Appearance
Creating screens
Audience: Event organisers and operators setting up spectator-facing displays.
A screen is a display you configure once and then open as a web page on a TV, laptop or tablet. Each screen has its own ID, its own layout, and — the first thing you choose — its own content: what it actually shows. Because a screen is just a web page, nothing is installed on the display device: you point its browser at the screen's URL and leave it running. See How meshO Manager works for the one-server, many-browsers model.
A screen can show:
- Leaderboard — live results, class by class. This is what every screen shows unless you change it. (The same board is the Leaderboard page inside Manager — see Leaderboard.)
- Start times — the start list, grouped under class or course headings.
- Live top 10 — a wall of live top-10 boards, one per class. The same graph the spectator and kiosk screens draw, on a TV.
- Time behind Superman — a wall of Time behind Superman graphs, one per class, ten runners each. The finisher graph: it draws the races that are already in, so it is the screen for the half-hour after a class comes home.
- Position bump — the same wall drawing each runner's place overall after every leg, so you can see who was gaining and who was slipping back.
So a hall with ten TVs might run the Leaderboard on seven of them, start times by the start lane, a Live top 10 wall over the finish, a Time behind Superman wall by the download desk, and a different set of classes on each of the rest. You choose per screen, in Manager — a TV has no controls on it and nobody needs to touch the display itself.
Note: These are the arena displays you build here. They're separate from the built-in Spectator and Kiosk views — the public, self-serve pages competitors open on their own phones — which need no setup (see Spectator site and kiosk), and from the info screens — the start clock, starters and radio-control feed you set up on the device itself. See the glossary for the distinction.
The Screens page
Open Screens from the event navigation. It has three sections:
- Screens — every screen in the event, one row each, with what it shows and how it's doing.
- Commentary — Open starts the announcer's live feed in a new tab, and the table under it lists every commentary view that is open and when it was last heard from. See Commentary.
- Video — the arena cameras streaming now and the recordings kept on this server, with Play and Delete for each recording. Cameras are started on the device holding them, from the info screens.
Every event has two built-in screens. all shows every class and is the simplest thing to put on a single display. manager is the Leaderboard page inside Manager itself — it's listed here so you can set its layout, but it has no display device behind it, so its Last heard from cell shows a dash and it has no reload button. Its settings leave out Shows, Theme, Language, the snapshot and Delete: it is always a Leaderboard, and it follows your own language.
For a bank of TVs set up and managed together, see TV screens.
Creating a screen
Click New beside the Screens heading. In Create new screen, give it a Screen ID, choose what it Shows and its Theme, and click Create. The ID is how you refer to the screen and it appears in the screen's URL, so keep it short and memorable (elite, juniors, arena1). It must be unique within the event — the dialog says Screen ID already exists if it isn't.
Shows and Theme are asked here, rather than left to the gear icon afterwards, so a screen created for the start lane isn't a Leaderboard for however long it takes you to open its settings. Both default to what most screens are: Leaderboard, and Light.
A new screen inherits your Leaderboard screen defaults (set on the Settings page) for club display, club icons, auto-scroll, the header, max radios, time display, single-line relay members and max places. Font size and columns are not among them — every new screen starts at 10 and 2 — and you can fine-tune any of it afterwards. A new Leaderboard starts with no classes, so the next step is to choose them.
There's another way to make a screen, and it's often quicker: point a browser at a screen URL that doesn't exist yet. A TV opened at /screen/tv9 creates tv9 and it appears on this page ready to be told what to show. A screen made that way does not take your Leaderboard screen defaults: it starts at font size 14, with club Abbreviations and the other settings at their built-in defaults, so check its settings once it appears.
Choosing what a screen shows
Click the gear icon in a screen's row and set Shows to Leaderboard, Start times, Live top 10, Time behind Superman or Position bump. The rest of the settings follow that choice, so you only ever see the ones that apply.
A Leaderboard screen: which classes
There are two places to do this, and they do the same thing.
In the screen's row, the Classes column:
- Click the expand arrow to see the classes currently on the screen as chips.
- Click the + (add) button to open the Add classes dialog — search by class name (the Already on screens column shows which other screens already show each class), tick the ones you want, and click Add (it counts them: Add 3 classes). On a wall the dialog says how many more the screen takes.
