DerbyNet Changes from v8.0:

• New: Support for late arrivals! Sooner or later you’ll have the experience of a racer showing up to your event after the racing for their group has started and some heat results have been recorded. Your choices used to be: discard the results of the already-run heats, or fold the late racer into a different group and try to fix up results afterwards. With v9.0, the racing schedule can now be adjusted, without disturbing already-run heat results, while still including the late racer in their appropriate group.

• Overhaul of the Mobile Check-In page. Autocropping can be turned off, resolving reported issues where racer photos failed to upload. Racers can now be chosen from a list as an alternative to using barcode recognition. Layout of the page has been updated, and several bugs fixed.

• New: Support for preference files, to capture your group's preferred race structure, awards, segments, and settings.

• Improved photostand.sh and shoot-then-scan.sh scripts to accept input from barcode scanner as keyboard input rather than trying to identify the specific device.

• Kiosks are now identified with easier-to-remember-and-recognize generated names.

• Retrospective page now shows higher-level actions.

DerbyNet Changes From v7.0:

• New: Mobile Check-In: Use your phone to scan racer barcodes, check in racers, and capture photos.

• More informative in-browser timer interface. Lots of internal code clean-ups.

• Updated Mac installation instructions for MAMP (https://mamp.info).

• Support for customized imagery directories.

• A new "From" field for racers (e.g. for championship races attracting racers from different units).

DerbyNet Changes From v6.0:

• New: In-browser timer interface: Connect your timer directly through a browser window, without using derby-timer.jar.

• New: Flexible racing structures: describe your organization's subdivisions, then arrange into racing groups to suit.

• New: Columnar "Now Racing" display option.

DerbyNet Changes From v5.0:

• New: Online balloting for awards lets the audience choose design award winners.

• New: Timer test page, with simulated heats and access to remote timer log.

• New: "Playlists" automate advancing from round to round.

• New: "Scenes" allow switching multiple kiosks with one click.

• New: One-click "Re-run last heat" on race dashboard.

• Better performance for local and remote replay.

• Isolate images into theme directories, so DerbyNet can be easily customized for different organizations.

• Better support for single-group racing: Remove mention of groups if only one group is being used. Don't require a group column for roster import if groups aren't being used.

DerbyNet Changes From v4.0:

• New: Video instant replay in a browser! Allows instant replay on Windows and Linux platforms. (Requires webcam and a suitable browser.)

• New: Support multiple aggregate rounds (formerly, "Grand Final" rounds), with different names. Support aggregate classes that allow bundling groups together for award determination.

• New: Race Retrospective page: after-action analysis of how your event went and what to improve for next time.

• New: Support for purging test data at different granularities, without having to erase the entire database.

• New: "Export Results" page generates a spreadsheet containing standings, awards, and detailed heat results. (Replaces previous "Export Results" and "Export Standings" capabilities for generating separate .csv files.)

• New: Customizable number of speed trophies for each class.

• The race scheduler now supports up to six runs per lane, for tracks up to six lanes. (Previously, for some group sizes, the scheduler could support only one run per lane on a six-lane track.)

• No more "Submit" button on the Settings page: settings are transmitted to the database immediately as they're made.

• derby-timer.jar tries variations of entered URL (e.g., with and without /derbynet path prefix), and attempt logging in with an empty password, to simplify timer set-up.

• Removed support for MySQL/MariaDB databases. No one was using this (to my knowledge), and maintaining support became more difficult than it was worth. (MySQL recently made "RANK" a reserved word, conflicting with the DerbyNet table field of the same name.)

DerbyNet Changes From v3.0:

• New: Printable artifacts like drivers' licenses and award certificates. (Want to try your hand at designing a certificate, card, tag, or similar printable? Get in touch!)

• New: Support for points-based (place-based) racing! If your timer reports place but not times, or if you just prefer to run your event by considering place only, use place-based racing.

• Full support for ties in standings.

• When editing groups, support adding, deleting, re-ordering, and editing subgroups within each group.

• For import, support importing full .xls or .ods spreadsheets, not just CSV files.

• New: Confetti animation for awards presentation screen.

