meshO Manager

Appearance

Radio punches ​

Audience: Timing operators monitoring the live feed of punches coming in from radio controls.

A radio punch is a punch that reaches Manager live as a competitor passes a control, rather than waiting for their card to be downloaded at the finish. The punch travels from a meshO Control unit to meshO Prime, over USB into Manager — or it can arrive over the network from an upstream system (see Forwarding and receiving punches). Either way it appears within seconds on the dashboard, the Leaderboard, Commentary and the other live screens.

This page is about the Radio punches page, where you watch the raw feed and act on it. For setting up the hardware, see Connecting meshO Prime and radios.

The Radio punches page ​

Open Radio punches under Event live. (It only appears once meshO Prime or Accept SIRAP punches is switched on for the event, and the event is running.) If neither source is on, the page says Radio punches not available and explains how to enable one.

Each punch is a row, newest first. These columns show to begin with:

ColumnWhat it shows
Card numberThe card number that punched.
NameThe competitor that card belongs to. Click it to open their record.
ControlThe control code that was punched.
Punch timeThe time of the punch at the control.
Received timeWhen Manager received it. Usually a few seconds after the punch time; a punch resent from Prime's memory, or held up on the radio network, arrives later.

Five more say how the punch was received, and start hidden: turn them on from the column menu at the end of the header row.

ColumnWhat it shows
ChannelWhich of the meshO Control's two radios took the punch: Red or Blue.
Sent byWhether the competitor's SIAC sent the punch, or the SRR station they punched.
Copies heardHow many copies of the punch the Control's radios heard, damaged ones included, up to the one it took. 1 means the first copy it heard was clean; 15+ means fifteen or more.
Signal (dBm)How strong that copy was. Around −40 is right beside the Control; below about −90 the copies start arriving damaged.
Frequency offset (kHz)How far the transmitter was from the Control's own frequency.

You can drag columns into a different order and sort by clicking a header; the list goes back to newest first when you clear the sort. To find a particular punch, use the filters at the top: Search card, Search name, and the Control dropdown to show just one control. The help button beside the title explains each column.

Unknown cards ​

If a card that punches isn't matched to a competitor in the event, its Name shows as Unknown — or, if the card is recognised in the Competitor Registry, the person's name appears in brackets. Click it to add a competitor for that card on the spot, so their punches start counting.

Runners from another event ​

When another event runs on the same Manager on the same day, it shares the radio network, so its runners' punches arrive here too — and stay here after it finishes. They change nothing in this event. Use the Show filter to choose what you see:

  • This event and unknown cards (the default): this event's runners and the cards entered nowhere.
  • Other events' runners too: the other event's punches as well, named with their event in grey — for example Jane Smith — Afternoon race.
  • Unclaimed cards only: the cards nobody is entered against in any event today.

A run that started at the other event's start or check is that event's, even on a card somebody here is entered on. See Running two events at once.

Rebuilt punches ​

A meshO Control unit sometimes hears a card only in damaged radio copies. Rather than lose the punch, it rebuilds it from those copies, and a punch rebuilt that way is marked Rebuilt beside its card number.

A rebuilt punch is usually right, but it can be wrong in a way nothing else shows: its card number can belong to a different card from the one that punched. So until an undamaged copy of the same punch arrives and confirms it — at which point the mark disappears:

  • On a card that isn't entered, it is treated as damaged rather than as an unknown runner. It isn't counted as an unknown card anywhere — not on the dashboard, in the in-forest and pending lists, or when you finish the event. It still appears in this list, marked.
  • It is never passed on to other timing software. meshO Prime keeps it off the connection MeOS and similar programs read, and Manager holds it back from forwarding until it is confirmed.

A rebuilt punch on an entered competitor's card counts like any other, and the card download at the finish still settles the result.

Rebuilt punches are marked only with meshO Control 3.2.6 and meshO Prime 3.2.4 or later. An older Control sends them as ordinary punches; an older Prime drops them, so with a new Control and an old Prime they never reach Manager.