- Remove a class by clicking the × on its chip.
- You can drag class chips between screens in the table to move them around quickly.
In the screen's settings, under Classes: the classes laid out the way the screen will lay them out — the same number of columns, filled in the same order. Drag one into a cell to move it there, × to remove, Add classes beside the heading to add more. Changes here are saved with Apply or Save like everything else in the dialog, so you can back out with Cancel — unlike the table row, where removing a chip takes effect straight away.
On a Leaderboard the grid follows the Columns setting, so changing it re-shapes the preview and you can see where each class will land. It shows which column a class is in and where in it; it can't show height, because a real column is as tall as the fields in it.
The all screen is special — it always shows All classes and you don't manage its class list. Nor does manager, which shows every class too.
A Live top 10 screen: which classes
Assign classes exactly as you would to a Leaderboard — either the Classes column in the screen's row, or the Classes section in the screen's settings.
In the settings, the class grid works as it does for a Leaderboard, except that a wall chooses its own shape rather than following a Columns setting — so it re-shapes as you add and remove, because the wall does. A wall's grid is exact: each cell is one board, and it follows Class layout below.
A wall holds 12 classes, and the settings will not let you go past it: Add classes stops offering once you are at twelve, and the picker says how many the screen takes. Remove one to make room.
A screen can still end up with more than twelve — assigned from the table row, which has no limit, or set up by an older version. The television draws the first twelve in your order and the screen's row says First 12 only; the extras stay on the screen and are managed from that row.
Each board is the same Live top 10 graph a spectator sees: one lane per runner, ten deep, including everyone still out in the forest. It sizes itself — how much each board says shrinks as you add classes — so there is no column setting on this screen, and nothing scrolls. What you get is what fits.
Font size is Large, Medium, Small or Extra small, and shrinks the whole wall — text, lanes and all — rather than just the words. Large is how the wall has always looked, and is right for a TV read from across the arena. On a big screen or one people stand close to, a smaller size makes everything look less oversized, and it also gives every board more room: a board that had to drop the club or cut its field short at Large may show all of it at Small.
Class layout is Side by side or Stacked. Side by side is how the wall has always looked: up to six boards across, then two rows. Stacked puts the boards one above the next — four classes are four full-width rows — and goes to a second column past four.
A board as wide as most of the screen — stacked boards while they fit in one column (up to four classes), or one class on its own — draws each runner on a single line: the name on the left, the track across the middle, the time on the right, with the class name beside the row of control codes rather than above it. That is what lets a short, wide board still show most of its class: on a 1080p TV, four stacked classes show about seven runners each at Large, and all ten at Small. When a board still cannot fit ten, it drops the leg times and clubs first, then shows the leaders and says so ("Top 7 of 16").
A class the graph cannot draw — a relay, a score course, one with no course — says so on its own tile rather than being left out, so you can see that you assigned it.
The wall's header names the graph, Live top 10, rather than the event: somebody crossing the arena is looking for where the live standings are, and every tile already names its own class.
Live position — the other graph on the spectator wall — is deliberately not offered here. It refuses a class with no radio control rather than falling back to the controls on the course, so on a hall where not every class is wired you would get a wall of refusals. Live top 10 keeps reading either way.
An analysis wall — Time behind Superman or Position bump: which classes
These two are the same screen drawing two different things, so everything below applies to both. Assign classes the same way again — the Classes column in the screen's row, or the Classes section in the screen's settings — and the grid in the settings re-shapes as you add and remove, because the wall does.
Either wall holds 4 classes, laid out two across and two down. That is fewer than a Live top 10 wall on purpose: a live board can give up what it says — the club, the leg times — and still show you the runners, while this one is a plot with ten lines on it and a name beside each, and there is nothing on it to give up. Four is what stays readable on a TV. Add classes stops offering once you are at four; remove one to make room. A screen given more than four (from the table row, which has no limit, or by an older version) draws the first four in your order and its row says First 4 only.
Each tile draws the top ten of its class.
