimes you should have proper drivers installed on your computer)
• other modes of Bluetooth connection, e.g. from your computer/phone/tablet to marshal's device etc.
• sending the data using another device as WiFi hotspot.

After tests, all result files on marshals' devices have to be deleted before the competition starts...!

Results processing

The results are primarily stored in the local filesystem of the device. The name of the file is res.date.event-ID.class-ID.station-number.Android-ID.charset.txt. The exact placement of the result directory depends on the particular device, however, when using the HTTP/HTTPS or Bluetooth upload in ANT, the application handle the path by itself. If you must transfer the data manually (e.g. by USB or BT download) the path to the result file is Android/data/cz.yq.ant.trail/files, and the root of it is either on the "device" or "SD card" folder.

The most helpful way is to upload the data to a web server immediately after every competitor (or after defined number of competitors) finishes the station. The data should be processed and published immediately.

You should test downloading the results files from the selected web server, or from the marshals' devices and processing them.

If you write your own application for data processing:

• It should handle duplicite lines because the upload operation of ANT sends the entire results file in every transport attempt by default.
• It should distinguish lines with competitor name selected from the startlist and lines with competitor which name was typed by a marshal. The former ones should be simple matched against the startlist while the latter not.

Do not forget to set charset encoding properly, i.e. configure the encoding used on your computer properly in the INI file, or configuration dialogue.

It is recommended to have the key components duplicated (two computers, own and our web server, some reserve phone/tablet etc.).