How a punch was received ​

From meshO Control 4.0.0, every punch says how the Control received it: the Channel, Sent by, Copies heard, Signal and Frequency offset columns. They help you place Controls and find cards and stations that are hard to hear:

  • Many copies heard, or a weak Signal, at one Control means its radios struggle to hear that spot. A Control closer to the station, or higher up, will hear the first copy.
  • Copies heard counts only copies the radios heard. A copy sent while the runner was out of range is not counted, because only the card knows it was sent.
  • Frequency offset is measured against the Control's own frequency, so compare one card across one Control rather than across several. A card or station far from the rest at every Control is drifting; Controls tune themselves to the cards they hear, so most cards sit near zero.

The columns are blank for punches from a Control older than 4.0.0, punches received from another system over SIRAP, and punches entered by hand. Show or hide them with the column menu at the end of the header row.

meshO Control 4.0.0 needs meshO Prime 4.0.0. An older Prime drops every punch from a 4.0.0 Control, so update Prime first.

Suppressing or deleting a stray punch ​

A bad punch — a unit double-reporting, someone testing a control, a card number garbled on the radio — can be dealt with in two ways.

Suppress it when you want it kept but ignored. On the Competitors list, the Last seen column shows the latest radio punch for anyone still out; click the ✕ on that chip and confirm Suppress. The punch stays in Manager, struck through, but the Leaderboard no longer uses it, and the competitor's position and predicted time are worked out again without it. Click the undo arrow on the same chip to reinstate it.

Delete it when it should never have existed — a phantom punch from a misread card number, or a unit that read a card at the wrong control. Click the bin at the end of its row on the Radio punches page, or on the competitor's Radio punches tab in Edit competitor, and confirm. Deleting is permanent: the punch is gone for everyone, and the card's competitor is worked out again from the punches that remain. The deletion is recorded in the audit trail. On a card shared between competitors, the tab only offers to delete the punches that are this competitor's.

See also Resolving issues on the day.

Late and duplicate punches are otherwise handled automatically: punches are processed in time order per competitor, and a punch Manager already has is ignored rather than counted twice.

Recovering missed punches ​

If Prime was connected for some time before the event was started, those punches will not have reached Manager — but they're still in Prime's memory. From the Actions menu at the top of the Radio punches page, choose Resend stored punches… and confirm Resend:

meshO Prime will resend every punch that is still in its memory. Duplicate punches will be ignored.

Prime replays its whole memory and Manager fills in anything it missed, skipping what it already has. (This is available while the event is running and Prime is a punch source.) The same works after Prime was unplugged for a while during the event.

A punch that never reached Prime at all isn't in its memory, but it isn't lost either: the card download at the finish carries every punch on the card, and a SportIdent unit's own memory can be read with Station memory.

Forwarding and receiving punches ​

Manager can pass radio punches to and from other systems over the network:

  • Forwarding (outbound) — send every punch from meshO Prime on to a downstream system as it arrives, except a rebuilt punch, which waits until it is confirmed. Turn on Forward radio punches on the event's Event details → Radio controls tab (it's offered when the event uses meshO Prime), and set the destination TCP host, TCP port and Protocol (SIRAP or OE12) in Settings → Radio punches. The dashboard's Radio punch forwarding tile shows Active / Disabled with running Sent and Queued counts.
  • Receiving (inbound, SIRAP) — accept punches from an upstream system. Turn on Accept SIRAP punches for the event and set the Listen port in Settings. The dashboard's SIRAP punch listening tile shows Listening / Stopped and a Received count, which starts again from zero each time an event starts accepting punches — so it counts the event you are running, not everything since Manager was opened. Punches that arrive this way appear in the Radio punches list just like Prime's. See also Punches from another system.

Forwarding and receiving are independent — you can do either, both, or neither.