On Time behind Superman, Superman is a runner who never existed: someone who took the fastest split on every leg of the course. Their total is what the race could have been won in if all the best splits had belonged to one person. Every line shows how far behind that a runner stands at each control, so a line that drops steeply is time lost on that leg — usually a mistake — and a line that stays flat is a leg run at the best pace in the field. Underneath, the ten are listed in finishing order with the gap each finished on. The perfect race is built from the whole class, not just the ten drawn: a runner well down the results who was fastest on one leg still counts, which is what makes the figure "how fast this course could have been run".
On Position bump, each line is a runner's place overall after every leg — 1 is whoever led the class at that point. A line climbing toward the top is gaining places and one falling away is slipping back, which is the race as it would have unfolded live. It starts at the first control rather than the start line, because nobody has a place at the gun, and the legend lists the ten with their race times. Places are counted across the whole class, not across the ten lines drawn, so a tile for a class of forty shows real positions rather than 1 to 10.
Both are finisher graphs — they are drawn from downloaded cards, so a class where nobody has come in yet says so rather than sitting blank, and fills in as the cards are read. A class neither can draw at all — a relay, a score course, a class running several courses — says that on its own tile instead, so you can see that you assigned it.
Like the Live top 10 wall they size themselves, so there is no columns or auto-scroll setting, and nothing scrolls — nor, unlike that wall, a font size. The header names the graph rather than the event.
Letting the wall choose: Cycle through all classes
Tick Cycle through all classes in the screen's settings and the wall stops reading its class list and works through the whole event by itself. It shows the first four classes, then the top two slide off the top, the bottom two slide up to take their place and the next two come in from underneath. At the end it wraps round to the first four and keeps going.
Seconds — beside that tick box — sets how long each screenful is held: ten by default, and anything from five seconds to two minutes. A TV by the download desk that people walk past wants longer than one over the finish that everybody is already watching. The slide itself always takes two seconds on top of that, and is deliberately slow: it has to be possible to follow your class from the bottom half of the screen to the top.
Classes come in the event's own class order — the one you set in Classes → Sort order — and only the ones these graphs can draw are included, so relays, score courses and classes running several courses are passed over rather than given a turn on the wall to say they can't be drawn. A class nobody has downloaded from yet is included; it fills in as the cards are read.
With the setting on, the Classes section disappears from the settings, because there is nothing left to arrange, and the screen's row in the Screens table says All classes instead of counting them. Your chosen classes are not thrown away — untick the box and they are back exactly as you left them. If the event has four classes or fewer, the wall shows them all and simply sits still; there is nowhere to cycle to.
A Start times screen: by class or by course
In the screen's settings, choose Group by — Class or Course — and then tick the classes (or courses) to show. One button at the top of that list toggles between Select all and Deselect all, depending on what's ticked.
With everything ticked, the screen stores "all" rather than today's list, so a class entered at nine in the morning turns up on the TV by itself. That matters because nobody is standing at the screen to re-pick it. If you tick only some, the screen shows exactly those and nothing else.
Because "nothing ticked" is how the screen stores "everything", it can't also mean "show nothing" — a screen showing nothing isn't a useful thing to configure. So if you clear the list, Save and Apply are disabled until you pick something, or select all again.
Your two lists are kept separately: switch a screen from Class to Course and back, and the classes you picked are still there.
Two more switches sit under that picker:
- Only classes with start times (or Only courses…, following the Group by choice) leaves off a class nobody is starting in. Off by default, because before the draw is done that would empty the board — an empty board looks broken. Turn it on the morning of the race, when a class nobody is starting in is a column of nothing taking room from the ones that are. It works per class, not per person: a class where one runner has no time yet still shows, with that runner in it.
- Show club names each competitor's club beside them. On by default.
A few things worth knowing about a start times screen:
- It shows the time each competitor is due to start, not the time they actually went. Somebody who has taken a punching start still appears at their allocated time.
- Competitors marked DNS, Not competing or Cancelled are left off. Anyone with no start time yet is still listed, at the end of their group.
- Relay teams appear as teams, once each — not as their individual leg runners.
- Grouped by Course, each row also names the competitor's class, because one course heading covers several classes. Grouped by Class, the heading above already said it.
- Times show seconds only when some start isn't on a whole minute — and then on every row, so the column doesn't step sideways as the board redraws.
- If anyone's class or course can't be worked out, they get their own No class / No course group at the end rather than being dropped. Somebody left off a start list would read it as not running. (This only happens when you haven't narrowed the screen to particular classes — a screen asked for M21 isn't also asking for the undecided.)
