Race Announcer

for the Palm Computing Platform

Users Guide

Version 1.0
July 1998

Installing Race Announcer in Your PalmPilot

Whether you downloaded the software from our Web site or received it in the mail, you should have a file called RaceAnnouncer.prc on your computer or floppy disk. Here's how to install it on your Palm Computing Platform handheld device (Pilot, PalmPilot, Palm III, or other equivalent devices such as the IBM Workpad):

From a Macintosh:

Run the program InstallApp. Click on the Select button, set the List Files of Type to All Files, locate and select the file RaceAnnouncer.prc, and click Open. Now click on the Install button. The next time you HotSync your PalmPilot, the program will be downloaded.

From Windows:

Run the program INSTAPP.EXE, which is located in the C:/PILOT folder. Click on the Browse button, locate and select the RaceAnnouncer.prc file, and click Open. Now click on the Install button. The next time you HotSync your PalmPilot, the program will be downloaded.

Starting the Application

From the Applications window on your PalmPilot, look for the icon labelled Announcer which looks like this:

Tap on the icon and you'll see the main screen of the program (the very first time, you'll see the "About" screen which gives you information about Stevens Creek Software; after you've seen enough, tap the OK button to get to the main screen)

Entering Your Serial Number

If you have registered the software, and have obtained a serial number from Stevens Creek Software, you enter the serial number by tapping on the word *Unlicensed* in the upper right corner of the screen. When you do, you'll see this screen appear:


Use Graffiti (or the on-screen keyboard) to enter your serial number (supplied to you by Stevens Creek Software); when you're done, tap on the OK button. If you enter an incorrect number, the software will let you know. If necessary, tap on the Cancel button to dismiss the Enter Serial Number screen. When you have entered the Serial Number correctly, you'll see the word *Unlicensed* disappear from the main screen.

If you have a site license copy of Race Announcer, the Name field in the Enter Serial Number screen will also be a dotted line in which you can enter information. In this case, you'll need to enter your "site license name" in that field, as well as the Serial Number in the bottom field.

If you run into a problem, this probably means that when you provided your PalmPilot name to Stevens Creek Software, you did so incorrectly. Check the name in the Enter Serial Number screen shown above, and write it down exactly (including case, i.e., whether the letters are upper-case letters like THIS or lower-case letters like this) and email it to Stevens Creek Software technical support (pilotsupport@stevenscreek.com) and wait for a new serial number to be provided to you.

Race Announcer is actually fully functional before you license it, with one rather important limitation - it will only look up the names for racers with single-digit numbers (1-9). So you'll be able to see exactly what the software does, but you'll only be able to really use it for VERY small events!

The Race Announcer Database

Like our RaceBase race scoring software, Race Announcer gets its basic information about the racers entered in your race from the standard PalmPilot Address Book application. Entering information into the Address Book is discussed in the standard Palm manuals, but to summarize there are three ways you can enter information into the Address Book on your handheld unit:

  1. Enter it directly into the handheld unit, using either the standard Palm "Graffiti", the built-in on-screen "keyboard", or, beginning in September 1998, a real (optional) keyboard attached to the handheld unit.
  2. Enter it into the "Palm Desktop" application on your desktop or laptop computer, then "HotSync" to transfer the information to the handheld unit.
  3. Enter it into any desktop database application you want to use, save the information as a "tab-delimited" or "comma-separated" file, import it into the Palm Desktop application, and then HotSync to the handheld.

Whichever method you use, the "standard" fields of the Address Book database are self-explanatory - Last name, First name, Address, etc. Many of the fields (e.g., Company, E-mail, Zip Code) will be irrelevant for the purposes of Race Announcer; Race Announcer uses only the First name, Last name, City, State, and Country fields (of the "standard" fields). However Race Announcer, like RaceBase, does use three of the four "custom" fields provided in the Palm Address Book - "Custom 1," "Custom 2," and "Custom 3" (if you go to the Options menu in the Address Book application, you can actually rename these fields to something more appropriate for our usage, but it isn't in any way necessary to do so).

The "Custom 1" field is the most important field for the purposes of Race Announcer. In this field you must enter the Bib# of the racer. When Race Announcer looks up racers by Bib#, this is the field it looks in. Any entries in your Address Book for which this field is blank, or isn't a number, are treated simply as entries in your Address Book, and are ignored by Race Announcer.

"Custom 2" field contains the name of the category, team, or age group of the racer, and is optional. For our RaceBase software, this information is critical for scoring the race (dividing racers by age group, etc.), but for Race Announcer, this is simply an informational field, so that the announcer can quickly see (and announce) this information as appropriate.

"Custom 3" is likewise required by RaceBase, but optional for Race Announcer. This field should start with a single letter, "M" or "F", indicating the sex of the racer, and is followed by a number which is the age of the racer. Again, this is provided so that the announcer has access to this information for announcing purposes.

The Notes field of the Address Book is optional, but is potentially a very important one for Race Announcer. You can put any kind of information you want into this field which will be of interest on race day. The previous year's winners, personal best time in the race, whether a racer is a VIP in a sponsoring organization - any of these things or more can be entered into the Notes attached to the Address Book, and read off by the announcer as the racer approaches the finish line. Great stuff!

Importing Racer Information into the Race Announcer Database

Assuming the information described above has been entered into the standard Address Book application and resides on your handheld unit, you are now ready to import the information into Race Announcer's own database. Looking up information directly in the Address Book can be slow (try a "Find" operation on your PalmPilot and you'll see), so Race Announcer makes a quick "cross-reference list" of the Bib#'s so that it will be able to find the "real" information (racer names, towns, etc.) as quickly as possible during the race. In order to do this, you need to "import" the Bib# information from the Address Book into Race Announcer.

