Electronic Combat Scoreboard

This is just a collection of ideas on this topic, that hopefully, one day, it will culminate in actually having a real scoreboard for our combat competitions.

Motivation

During combat competitions, I've watched bystanders try to figure out what is happening during a bout. Who's winning? By how much? Even fellow competitors generally have no idea how the bout is going, if they are just glancing over to the pilots every now and then (away from the wreckage they are trying to get operational before their next bout).

Other sports have the same issues, but they have scoreboards to fix this problem. No matter what the game, there is generally a scoreboard. Admittedly, combat bouts are only 4 minutes long, so mid-bout scoring isn't quite as important as mid-game scoring in (say) basketball. But sports like judo and Tai-Kwondo still benefit from scoreboards at the Olympics. In any case, it is always more exciting watching a combat bout if you know what the tactical situation is; e.g. 2 cuts ahead, but a crippled model to defend with.

The concept is that combat might be much more interesting to spectators if they have a scoreboard to watch as well as the bout. More spectators means more interested recruits, more publicity, more funding, more sponsors ... (OK, I'm getting carried away just a little).

The over-riding principle is that the scoreboard is for the enjoyment of the audience, not for the competitors but I think they would find it good as well.

What would it look like?

There are a couple of options here. Due to the outdoor (sunny) use, the display would have to be very bright. If it was in a well shaded area this would help, but a bright display is still needed. There seems to be two main options:

special purpose LED digit display like at a basketball stadium (best visibility, but not flexible after built)
general purpose Plasma TV or maybe CRT TV (i.e. the brightest TV types, not so visible (needs shade), but very flexible in what can be displayed.

Starting with a standard Basketball scoreboard, we can re-interpret the existing display numbers for the purpose of Combat scoring. Overall time becomes bout time, but maybe use a negative number for warm-up time. The single red digits could be used for number of cuts for each competitor. The bottom 3-digit numbers would be used for competitors scores, which would account for ground time, air time, and cuts (and maybe known penalties). The top single digit displays could be used to show known (to the side-line scorers) penalties to the competitor - these could be updated when the centre-marshall adds his penalties, if any. In addition, there would need to be some shading surrounds to make it easy to read in bright sunlight.

Here is a mock-up of an alternative TV-based display (high contrast, large bold digits for high visibility in outdoor area). The colours would match the pilot bibs and the main scoreboard area would be black on white (or white on black) to maximise the contrast and brightness (i.e. any colouring would turn down primary colour light sources). The grey area at the bottom would be unnecessary if we customise keyboards with labels etc.

What might not work well?

The scoreboard would always be unofficial, since it wouldn't account for centre-marshall penalties such as foot-faults.
Electronic scoreboards are hard to see during the day (would need to be big, bright and shaded from the sun).
Typical competitor identification on scoreboards, like "dark" and "light" would be fine for streamers, but to be really good would require the competitors to wear "bibs" (or vests) to match the streamers, like in the world championships.

Let's make one!

Starting out perhaps simple and cheap to test some concepts and ideas, a laptop computer might be the best option. A computer has ultimate flexibility in building up to a large-scale score-board, potentially integrating other aspects of managing a competition. There is also a lot of very cheap computer hardware that could be adapted for scoreboard use.

objectives

keep to a modest cost by using/adapting high-volume consumer electronics (and hire of large-cost items?)
portable system based on laptop computer and large display board/monitor/TV
include an audio system for count-down sounds and sirens, and automatic announcements.
automatic timing (bout and airtime) and counting of cuts and penalties
direct real-time input by cut judges and real-time output for audience
display on a large TV (later? may just start with laptop?)
display the pilot's names as well as scores and bib colours (so that "blow-in" spectators can relate the score with the pilots and planes through colour coding).
provide (simultaneously?) the bout schedule and other competition management tools (dual display?)

