Orienteering, timed properly
A whole competition, from the first entry to the published result.
steel takes the entries, draws the start list, reads the SPORTident cards at the finish, works out the results and publishes them. It runs on a laptop in a forest with no signal — and everybody at home sees the results as soon as there is a connection.
Races
Everything published here, today first.
The whole of a race, in one place
Most timing software does one part of a competition and leaves the rest to a spreadsheet. This does the week before, the day itself, and the afternoon afterwards.
Entries
Type them in, or import a file the rest of the sport already speaks. Every entrant carries their club, their class and the card they will run with.
Classes and courses
Say which controls each class runs, and in what order. A class can run a different course in each round, which is what makes a final a final.
Start list
Draw start times at whatever interval you want, or seed a final from how the qualification went. Print it, or read the times out at the desk.
The finish
A SPORTident station plugs into the laptop and every card read lands on screen at once — whose it was, what they ran, whether it counts, and a slip to hand them.
Results
Times, places and penalties worked out as the cards come in, with mispunches named rather than quietly dropped. Nothing waits for the last runner.
Published
One press puts the results on this site, where anybody can read them with no account and nothing to install. Multi-day standings add themselves up as the days go.
It works where the race is
A forest has no signal, and a race cannot stop and wait for one. The laptop at the finish holds the whole event itself and never asks the internet for permission: it reads cards, times runners and prints slips with the network flat on its back. When a connection comes back it catches this site up, and the results appear for everybody at home.
Every change has a name on it
Somebody moved a start time, corrected a class, or read a card into the wrong round — and the protest arrives an hour later. Every change is recorded with who made it and when, a run of changes made for one reason reads as one line, and any of it can be undone.
Five shapes of race
An event is created as one of these, and it brings its own screens, its own rules and its own results with it.
Single race
Interval starts, one run, one result.
Mikrosprint
A qualification and a final on one card, with time penalties.
Qualification and finals
Heats that decide who runs in which final.
Multi-day stage race
Several days added up, with a chasing start if you want one.
Relay
Teams, legs and changeovers.
Run a race on it
The desktop application is what runs a race: it holds the event, reads the cards, and keeps working with no signal. It is free, and so is everything here.
About steel
steel is free software for running orienteering competitions, made and operated by Salgótarjáni Dornyay SE, a Hungarian sports association. A club uses it to take entries, draw start times, read SPORTident cards at the finish, compute results and publish them.
Results are public and need no account. Everything else — entries, the people organising, the cards that were read — is visible only to the organisers of that race.
Signing in with Google is offered to organisers so they do not need another password. steel receives your name, your email address and your profile picture, and nothing else: no access to your mail, your contacts, your files or your calendar. It uses them to know who signed in and to show your name to the people you are running a race with.