HaresWARE Development - DragTracker

DragTracker v1.0 is a handy companion for any drag racing fan. Maintain team profile information including driver, competition class, chief mechanic, and team owner. Then create an event profile for this week's event using the team profiles. During qualifying, a drag and drop interface allows you to quickly and easily track results for any competition class. Then, a nifty eliminations ladder allows you to advance teams through elimination rounds, and see at a glance what match-ups to expect. You can review or reference final eliminations results from each event and class you've tracked for the entire year. Add in a national-records screen for quick easy reference, and much more, and you have DragTracker v1.0.

At a glance.

When you start DragTracker for the for the first time, you will be presented with the following splash screen:

A menu system is active through out the application, and can be used to navigate between the four main screens that comprise DragTracker v1.0.

The four main screens of DragRacing v1.0 are as follows. A help system is accessible from each of the main screens by tapping on the 'i' icon at the top of each of the main screens.

Teams - Set up team profiles including drivers name, which class the team competes in, the chief mechanic, and the team owner. Click on a cell in the table for an editable list of selections. The Hidden checkbox is discussed later. Add a team be pressing the + icon at the top of any of the main screens.

Events - Get ready for this weekends event. Here, you create new events, enter the date and location, check the classes of interest, and the drivers that will be participating.

Qualifying - It's Saturday, and time to start tracking results. Select the event, and the class, and the screen will populate with the teams selected from the Events screen. As qualifying progresses, you can drag and drop the teams from their current position into a new position to reflect their new position in the standings.

Eliminations - Once the qualifying is over, and you have pressed the Finalize button, the Eliminations screen arranges the data in a tree form according to qualify position. From here, you can advance drivers through the eliminations rounds for each class until the event is over. Do this by clicking on a cell and selecting Advance.

Detailed instructions:

Working with Years.
In any of the four main screens, you will see a pull-down that displays the list of years. The following screen snip shows the year (2002) and Edit... When you create a new year, you are also required to enter a 4 character sanctioning body. This allows you to have track each sanctioning body events with out having all the teams and events stored in the same database.

Each year is saved on the device as a separate database. Selecting a year opens the year and its data can be accessed and updated from the Setup screens.

Note: Edit... shows up only from the two setup screens, Teams, a

nd Events.

When Edit... is selected, you will see the following screen

From this screen you can delete year databases, create new ones, or clone existing databases. Cloning a database is helpful in that the teams and events are copied from the cloned year to the new year. This means that you do not have to re-enter all the data for each year of racing. Just clone a year and make any modifications required to correctly reflect the teams, events, locations, dates etc...

Note: The Clone button only appears when a year is selected in the list.

Working with Classes.
In any of the four main screens, you will see a pull-down that displays the list of classes. The following screen snip shows a class drop-down including All and Edit... entries

Note: Edit... shows up only from the two setup screens, Teams, and Events.

When Edit... is selected, you will see the following screen

From this screen you can delete, create, or rename classes. As a convenience, the select button can be pressed. This will close the Edit Class screen and make the selected class current.

Working with Teams.

Here is the Teams screen again. We've already discussed the Year and Class pull-downs. The four columns of this screen consist of Driver, Class, Wrench, and Owner. The Add Driver button (the 'i' icon) up an Edit Driver screen, which is similar in look and feel to the Edit Class screen, discussed earlier. When a driver is added it will appear in the table with blanks for Wrench and Owner (the Class will automatically be set to whatever class was selected when the driver was added).

Clicking on any field in the table will bring up a list that lets you edit or select Class, Wrench, or Owner, and clicking on any driver will bring up the Edit Driver screen.

Show Hidden - The checkbox to the left of each driver indicates whether or not a driver is hidden. Hiding a driver is useful in the event that a driver is out of commission for some time, but you expect the absence to be temporary. Marking the driver hidden removes the clutter from following screens, without the need to re-enter the data when the driver returns.

A driver marked hidden does not appear unless Show Hidden is checked. If Show Hidden is checked, then hidden drivers will appear, but with the checkbox set.

Working with Events.
Here is the Events screen again. This screen includes an Event pull-down. The Event pull-down displays a list of events, along with Edit... Selecting Edit... shows a screen that allows you to create, delete, rename or select events.

When working with events, you first need to check all classes of interest for this event. This is a necessary step since not all classes compete at all events. Or you might not always be interested in all the classes.

When you check or highlight a class, a list of drivers is displayed to the right. Place check marks next to all of the drivers who will be attending this event. If you are unsure, don't worry, you will be able to select the participants during Qualifying and even Eliminations.

The Check All button is a convenient way of selecting all the teams as participants. You can then uncheck any teams that do not participate.

Working with Qualifying.
This screen includes an Event selection pull-down and a Class selection pull-down. There are also three tables labeled Top half of the field, the Bottom half, and those who are "Outside looking in".

Clicking on any empty slot in a table pops up a list from which select a team, incase you did not have a complete list of participants during Event setup.

Clicking on any populated slot allows you to drag and drop that team into a new position as qualifying progresses.

Once qualifying is complete, you can press the Finalize button. This clears out the teams who remain "Outside looking in", giving you a complete 16 car field for that class. Once and Event/Class is finalized you will not be able to make changes to the qualifying field. Finalizing is required before edits will be enabled in the Eliminations screen.

Working with Eliminations
This screen includes an Event selection pull-down and a Class selection pull-down, and a tree like representation of the finalized qualifying results.

The Eliminations tree can be scrolled by dragging your stylus across the screen left or right. The scroll buttons at the bottom right will scroll the window all the way to the right or left with just one click.

You can advance a driver through elimination rounds by clicking on the winning driver, and selecting Advance from the resulting pop-up.

If you missed qualifying for any reason, you can still add drivers at this point by clicking

Clicking on any empty slot in the eliminations tree will bring up a driver selection list. This allows you to add drivers/teams to the eliminations tree in the event that you missed the qualifying rounds and do not have the qualifying results.

Finalize
Once eliminations are complete, and the Winner slot is filled, a Finalize button will appear. Clicking this button will archive the results for review at any time. Archiving results is useful so that team configuration is maintained through out the season.

For example, suppose a team undergoes chief mechanic change mid-season. You return to the Teams setup page and make the changes. Without the archiving feature, the change you made would be reflected in results as if that new chief mechanic were on the job for the entire season. Archiving results ensures accurate results can be reviewed at any time after the event is complete. It is in essence a snapshot of team configurations at the time of the event.

Note: Eliminations Event/Classes can only be archived once. The finalize button will not appear again for the same Year/Event/Class.