Autocross Instant Results for smartphones

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:06 pm

Huge thanks again for getting this off the ground guys. It was pretty cool being down in South Georgia and being able to look at times on Sololive, which my 'multimedia' phone could barely handle.

This will be my tipping point for an iPhone or Droid very soon. Good luck and feel free to test away at the T-n-T as we'll be using the timer and perhaps we can setup the AxWare with a few entries to test???

Gwen Habenicht · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:11 pm

DickRasmussen wrote:

Is SCCA doing anything similar at Tours or Nats?

Thanks!

SCCA uses sololive.scca.com
internet based informational only results-it's been around awhile.
Cool, because you can check what your friends are doing even if you're not attending the event.

MarcusMcRae · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:23 pm

Carlton Whitehead wrote:

MarcusMcRae wrote:

Is that safe? I am computer network illiterate but I never use public wifi for fear of getting hacked.

Since this wireless access point won't be providing internet access, you won't be signing into your bank account, Facebook, other websites, etc.

Changing the network to a password-protected type wouldn't stop anyone with the network key and appropriate hardware/software within range from listening in on the network traffic anyway, due to the broadcast nature of 802.11 wireless networks. Since that password would have to be posted where anyone could see it, it wouldn't add any real security, just another hoop to jump through before you can see the coneage.

If we were to host the software on a website on the public internet, everyone would be dependent on their own cell provider's data coverage in order to reach it, and if the T&S laptop's data coverage flaked out, the results wouldn't stay up to date. But at least the guy standing next to you couldn't as easily sniff your requests to the T&S server and see whose results you were looking at, because of the switched network architecture in cell data networks. I think the minimal gain in theoretical security with this approach is drastically outweighed by the unpredictable experience it would provide. If all of our sites had great cell data coverage, I'd have a very different position on this.

tldr; if you want security theater, visit the TSA at an airport

Thanks for the explanation. I imagine it also depends on the security/firewalls on the device you're using.

I had to google security theater. That's funny.

Les Davis · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 2:04 pm **Posts:** 2059

MarcusMcRae wrote:

Carlton Whitehead wrote:

It'll have an open network with no key required to connect.

Is that safe? I am computer network illiterate but I never use public wifi for fear of getting hacked.

That's more than a bit paranoid Marcus, hackers are not lurking about every corner contrary to what the local evening news might have you to believe.

MarcusMcRae · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:37 pm

Les Davis wrote:

MarcusMcRae wrote:

Carlton Whitehead wrote:

It'll have an open network with no key required to connect.

Is that safe? I am computer network illiterate but I never use public wifi for fear of getting hacked.

That's more than a bit paranoid Marcus, hackers are not lurking about every corner contrary to what the local evening news might have you to believe.

Paranoid?? Who said I was paranoid? :shock:

Chris Halweg · **Posted:** Sun Jan 15, 2012 8:23 am

Nice! Too bad I have a Fisher Price dumb phone.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Sun Jan 15, 2012 8:35 am

Chris Halweg wrote:

Nice! Too bad I have a Fisher Price dumb phone.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/index.html

Worked for me. :lol:

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:24 am

Les Davis wrote:

That's more than a bit paranoid Marcus, hackers are not lurking about every corner contrary to what the local evening news might have you to believe.

Well... It might be more common than you think. In years past it was required that a cracker (proper term for a malicious engineer; a "hacker" is just a person who explores and learns about a system) would have to have significant knowledge of networking concepts and some good command-line skills. Now, some pretty nasty exploits are packaged into nice little smartphone apps that are as simple as a few clicks. I recommend not using public wifi for logging in to anything you wouldn't want to be compromised. Or, use an SSH tunnel, then do anything you want. ;-)

As for the THSCC timing system, these vulnerabilities do not exist since there is no internet connection. The only precaution that should be made is a to ensure good hostbased security of the timing and scoring computer, since theoretically it will now be accessible by someone over the wireless network. I'd be happy to volunteer to make sure that computer is configured properly in this regard (I've done this sort of thing once or twice before...

).

Carlton Whitehead · **Posted:** Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:51 pm

Zach Hill wrote:

ensure good hostbased security of the timing and scoring computer

I was planning to take care of this when I deploy the software.
* Make sure Windows Firewall is on. Allow inbound tcp port 80, deny everything else.
* Make sure Windows Update is caught up and set for automatic updates
* Review Apache and PHP configs

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:23 pm

Carlton Whitehead wrote:

* Make sure Windows Firewall is on. Allow inbound tcp port 80, deny everything else.
* Make sure Windows Update is caught up and set for automatic updates
* Review Apache and PHP configs
* Ensure strong passwords are set (or blank passwords, forcing group policy lockdown) for all Windows user accounts

Carlton Whitehead · **Posted:** Sun Jan 22, 2012 9:49 pm

Anyone interested in taking a look at the code may now do so at https://code.launchpad.net/~cebesius86/axir/axir.trunk

To install it, you'll need an HTTP server, PHP 5.3, PHP's SQLite library enabled, and Zend Framework 1.11 in your include path.

Carlton Whitehead · **Posted:** Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:03 am

Who is the current keeper of the T&S laptop? I'd like to deploy this software on it ahead of the TnT.

Carlton Whitehead · **Posted:** Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:11 pm

I deployed this software on the T&S laptop last night. If you're at an event, you can access it by following these steps:

1. Join your device to the THSCC wireless network
2. Point your web browser to http://ts

Carlton Whitehead · **Posted:** Mon Feb 20, 2012 7:54 pm

Overall, it seems the software must have worked pretty well yesterday, because I didn't have a lot of people coming to me with problems. There were only a couple of issues that I'm aware of so far:

Range:
The range of the wireless network is pretty limited if the trailer is located between you and the router (inside the bus). On the other hand, my phone could see but not quite join the THSCC network from near the covered area way at the other end of the site. I also heard reports of successfully using it from the pit area.

Empty times:
This is partially a case of garbage data coming in from AXware. The T&S personnel have to add a driver to the run list in AXware so that when they trip the finish lights, AXware can know who it was, but until they complete their run, they don't have a time attached to the run. If they press save while a driver is in line to start or on course. This would happen almost constantly at an event. I'm planning to filter those out in a future version.

Impossibly fast times (0.5 seconds, etc):
If you saw this, it was garbage data coming through from AXware due to timing lights malfunctioning. Nothing I can (read: want) do about this from a programming perspective.

Did anyone else have any problems with it?

JamesShort · **Posted:** Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:26 pm

Other than the fact that we might have to put a sticker on the laptop to tell the T&S person to 'save' every few minutes (or a cron job that touches the file ever 60s or so) I think it worked very well.

I connected to the network from near Gwen's SUV one time which was about a football field away from the bus.

This effort is much appreciated.

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