PocketTimer Pro Manual

PocketTimer Pro User Manual

Scoring / Results

Introduction

Once you have set up categories and racers (either manually or by importing from a file), and recorded some times, you can display (and upload to the web or elsewhere) the results. If you are using a small device (e.g., a phone), the results are displayed in a different format depending on the orientation of the device. In portrait orientation, you'll see a simple column displaying the place, bib#, time, and name for each racer, with pop-up menus that allow you to select which race and which category of that race is displayed. In landscape orientation, you see the full results, which adds a display of the pace (if the race has a fixed distance, the division and place in that division, the sex and place by sex, and, optionally as discussed below, times for each lap of a multilap race. On larger devices, the display always shows the full results.

Settings

The Scoring section of the Settings gives you a number of choices in the way the race is scored.

The first section, entitled Duplicate Bib#'s, tells the software how to score the race if you have recorded multiple times for each racer:

Score Using gives you four ways to score the race: Shortest Time, Longest Time, Nth Time (Laps), or N,<N Laps. For races in which you only intend to record each number race (and for which a second recording is a mistake), either Shortest or Longest Time may be appropriate; in either case, the results are going to contain an error, and really you need to go back and correct the original raw times on the Timer screen.

For multilap races, you really have three choices. If you think it's possible that you missed some of the lap times (or times at intermediate aid stations, in some cases), but you're sure you captured all the finish line times, then just use Longest Time. If you're sure that you captured all the intermediate times, but racers were required to finish a certain number of laps (or pass a certain number of intermediate timing points in the race), then you select Nth Time (Laps) and set Required Laps to the proper number. Any racer for whom fewer times than the required number of laps has been recorded will not be scored. In some races, however, you can still be scored if you completed fewer laps, but of course after all racers who completed the required number of laps. In this case, select N,<N Laps.

If your race does involve laps, the next two items apply to the output (not the actual scoring). Results Include Laps includes the times for each lap in the output. Show Laps as Differences shows each lap as the difference from the previous lap; otherwise the cumulative time is shown.

The next section, Handicaps, is self-explanatory. You can score the race with handicaps (the typical situation), or without. Of course if all handicaps are 0, that is, all racers started at exactly the same time, then this setting is irrelevant.

The final section, Exclusions, applies to races which like to remove the overall winners, or the overall winners of the masters category, from the category (age group) results (that is, if you finish first overall, then someone who finished behind you, but is in your age group, will be given the first place award for that age group). You can Exclude no one like this, or the top N overall finishers, or the top N male and top N female finishers.

Masters is a special "super-category" which some races like to use. You specify the Age (typically 40), and whether you want to Score Masters, in which case any racer over that age is eligible to win the Masters award. And, as with overall winners, you can then specify whether you want to include those Masters winners from also winning a Category (Age Group) award.

Output

To output the results, you tap the Output button , which will send the results either directly to a website, or as a file to some other destination, as specified in the Input/Output section of the Settings (and described in the next section of the manual, Input/Output). When you do this, you'll have a choice to output just the category (and race) currently displayed on the screen, or for all the categories for that race (categories with no finishers are omitted). Because this happens "in background," you can actually do this while a race is still in progress, so you can update your website periodically during the course of the race.

There are lots of details to be discussed in the Input/Output section, but one needs to be discussed here. If the filename for the output of your results ends in ".htm" or ".html", the results are formatted in HTML and ready to be displayed on the web. If the filename ends with anything else (e.g., ".txt", ".csv"), the output is formatted as a simple text file, with the different fields of information for each result separated by tabs or commas, ready to be input into a spreadsheet or other program on a computer.

Read the other sections of the manual: