Introduced not long ago, you've probably seen this new feature in the print preview:
Still under "experiment" to see if runners take it easy - or not - when looking at their results on the paperboard and thus if some further tuning may be interesting, this new way of printing was born with multiple purposes in mind:
Modernize the old boring table display - and give you another distinctive mark that everyone can see.
Get more runners on a single page, especially when the number of information pieces is not wide. Makes it possible to have some 100 items on the first page with the default header. And the result is more visually appealing than the multi-column mode. You can save paper in situations when for example you have to distribute a participant list with a few basic information.
Introduce opportunities for design variations - align, font-size and weight, multi-line data,...
Result
Hoping you'll enjoy it! and why not make it your default printing way for the future.
On the roadmap
The feature is already available with a panel of pre-defined thumbnail templates. Choosing the number of columns and the flow direction (top to bottom or left to right) is also OK.
Next step will be finding out a possible design for triathlons, including the segment rankings. And open a thumbnail designer so that you can customize your own templates. Will be interesting to make it work with custom data of your own.
Gives you more ideas for new displays? Don't hesitate to share them.
In 2016, we can't think of timing an event in a manual way. So we have to make our favorite hardware talk to Wiclax. This is possible in a very simple way. Wiclax can interface with many systems on the market and the list is not closed.
Below is a quick video to show you how it can be done. It does not show all the possibilities as your timing configuration can be much more complex, with multiple readers/decoders or loops that can be either local or distant, and with multiple passings on some of them, etc... But it does make a short introduction.
You may have such a specific need because you want your results to go into an independent publishing process. Or maybe a governing body of your preferred discipline asks them in a specific format.
He're what Wiclax can do for you:
Custom export formats
Looking at the ribbon > Print - Export panel, you can see listed the standard formats - Excel, HTML,... - and then the last button saying Other formats.
The dropdown menu shows a short list of items and the last one is called My custom export. Clicking it will ask you where to save an exported file, and will create this file according to some specific formatting rules.
Now, how about my own format? Let's take a tour at folder Wiclax_install_folder\export: here you can see a file whose name is identical to the menu item label.
Create a copy of the file in the same folder, and name it as you wish. Let's name it My CSV export for our example. Then edit it with any text editor of your choice.
The file describes all the data you can export, in the form of variable "tags" - i.e. a numeric id identifying a variable like for example a bib number or a time. It also lists a few available options to change the global behaviour of the export, like some possible values for a header and a footer. This list is not definitive, so please feel free to contact us if you're missing something there to get the perfect export matching your case.
The part to modify is the content between the <Export> tags. We can define a CSV export, for example. A basic export row with the main result data will look like that:
Finish your format definition and then open again the Other formats menu in the ribbon. Your new format is now available:
FTP
In addition to the ability to output the file corresponding to your new format, you can also decide that the FTP export will follow this format instead of exporting the event file itself.
On the roadmap
As said, the list of options is intended to grow as new requirements come out. Another natural enhancement will be to make possible the setup of multiple FTP exports for an event. You may need to send your results to 2 different places (servers), or to send them both with the Wiclax format and your custom one.
Classic race week-end: you're having to deal with multiple races spread across Saturday and Sunday. Each of them holds its own bib number range, but eventually you discover lately that the organizer made two of them overlap.
You want to avoid any perturbation in a simple way. For example some runners hanging around your mats/antennas with their bib for next day's race. Or other kinds of interference like clothing chips holding a plausible id (note: this is a good reason among others that makes filtering also useful in a single race configuration).
At the same time you want to make your chips encoding as easy as possible. Though the software can deal with chip-bib correspondence tables, it's always a waste of time to feed them and a non-necessary source of errors.
Here's what you'll use: chip filters in the software and a prefixing of your chip ids at encoding.
Chip encoding policy
Your chip ids will be made of 2 parts:
a unique number identifying the race - for example 0147. This number will be simply incremented after each race
the actual bib number
Giving for example this chip id for bib #4356: 01470004356
Chip filters in Wiclax
Open the acquisitions form, and look for the interference filter panel in the status bar:
Check the Filter active option. Enter the prefix that will identify the only chips you want to see read, and the number of trailing digits that will compose the actual bib number. In our sample case: 0147 is the prefix and 7 is the number of digits to care about.
Close the panel. The status bar now indicates that there's a filter active:
And that's it!
In case you're in doubt after that, seeing a chip discarded and wondering why, remember you can check the acquisition log. All filtered readings land there:
New in version 8 is the ability to open a network service that makes your participant data editable from a remote station/device.
This can be a great help for example if you want to dedicate a member of your team for a participant registration follow up, while you can strictly focus on timing the current race.
How to make it work
Almost nothing to do for that: the service is opened by default when Wiclax gets launched and as soon as an event is active, the participant data can be edited remotely.
Simply find the Network button in the Registrations tab, and you'll get the address of the service in the dropdown menu. Type this address in the browser of a tablet connected to your local network and here you go.
You're getting this kind of screen, showing the name of the active event and a minimal registration form:
What can you do with the service?
The application can do the following:
Lookup some existing participant data: either typing a bib number or part of a name
Modify the data for a registered participant
Register a new participant, providing his/her bib number (an alert will tell if it's already allocated)
Register a new participant, letting Wiclax allocate him/her an available bib number. This number will be determined by the races' bib ranges if any, and will be displayed right after the validation.
Display the history of the registrations made on the device, for an easy go-back when necessary.
On Wiclax side, a greenmark icon appears on a participant row when he's been added remotely. The mark disappears at the next file saving. Remember that only this file saving operation makes the remote modifications definitely saved.
Note: to simplify, only one single service is active at a given time on your PC. So in case you're working with multiple instances of Wiclax, remember that the last one that was alone when launched owns the service. Having a doubt or wishing to switch for another event: check the Network menu. It will propose to hijack the active event in case it's not the current one.