When Race Announcer starts, the button in the lower right corner of the screen will either read Import (as it does in the example above in the "Starting the Application" section) or Lookup (as in the example below in the "Looking up Racer Information" section). If it reads Import, that means that Race Announcer's database of runners is empty, and they must be imported. If it reads Lookup, Race Announcer has a database of runners, but of course you'll want to be sure that the database represents the current race, and not a previous race. Clear the database first if you need to (see below), then tap the Import button. Race Announcer will then search your main PalmPilot Address Book, find all the entries which have a number in the Bib# ("Custom 1") field, and enter them in its own internal database for fast lookup.

Getting Information About the Race Announcer Database

If you tap on the Menu button in the lower left corner of your PalmPilot screen, an Options menu will appear which looks like this:

Tap on Database Info, and the program will tell you how many racers it currently has in its database. This number will not necessarily match the number of entries in your PalmPilot Address Book, since the Race Announcer database, as noted above, is a subset of that database, corresponding only to those people in the Address Book who have a number entered in the Bib# ("Custom 1") field.

Clearing the Race Announcer Database

Tap on Clear Database in the Options menu, and any racers currently in the Race Announcer database (not in the main Address Book database) will be removed. The button in the lower right of the screen will now read Import, and you can import a new database of runners into Race Announcer. You'll want to clear the database before you use the software again for a new race, and you'll also want to clear it before importing an updated database for the current race. That is, in some races, you may have installed all the pre-registered runners in the Race Announcer database before the race starts. Now, during the race, you update your Address Book to include all the race day registrants as well. If so, you'll want to quickly clear the Race Announcer database, then re-Import the racer information, so that the race announcer will be ready at the finish with complete information about all the entrants (for shorter races this may not be practical).

Starting the Timer

Race Announcer isn't designed to be the timing software for a race (it doesn't record times); PocketTimer is our software which accomplishes that task. But it can be helpful for the race announcer to have a display of the elapsed race time on the screen of the Pilot, so that when announcing the names of racers approaching the finish line, the announcer will be able to see the elapsed time without needing to see the race clock. Starting the timer is simple - just tap the Start button next to the word Time when the gun goes off. Since the announcer will probably be occupied at that time announcing the start, just hand the unit to an assistant or spectator to do this task.

Configuring the Pace

The Race Announcer timer displays not only the elapsed time but also the current pace. In order for the pace to be meaningful, you need to configure the program (usually, you'll do this before the race starts, although you can actually do so at any time). Tap on the Menu button in the lower left corner of your PalmPilot screen, and then tap on Settings from the Options menu that appears.

When you do, you'll see this screen:

Distance: This is the total distance of the race being run, like 10 km in the example above. Units for the distance can be set in miles, kilometers, meters, yards, or feet. If your race is a multipart race, like a triathlon or adventure race, set the distance to 0; and the pace display (which would be meaningless) will be removed from the main screen.

Pace Units: Units of pace can be displayed in minutes per mile, minutes per kilometer, miles per hour, kilometers per hour, minutes per 100 yards, or minutes per 100 meters.

Tap on OK once you're done adjusting the settings, or Cancel if you change your mind and want to leave the settings alone.

Looking up Racer Information

Looking up information about racers approaching the finish line (or other spot on the course) couldn't be easier. Just tap the bib# of the racer (like "1", "2" in the example above) on the large buttons, then tap the Lookup button. If that bib# is in the database, you'll see a display; if the bib# is not in the database, you'll hear a beep. As you enter the numbers, you'll see them appear just above the Lookup button, so you can see what you're doing. If you make a mistake entering the number, just tap the Lookup button anyway, ignore the display, and start over.

The display is pretty much self-explanatory. The first line below the time/pace display shows the name of the racer. The second line shows the hometown, state, and, if it's not blank in the original database, the country as well. The third line shows the sex (M or F) and the age of the racer on the left of the line, and the category (age group, team name, or other type of category) on the right. Between that information and the number buttons on the bottom is the space for any optional notes which were entered about the racer. The font size of this part of the display is adjusted based on the extent of those notes, so if there are just a few words, you'll see the display in a large font; if there are more words, the font will be made smaller. And if the full notes still don't fit, at the lower right of the notes area a new button will appear labelled More. Tap on the More button, and the complete notes will "popup" for the announcer to read (tap on the OK button at the bottom of the new window to go back to the main display for the next racer).

Displayed information will remain on the screen until you do the next lookup. There isn't any "Erase" button, but if you want to erase the screen, you can just tap Lookup button without entering any bib#.

Stopping the Timer

When the race is over, tap on the Menu button in the lower left corner of your PalmPilot screen, and then tap on Stop Timer in the Options menu that appears.

For Support

If you have any problems using Race Announcer, you can contact Stevens Creek Software in one of the following ways:

By email: pilotsupport@stevenscreek.com
By phone: 1-408-725-0424

You'll see this same information by selecting About in the Options menu of Race Announcer.

Licensing the Software

The registration fee for Race Announcer is $49.95. If you haven't yet licensed your copy, you can do so in one of the following ways:

Online: http://www.stevenscreek.com/pilot/pilotorderform.html
Phone: North America: 1-800-823-4279
Elsewhere: 1-408-725-0424
Fax: 1-408-725-0424
E-mail: sales@stevenscreek.com
Mail: Stevens Creek Software
21346 Rumford Drive
Cupertino, CA 95014
We accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express credit cards, and checks made out in U.S. funds. If ordering via fax, e-mail, or mail, be sure to include credit card type, number, and expiration date (if using a credit card), mailing address, e-mail address, and daytime phone number. Please note: A $3.00 order processing charge is added to any order which is not placed through our automated Web site order form (that is, via phone, fax, email, or mail).

Copyright 1998 by Stevens Creek Software
All Rights Reserved