- Before anything is entered, the screen says so and points you back here.
It doesn't need the event to be started, so you can prop one up first thing in the morning and it will already be showing the day's start list.
Adjusting a screen's settings
Click the gear icon in a screen's row to open Screen settings. There are two tabs, Settings and Snapshot.
Settings — the layout and content of the display. Shows, Theme, Rotation, Language and Show header apply to any screen. Font size, Columns and Auto-scroll apply to a Leaderboard and a Start times screen — the walls decide all three for themselves. The start-times settings appear only on a Start times screen, and everything else in the table below only on a Leaderboard.
Changing what a screen shows can leave it carrying more classes than the new display can draw — a Leaderboard with ten classes switched to an analysis wall, which holds four. The surplus come off the screen as soon as you choose, keeping the order you arranged them in, so the class grid redraws as the four that will actually be on the TV. Cancel puts them all back if that wasn't what you meant. Switching the other way — to a display that holds more — brings back any classes the screen was carrying but not drawing.
Theme is Light or Dark, and it is the screen's own — set it per screen, or set every Leaderboard TV at once with Edit all Leaderboards (that button only appears once the event has at least one tv-named Leaderboard screen). New screens are light. There is deliberately no "follow the device" option: a TV has nobody standing at it, and a board that went dark because the stick driving it decided it was evening would have changed without anyone asking.
Rotation is for a TV hung on its side, in portrait. 90° clockwise and 90° anticlockwise turn the board the screen shows, whatever it is, and lay it out tall and narrow to match the TV. Which of the two you need depends on which way the TV went over: if the board reads upside down, choose the other one. Nothing needs changing on the TV itself or on the stick or computer driving it, which is the point — many of them can't turn their picture. Set it per screen, or for every Leaderboard TV at once with Edit all Leaderboards; new screens are not rotated.
A portrait screen is narrow, so it is worth revisiting the layout once it's turned: fewer Columns on a Leaderboard, and Stacked rather than Side by side for a Live top 10 wall.
The Snapshot tab shows a turned screen upright, the way people in the hall read it — whichever way the TV hangs. So it can't tell you a TV went over the other way: check that by looking at the TV, and if it reads upside down, choose the other rotation. The tab says so for any screen that is turned.
A screen only knows it's turned once it has read its settings, so a few things on it still appear sideways on a TV hung in portrait: the moment it is opened, while it waits to be set up, and — for as long as it lasts — the page it shows when no event is live, with its list of recent events. Once the event is live the board turns. A TV propped up first thing in the morning, before the event is started, shows that page sideways until then.
Any screen:
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Shows | Leaderboard, Start times, Live top 10, Time behind Superman or Position bump. | Leaderboard |
| Theme | Light or Dark. The screen's own — see above. | Light |
| Rotation | None, 90° clockwise or 90° anticlockwise, for a TV hung in portrait — see above. | None |
| Language | Render this screen in a particular language, whatever the browser showing it is set to. Default follows the browser. | Default |
| Show header (logo, event name, clock) | The strip across the top. Turn off to reclaim space. | on |
A Leaderboard and a Start times screen add:
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Font size | Base text size, 6 to 72. Larger for a TV seen from across the arena. | 10 (14 for a screen created by opening its URL) |
| Columns | How many columns sit side by side (1–6). More columns fit more on a wide TV. | 2 |
| Auto-scroll | Scroll long lists automatically so everyone gets airtime. | on |
A Live top 10 wall adds its own Font size (Large, Medium, Small or Extra small, default Large) and Class layout (Side by side or Stacked, default Side by side) — see above. An analysis wall adds Cycle through all classes and its Seconds.
A Start times screen adds Group by, the class or course picker, Only classes with start times and Show club, all described above.