components

laptop computer (borrow an old one)
2 extra USB keyboards (with colour coding (matching pilot bib colours) and key-labels for cut judging) 2x $15
(later?) wireless (blue-tooth?) keyboard for centre marshall
large screen TV (preferably plasma, for brightness; hopefully there are a few 2nd hand ones around with minor screen defects (dead pixels, screen burn-in) that would make them cheap) $400
extra-long video cable for large TV (S-video 15m @ $33 http://www.cablechick.com.au/cables/15m-s-video-to-s-video-cable-gold-connectors.html)
Public Address system (amp, speakers, microphone, audio input from computer) - hire? someone's guitar amp?
power generator (for computer, PA system, misc., or inverter from car battery 300W for $70) $100-1000

issues

power supply (generator for this and other items?, car battery and inverter)
brightness of main display in the sun, especially for competitors during the bout
how to set up a shared keyboard for cut judges (and how to have continuous on-screen help to make it easy to use)

methods

largest possible fonts (pythoncard? pygame?)
put external screen in well shaded area (cafeteria) visible to audience and competitors
external screen only contains scoreboard info, laptop screen includes help information/instructions for cut judges
audio acknowledgement of cuts (e.g. "blue cut", ) so that cut-judges don't need to check screen when pressing buttons. But this will go over the PA system - will cut judges want these to be announced publicly (especially if a mistake is made). If over the PA, the audience would love it! (remember, this is for the audience!)
a key needs to be available to undo a "cut" to enable score correction after a mistake (e.g. "cut"=F3, then "un-cut"=shift-F3)
need a good setup for cut judges:
- well shaded gazebo area (to see the laptop screen)
- plenty of table space for laptop, and two additional keyboards

other ideas

could segregate keyboard areas, but would need an overlay to be easily understood
stick labels on the keys (dedicated USB keyboard)
- general: F5=time!, F6=abort
- per pilot: F1/F9=cut (shift-F1/F9=uncut), F2/F10=airtime, F3/F11=groundtime (maybe F4/F12=penalty)
need a PIC or micro-controller to run a large dedicated display (interfaced to computer?) and perhaps scorer controls
computer-type screens are much more flexible, allowing display of competitor's names (photos?!), their current competition standings
can a very large full colour VGA compatible screen be hired for a reasonable price?
keyboards need to be colour coded with pilot bibs so that cut judges know who they are scoring for.
need a nice lady's voice for automatic calling of time, countdown, start and end of bout, cuts, etc.
do we need some kind of flashing light to provide visual indication (assuming PA is not loud enough for competitors and a large TV is not available or is not visible to competitors? how can this be connected to computer? keyboard LED?)
a laptop computer (with a functional battery) will be able to tolerate any short interruptions to power and still be able to continue the bout.
may need black ("blinker") surfaces protruding out from the sides of the TV to reduce screen reflections (to help with visibility).

Software

build with python + pythoncard or pygame (note need to resize to fit variable external monitor resolution)
2 windows:
- one window for scoreboard only (for large screen if available and for laptop screen during a bout)
- one window for bout pairing management (for laptop screen only) - start with just typing in pilots' names for the next bout.
PyJudo might be a good starting point.
"Keyboard Commander" (and maybe "GlovePIE") seems to be software that can allow flexible use of multiple simultaneous keyboards (2 cut judges, 1 centre marshal, 1 CD/bout scheduler). The software allows the same key on each keyboard to be recognised as a different code/function (e.g. c=cut on both keyboards, but the software recognises which keyboard it comes from and records it properly). However, if just using function keys (with labels), then we can just pick a different set of function keys for each user's keyboard and not worry about special multiple-keyboard software. This way (in theory), we can start with just a single keyboard and the two cut judges can share it by just using the 4? function keys at their respective ends of the keyboard. Need to check that simultaneous key presses on one or multiple keyboards are properly recognised (e.g. "airtime" key will often be pressed for both pilots at the start of a bout; research indicates that one USB keyboard should recognise 6 keys simultaneously (12 for 2 USB keyboards)).
if needed, the laptop's individual stereo channels could be independently exploited with a stereo PA to allow separate audio for speakers facing pilots from audio for the audience.
allow for "video" capture (with sound) of scoreboard for editting into competition movie.
pygame?
- use pygame "grab" focus to prevent screen accidentally changing window focus during bout.
- list of 2 pilot objects + bout object
- split of each sound's volume to left and right channels can be done by manual control of pygame.mixer channels
- log the results of each bout for later reference (.csv?)

CategoryIdea