• Support multiple webcams (built-in phone cameras) for photo capture from check-in page. (Thanks, Carl Hunter!) Update photo capture library to work with latest browsers.

• Add "bulk" operations on Check-In page, for operating on groups, subgroups, or the whole field. Bulk operations including checking in, undoing check-ins, numbering cars, and marking eligible or ineligible for awards.

• On judging page, a laurel leaf marks speed award racers, in case that's a consideration when awarding design or other awards.

• Standings can be exported as CSV files.

• Track lanes can be masked off to be left idle.

• Dynamic font sizing for "Now Racing" kiosk page, so the whole table always fits on the page.

• Support alternative "Abbreviated single-run-per-car" scheduling.

• Improved performance of slideshow kiosk by prefetching both photos.

• Appearance tweaks throughout, including suppression of scrollbars for kiosk pages.

• MacDerbyReplay supports https: for communicating with server.

• Support for network speed testing from photo upload scripts. (Is your wifi working well?) Report results by voice if 'flite' speech synthesizer is installed.

• Miscellaneous bug fixes and improved internal testing.

DerbyNet Changes From v2.0:

• Simpler Set-Up Process:

  • Set-Up "Dashboard" page provides overview of set-up process.
  • Simplified database set-up (just choose a name) for typical users

• Support for additional derby timers

  • DerbyTimer ??
  • MiscJunk.org Pinewood Derby Timer

• Add optional car photos to on-deck page, and car and racer photos to race-results page.

• Kiosk scripts for Raspberry Pi are more robust in the face of browser crashes. (Browser restarts, and won't require re-identification.)

• Roster import now allows a "full name" column, instead of requiring separate first name/last name columns.

• Debian installers divided into smaller packages

• Click-to-restore functionality for fullscreen display

• Allow checking in via barcode reader in photostand.sh

• Application icon for MacDerbyReplay

DerbyNet Changes From v1.0:

• One-Click Install for Windows! A bespoke Uniform Server directory that can even be run from a flash drive.

• Improved kiosk management

  • Move kiosk management into a separate kiosk dashboard.
  • Individual kiosk displays can now be parameterized:
    • The "please check in" display can be restricted to selected groups or subgroups.
    • The "slideshow" display can be restricted to selected groups or subgroups.

• New features for working with awards:

  • "Import Awards" imports awards from comma-separated files
  • "Awards Editor" interactively edits, adds, deletes, and re-orders awards.
  • Drag-and-drop interface in Awards Editor for assigning award recipients.
  • "Present Awards" page directly controls awards presentation kiosk display for an awards ceremony.

• New photo features:

  • Added drag-and-drop photo uploading for photo editor pages.
  • Added "auto-crop" for photo capture, using advanced face detection algorithms.

• Improved timer handling in derby-timer.jar:

  • Support for "The Judge" (thanks especially to help from Casper Bucl)
  • Support for older FastTrack timers
  • Experimental support for NewBold timers
  • Detect and recover from lost connection (tripping over a wire) between derby-timer.jar and timer.
  • Command line arguments work even when using the GUI.
  • Bug fix: now correctly finds serial port names for Linux.
  • Updated handling of timer malfunctions and unhealthy conditions.
  • derby-timer.jar incorporates both host and timer simulators, for testing/development.

• Support for hosting on a shared server:

  • Passed-in environment variable CONFIG_DIR overrides local configuration directory.
  • Presence of a settings.lock file disables changing database or photo directories.
  • Introduce "non-interactive" roles with limited privilege, to reduce risk of compromised passwords used for e.g. derby-timer.jar.

• Miscellaneous:

  • Fixed formatting for modal dialogs to allow scrolling when screen height or width is too small to display the whole dialog.
  • "Set-Up" modal for index page, to declutter the main race coordinator home page.
  • Update formatting and click handling for banner: actually center the title!
  • Rename internal ajax actions.
  • Clean up formatting for standings page selector.
  • Combined "Schedule + Race" button in scheduling dialog.
  • Better error messages for problems during database set-up.

• Debian binary package for Raspberry Pi-based derbynet server.