A Leaderboard screen adds:
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Name column width | Small / Medium / Large room for competitor names. | Medium |
| Club display | Hide the club, or show Abbreviations or Full names. | from your screen defaults, else Hide |
| Max radios | How many radio-control splits to show per course (0–100). | 4 |
| Competitor time display | Elapsed time, Difference (behind the leader), or Both. | Both |
| Max places per class | Show All finishers or just the Top 3 to Top 10. | All |
| High-contrast text | Draw the text darker and slightly heavier, so it stays legible after a TV enlarges the picture. Automatic does so when the screen is drawn at 1280 × 720 or less — see Resolution below; On and Off decide for this screen whatever its resolution. Not offered for the manager screen, which is always drawn as normal. | Automatic |
| Pin top places | Keep each class's top 3–10 places at the top while the screen scrolls — see below. | Top 3 |
| Pinned classes | Which classes pin their top places. Appears once Pin top places is on. | all classes |
| Show club icon | Show each club's badge. | on |
| Show relay team members on single line | Compact relay rows. | off |
| Show projected times for competitors with radio punches | Estimate finish times for runners seen at a radio control but not yet finished. | on |
| Show start time | Show each competitor's start time. | on |
| Show class names in header | Label each column with its class. | on |
Pinning the top places. An auto-scrolling Leaderboard normally moves everything, so a class's leaders scroll off the top and the TV spends much of its time on the middle and back of the field — often runners still out, DNFs and mispunches. With Pin top places set to, say, Top 10, each pinned class keeps its header and its top ten places at the top of the screen while the rest of the class scrolls up underneath them, so anyone reading the board always sees the leaders and can compare themselves against them. The scroll itself behaves as before — down in steps, a pause at the bottom, then back to the top — it just steps shorter when the pinned rows leave less room, so nobody is skipped.
Pinned classes starts at every class on the screen. Narrow it when only some classes should pin: two big classes such as M21 and W21 side by side on a screen of their own are the typical case. Pinned rows take room from the rows that scroll, so a screen of many classes that all pin can leave little or no room to scroll through — pin fewer classes or fewer places, or use more columns. What is pinned is the top of the class as the board shows it: a runner still out who is projected to finish in the top ten sits in those rows with the finishers, and is pinned with them. Runners out with nothing to project from are never pinned, and until anyone in a class has finished there is nothing to pin, so that class scrolls as normal. A relay class pins its top teams the same way.
Snapshot — on the Snapshot tab, click Refresh snapshot to capture a live screenshot of the screen as it currently renders. It's the quickest way to check the layout looks right without walking over to the TV. (A snapshot only works while the screen is open somewhere.)
Use Apply to save and keep tweaking, or Save to save and close.
Keeping an eye on a running screen
Once a screen is open on a display, its row reports live health so you can spot a TV that's dropped off:
- Last heard from — when the screen last checked in, and how long ago. A screen that has never been opened says Never. Green means it's reporting now; grey means it's gone quiet.
- FPS — how smoothly it's refreshing (green is healthy, orange is marginal, red is struggling). Click the number for a history graph that also marks disconnects, reconnects and reloads.
- Resolution — the resolution the screen is really drawn at, in pixels. Hover over it to see the size the browser lays the page out at and how many screen pixels it uses for each one. If it's lower than the TV's own resolution — 3840 × 2160 on a 4K set — the TV is enlarging the picture, and the board will look softer than the TV's own menus. A smart TV's built-in browser is often the cause; a laptop or media stick sending the TV its full resolution draws it sharply. The cell is blank until the screen next checks in. A Leaderboard drawn at 1280 × 720 or less switches on its own to darker, slightly heavier text, which stays legible better after the TV enlarges it — unless its High-contrast text setting says On or Off.
- DC / RL — counts of disconnections and force reloads, shown once there are any.
The refresh button at the end of the row (Force reload TV screen) reloads that display remotely — the quickest fix for a TV whose browser has got stuck. The manager row has none.
Deleting a screen
Open the screen's settings (gear icon) and click Delete, then confirm. The built-in manager screen has no Delete button. If you delete all, it is created again, with its default settings, the next time the event is opened.
Note: A display still open on a deleted screen creates it again the next time it checks in — with default settings and no classes. Close or repoint the browser on that TV before deleting its screen.
Related
- TV screens — set up and drive a whole bank of arena TVs at once
- Commentary — the announcer's live feed
- Leaderboard — the results board these screens show by default
- Info screens — start clock, starters, radio-control feed and cameras, set up on the device
- Spectator site and kiosk — the public pages that need no setup
- Results quarantine — holding elite results back from every screen
- Results — the operator-facing results and exports
- Running two events at once — pointing each screen at its own event