meshO Manager

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TV screens ​

Audience: Event organisers setting up multi-TV displays at the finish area.

When you're driving several TVs at the arena, TV screens let you create and manage them as a group instead of one at a time. Manager can generate a screen per TV, split your classes across them automatically, and let you change the look of every TV in one go.

TV screens are ordinary screens named tv1, tv2, … — the name is the whole of what makes them a group (any screen whose ID begins with tv counts). The tools on this page build and edit Leaderboard screens only, so a TV you switch to Start times, Live top 10, Time behind Superman or Position bump drops out of both and is configured on its own row like any other screen. It keeps its tv name, and the wizard will not hand that name out again.

Creating a set of TV screens ​

On the Screens page, click Leaderboard classes.

The first time, the dialog — Create TV screens — has two steps. Its header keeps a running Total competitors and Avg per screen.

Step 1 — how many, and the default look. Set the Number of TVs (1 to 20), then set the Default settings for all TV screens — Font size, Number of columns, Club display, Time display, and the Show club icons, Auto scroll and Show header switches. These defaults apply to every TV you create here; you can still adjust an individual TV afterwards. Click Next: Distribute Classes.

Step 2 — split the classes across the TVs. Manager lays out one column per TV (each headed tv1, tv2, … with its competitor count) plus an Unassigned area. To arrange them:

  • Auto distribute balances the classes across the TVs by competitor count, keeping age groups together — a good starting point.
  • Drag class chips between TVs (or into Unassigned) to fine-tune.
  • Add TV adds another screen; Unassign all clears everything to start over.

Back returns to step 1 without losing the layout.

Click Create TV screens to finish. Each TV becomes a screen you can open and monitor like any other.

Afterwards, reopening Leaderboard classes goes straight to the class distribution, titled Edit TV screens — there's no step 1, because the TVs already exist and have their own settings. The gear on each TV's column opens that screen's own settings. The button at the end reads Update instead. Add TV still adds one, and any TV added this way is given the next free tv number, skipping any already in use — including one you've switched to Start times, which keeps its name even though it's no longer part of the distribution.

Opening each screen on its TV ​

Each screen is a web page at a URL of the form:

http://<server-address>/screen/<screen-id>?eventId=<event-id>

So tv1 for an event is http://<server-address>/screen/tv1?eventId=<event-id>. The simplest way to get there:

  • On the server machine, click the screen's ID link on the Screens page — it opens the screen in a new browser tab.
  • On another device (a smart TV, a media stick, a laptop driving an HDMI output), open that device's browser and go to the URL above, substituting your server's address. Copy the link from the open tab's address bar if it's easier than typing.

Older links of the form …/leaderboard/<screen-id>?eventId=… still work, and they show whatever that screen is now set to — so televisions already pointed at one don't need touching. New links use /screen/.

Note: With two events live at once, a screen opened with its event in the link (?eventId=…) stays on that event while it is live. One opened without it follows whichever event was started most recently.

Put the browser full-screen (press F11 on most desktop browsers) for a clean display, and turn off Show Header in the screen's settings if you want to reclaim the top strip. There's no separate software or kiosk component to install — a browser pointed at the URL is all each TV needs.

A TV hung in portrait ​

To hang a TV on its side, leave the TV and whatever drives it in landscape and set the screen's Rotation in its settings (the gear icon on the Screens page) to 90° clockwise or 90° anticlockwise — whichever makes the board read upright. The screen turns itself and lays itself out for the taller shape. See Creating screens.

Driving several TVs from one computer ​

You don't need a computer per TV. Open each screen in its own browser window, then drag each window onto a different monitor or HDMI output and full-screen it there. One PC with several outputs can drive several TVs this way, each showing a different screen.

Changing all the TVs at once ​

Two controls act on the whole group:

  • Edit all Leaderboards opens Bulk edit TV screen settings, which applies to every Leaderboard TV screen. It covers the Leaderboard layout settings plus Theme, Rotation and Language, so you can take every TV in the hall to Dark, or turn them all for portrait, in one go. Only the settings you actually change are pushed out — anything you leave alone is untouched, and a setting that currently differs between TVs shows as [Mixed] until you set it. Click Apply to all to push the changes out. A TV showing anything but a Leaderboard — start times or a wall — is left alone, since the rest are Leaderboard settings, so turn one of those for portrait from its own settings; the button disappears entirely if none of your TVs is a Leaderboard.
  • The refresh button on a screen's row (Force reload TV screen) reloads that display remotely — handy if a browser has got stuck without you walking over to it.

To re-balance which classes show on which TV later, reopen the dialog with Leaderboard classes.