THSCC Forums

As anyone who attempted to stay for trophies today knows, we weren't able to hand out trophies. I'd like to let everyone know what happened.

We log every run's driver, time, and penalty on both the computer and on paper. When everyone is finished with their runs, we audit the computer results vs the paper results, and then enter any corrections into the computer.

I had just finished entering the corrections, so I pressed save in AXware, and in the split second when AXware was trying to save the file, the power in the bus went out, and the computer shut off immediately. When I turned the computer back on, AXware wouldn't load the event. A closer inspection of the event file revealed it was corrupt. Without that file, we couldn't generate results with the computer.

The good news is that we have the paper copy of the final audit report containing all 481 runs with driver info, times, and penalties. We can reconstruct the event file on the computer from that. The bad news is it may take a few days. Zach and I will be working on that.

There were several simultaneous points of failure that resulted in this situation:
1) The power in the bus went out
2) The laptop's power failed immediately even though it had been plugged in all day
3) There was no computer-based backup of the event data

Points of failure 2 and 3 have already been addressed (Noah is the man!)

I'm sure we have the talent in the club to get to the bottom of point of failure 1, but that is really not my specialty, so I leave that up to those more mechanically inclined.

tldr; results will be posted in a few days

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2017 THSCC Autocross Chief of Timing and Scoring

03 Nissan Altima
02 Honda S2000

One thing worth considering-The event file may be stored in plain text so it could still be possible to retrieve information from it.

That was a whole lot of words to say 'Carlton and Zach will be accepting beer for better times.'

Said text file looked like this when opened:

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2011/2012 Autox VP
2013/2014.5 President
2013 Top Gun

2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

sounds like DNFs for everyone.

You could also try and contact vitek at axware if you are having trouble with the files he might have a better solution, than having to manually enter all those runs.

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GS - 17 Honda Civic Si
STS - 91 Honda Civic Si
S04 - 00 Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS

http://www.kestrelracing.com

Have you considered writing a VB Script to create a GUI to look up the IP?

Pretty sure I see "STX 86 - 45.133" somewhere in there.

Any chance some of the live timing and scoring files are cached somewhere? I assume they are generated on the fly, but maybe there is something in there (I know there is something on my phone).

We looked into that very thoroughly but unfortunately the answer is no.

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2017 THSCC Autocross Chief of Timing and Scoring

03 Nissan Altima
02 Honda S2000

I apologize for having to leave early, what were the specific conditions when the power went out on the bus?

Engine running?
What was actually drawing power at the time (we do normally say to turn the bus on before running the printer, not sure if thats necessary but its a rule I've always adhered to)?
There is a beeper that typically goes off when we reach low voltage, did that go off?
No issues with the bus making it home right?

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2012 MX-5 Sport SUV

The auxillary power switch was turned off which kills the 120V outlets that the printer and computer is plugged into.

We have a new laptop battery on the way and Noah has setup a system for doing backups every 5 minutes of the axware files.

_________________
2011/2012 Autox VP
2013/2014.5 President
2013 Top Gun

2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

Did someone just turn the switch off by accident, or did the aux power stop working.

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2012 MX-5 Sport SUV

The aux power switch was flipped and when we turned it back on, we got power to the laptop. The laptop battery + back up scripting coupled with a friendly reminder to NOT touch the aux switch until after audit and results are printed should safeguard us from this situation again.

_________________
2011/2012 Autox VP
2013/2014.5 President
2013 Top Gun

2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

OK, this is where I have to step up and admit I did something really stupid, like turn off the switch that was labeled "aux" power. My head must have been somewhere else. It was towards the end of the day and I heard the outside speakers humming. I thought, time to kill the speakers. I flipped both PA speakers and without thinking I flipped the power switch thinking it was for the speakers.

I want to offer my humble apologies for my bone head move and not speaking up earlier, but I was horrified at what I created and was embarrassed. I also want to apologize for creating a lot of unnecessary work for folks like Zach and Carlton. I owe you a few beers. The upside to this is we're looking into backups and purchased a new battery for the laptop. May I also suggest relabeling the switch to primary power.

Let the flogging begin and I'll pay my penitence by washing the bus....

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Hahahaha.

That's good news to me. I was worried we had bigger issues with the power setup in the bus. If its just user error, that's more easily correctable.

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2012 MX-5 Sport SUV