Here in Germany, since this season almost all high-level club competitions employ live tickers so that you can follow the games from home (or one of the other venues ). Of course, the displays at the venue can then be fed by the umpire as well. At the moment, the club's kids usually feed into the tickers, but that's unreliable and error-prone. Clearly the setup at national or international tournaments - where the umpire is in control of the display - is far better. Therefore, I looked for software that allows the umpire to record the game (another advantage is that you don't need the scoresheet anymore. I've heard from a league match where they didn't have a printer and forgot the scoresheets. In the end, one player drew the scoresheets by hand!). tournamentSoftware solution (used at virtually all large tournaments) requires a gigantic setup and is far too expensive for a local or regional club match. There are a number of smartphone apps, but they're all really limited, not usable, and can usually not be connected to live tickers. Therefore, I decided to write my own umpire panel, which runs on any modern web browser (i.e. Android/iOS tablets and smartphones). In the process, I took care to implement all the minutae that other software gets wrong. For instance, a red card at interval should not reset the timer, but it's a long-standing complaint that the tournamentSoftware umpire panel does reset the timer. I am happy to report that my software is already being used by some umpires, and will probably be in use in the German Bundesliga next season. However, despite extensive testing I have probably left in a couple of bugs and other problems. Thus, I'd love to get feedback from the BC community. Can you find problems (rule violations, spelling mistakes, crashes, broken displays, gratuitous German) in the following umpire software? https://aufschlagwechsel.de/bup/#demo I'd also be happy to hear what you think about it. Do you miss any features?
This is just the umpire panel, live tickers are developed separately. Two examples already in use in the Bundesliga would be CourtSpot and badmintonticker.de, both of which are supported by this panel.
I am an umpire in the Austrian Bundesliga. I think it's awesome that you implemented this software. I could imagine that we use/try this. I have one immediate question regarding the live ticker: Did you already implement the live ticker component of this? If yes, how does it work? Or is your umpire panel able to send scoring information to CourtSpot/badmintonticker.de tickers? Since I am also a computer scientist and know how to code, I am happy to help in any future developments of this. I am sure this has a lot of potential. For instance, it would be nice to have a "tournamentsoftware import" feature which allows games to be imported automatically after teams have entered their lineups in tournamentsoftware. Of course this depends on the scope of this app.. If the goal is to just help umpires, it's something different than if you want to capture the whole "league match" workflow. I sent you a private message to keep in touch via mail.
The live ticker software has a link to an instance of the umpire panel (typically served by them), and the umpire panel then transmits to the live ticker software. Both live tickers I mentioned are already in use. Wow, great to hear! I'll send you an email! The panel itself is intended just for umpires. The live ticker, entry, and reporting parts are separate, at least for now. I can certainly imagine parts of the general workflow (e.g. the option to import from tournamentsoftware) moving into the panel for practical reasons. Here in Germany, especially in the Regionalliga, it is usually the umpires who do all of the match management and reporting anyways.
