Podium Mobile

The Android phone or tablet. It reaches boxes over the phone's own Bluetooth or over the network.

It has no dongle and cannot use one. Never suggest a dongle to somebody on a phone.

Getting around

One button moves between the screens, and it is labelled with where it goes NEXT, not where you are. Standing on the boxes, it says Reads. It goes round Boxes, Reads, Result and Log. If somebody says "I pressed Reads and I'm looking at the results", that is why.

The other buttons: Help, Add, Settings and By hand.

START and STOP are there on Boxes and Reads. They are hidden on Result, where the race is being looked at and the row would only be somewhere to press the wrong thing.

Before it will find anything

Bluetooth on — and on phones older than Android 12, location switched on too. Android will not let an app find Bluetooth devices with location off on those phones; the search runs, reports no error, and finds nothing. That is the phone's rule, not Podium's, and it is the commonest reason a phone finds nothing at all.

Podium says which is missing when it opens. Turn it on, then close Podium Mobile and open it again. The message says to press Scan, but there is no such button — reopening the app is what starts the search.

Boxes

Boxes are found and connected automatically. The phone keeps looking and puts each box it finds into a free slot. There is nothing to press per box.

There are two kinds of row, and tapping the point name does a different thing on each.

• On a slot's row, it names the timing point — Timing point for slot, then Set. Give every slot a timing point, or its reads have nowhere to be filed. See Timing points.
• On a box's own row, it corrects that box's clock. A clock belongs to the box, not to the slot: move the box to another mat and its clock is still wrong by the same amount. See The box clock was wrong.
• START and STOP run the reader on the selected box. Connected is not the same as reading, and a reader stops itself after two and a half minutes, so start it for the race.
• Add puts in a box by its network address, for one that will not turn up by itself — usually because the wifi is not passing the search between devices.
• Rewind on a box gets its reads back. See below.

If a box stops reading, the phone says so out loud — a short tone, then the words — because the person holding it is watching the course, not the screen.

Choosing the race

Choose race, on the Result screen.

Races, entries and the gun come down from the timing server — they are not built on the phone.

• Nothing on the phone yet? It says No race on this phone. Press Fetch from server and pick the event.
• Already have one and need another? Fetch another.

Once fetched, it stays on the phone, so scoring carries on with no signal. Fetch before you lose it.

The first time you pick a race it asks Which point is the finish, and it only offers points that have actually taken reads.

Reads and Result

Reads is what is arriving. Result is the race as it stands, worked out afresh each time you open it; Score again recomputes it on the spot.

Hand times, beside them, lists every time typed in for this race and offers Add one for a time read off a watch afterwards. See Typing a time in.

By hand — the desk screen

A screen you hand to a helper.

Set it up first: which race, which point, and a PIN. Then hand the phone over.

Type the number and press TAKE. That moment is the time. It clears itself, ready for the next. The last five stay on screen, and any of them can be taken back.

Wave start stamps the gun for the wave as it goes. It sits well away from the number keys and looks nothing like them, so a thumb aiming for a digit cannot hit it.

While times are being taken, Back does nothing and the phone stays on this screen, so a helper cannot reach the boxes by accident.

"We have forgotten the PIN"

Hold Finish down for ten seconds and it lets you out without one. Long enough that nobody arrives at it by leaning on the phone.

Nothing is lost either way. Every time is saved the moment it is taken, so a forgotten PIN, a flat battery or a closed app costs you the screen and nothing else.

Leaving the PIN blank is allowed. The screen then simply does not lock.

Getting reads back off a box

Rewind on the box opens Get reads back.

How far back — The last 15 minutes, The last hour, The last 3 hours, Since midnight, or Pick the start and end…. Use one of these. They ask for exactly the span you named.

Longer — Fill the holes, or Everything — the whole log. These are bounded by what the box holds, not by you, and that can run for a very long time. Filling the holes starts from the earliest read this phone holds for that box — if the phone still has last month's race on it, that means replaying from last month.

A rewind already running puts Stop the rewind that is running at the top, so the press after "I should not have done that" is the obvious one. Whatever arrived before the stop is kept.

Reads you already have are recognised and not duplicated. See Getting back reads you missed.

Sending to the server

The line under the status says what the sync is doing.

• "Server: not set. Reads are being kept here only." — nothing is going anywhere yet. Set the server under Settings.
• Otherwise it names the account and the server, whether it is sending, and how many reads are waiting.

Wait for the waiting count to reach zero before you pack up. A phone in a bag is a phone that has not sent anything. See The results are not on the website.

Settings

• Timing server — the server address, Username and Password, and Test server. Send reads to the server turns sending on.
• General — Output chip codes in HEX. It changes how a code is shown, not the chip.
• Diagnostics — Send log and Share DB, for sending to RFID Timing when asked.

Then Save.

Fetching an event is not here — it is under Choose race.

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