Swim & Water Polo Camp/Attendance Application

Background[]

Developed first in 2012, but to be put into full use in 2013.

Written in LiveCode

Operates on WIN, Mac, Android and not iOS in 2013.

Authored by Mark Rauterkus and Noah Vito too.
An attendance application for Summer Dreamers Swim & Water Polo Camp.

Insights[]

Coaches Meetings[]

Mark Rauterkus is willing to lead a 10 to 40 minute presentation with fellow coaches about technology and the Attendance Application. This tool should be shared with fellow coaches and team administrators. The simple, open-source, ATTENDANCE Application runs on ANDROID and Laptops with communications to the internet / cloud. It is helpful in tracking students and retaining emergency contact information as teams and school groups go on field trips. Travels to outside pools is all we did with the Swim & Waterpolo Camp with PPS Summer Dreamers . This is an "open source" application so there is no charge for it. It helps to get an explanation about the technology behind the scenes too. It is easy enough that a tech kid on the team could embrace it and make it customized for his/her squad. Or, others can just use it as is or with slight customization.

Talk could be advertised as follows: []

Open Source Golf Application for Attendance by Coach Mark Rauterkus, Mark@Rauterkus.com. He'll bring a computer and his Android phone and give away all his code for free while telling you about it, if you care.

Mobile_Touchpad[]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c4napih00tlf0zn/_VpI2ZisEI DropBox link from June, 2013.
Limitations: Only those students who are on the master list are able to check into the class with the Mobile_Touchpad.

The list of all the students and staff are on a file on the internet. The file is a hidden URL that the public can not see.

The Mobile_Touchpad is a two screen application that is written for use on a smart phone.

The first screen collects the names of the students and staff from a web page.

On the first screen, the user can click the preference button to check the name of the device. If the device is wrong, then the proper name can be inserted. The device name might be as simple as "Erik's iPhone." That device name is written into the attribution part of the check in statement.

On the second screen, the top field is where users type in the name of the student to "check in." As the typing begins, options appear on the screen below. Once a SINGLE NAME remains, then the bigger check in button can be clicked and then the magic happens. The name is uploaded to the web .

Audio feedback happens as the name is uploaded.

To Develop

Photos of the students could be shown before and after a student checks in with the application.
- Photos would need to be uploaded to a certain directory and be built with the student's first and last name dot jpg.
At present, there is no fixing a false check in. If a student or operator miss-leads, then the entry can not be terminated. For now, be accurate.
- Perhaps an undo function would have a button would save the past 10 check ins. Then a table would be shown to have a check-box and then re-write on the server, removing and then replacing those messages.
Upload a new participant is not yet working. So, if a person joins the class who has NEVER been a part of the team roster, then that person can not be checked into the activity.
- Could put a person right into the main file on the server. However, that would be less than ideal as there would be no database record for that individual.
- Could just write a message to the server, "Check in of JOE JOKES an UNLISTED individual with a phone number of xxx-xxx-xxxx at time location. Try out swimmer, perhaps. Do get the phone number.
- Could add a one-time visitor with the PREFERENCES button on the first screen.
- Upon the visitor check in, the main database application would have to be able to deal with that person and create a message after it fetches the info. That script is not done yet either.
- Perhaps a photo of the visitor is also taken at the check-in.
Perhaps a photo flag is sent if the person is checking in but without a photo.

Back key support for Android needed.

All we need to do is add a backKey message to our stack script that checks what card we are on and takes the appropriate action.

on backKey

   if the number of this card is 1 then
       pass backKey
   else
       go to the previous card
   end if

end backKey

Main Application[]

To Do with Images

Cache[]

Photos of the students and staff can be made to appear in the check in and with the database. Image handling changes should be made to utilize he LiveCode engine's image cache for decompressed image data. The size of the cache can be set using the global 'imageCacheLimit' property, and the amount of data in the cache is returned by the global 'imageCacheUsage' property.

The image cache operates in a least-recently-used manner - if an image needs to be decompressed and there is not enough room, the images that were used longest ago are discarded from cache until there is enough room.

If an image has 'alwaysBuffer' set to true, then it will be decompressed into the cache on card open.

Images are processed from lowest layer to highest, so if too many images have alwaysBuffer on a card, images on lower layers will have their data discarded from the cache before ones higher up.

An image can be forced to be cached by using the new form of prepare: prepare image <name> [ of ... ] prepare image file <filename>

The image cache is keyed on absolute filename of image thus it is now highly efficient to use image objects referencing the same filename, rather than buttons referencing icons. In particular, there will only ever be one decompressed set of image data for a given (absolute) filename in the cache at any one time.

Note that rotated/scaled images cache the transformed image data in the cache also, but images will not share this transformed data.

Import and Export Snapshot at specific sizes[]

New variants of the import snapshot and export snapshot commands have been added:

import snapshot … at size width, height
export snapshot … at size width, height

Use the “at size” extensions if you wish the engine to resize the snapshot taken to the dimensions specified.

To Do with Photos and mobile[]

From Gerry on the LifeCode list:

on takePhoto thePhotoName
 if the environment is "mobile" then
   iPhonePickPhoto "rear camera", 600,800
   if the result = "cancel" then 
     exit takePhoto
   end if
   put image (the number of images) into url /
   ("ftp://username:password@yourdomain.com/public_html/project/photos/"& thePhotoName &".jpg")   
   iphoneExportImageToAlbum image (the number of images) 
   delete image (the number of images)
 end if
end takePhoto

Health Concerns and Guard.CLOH.Org[]

A web form has been created to help communicate health concerns to coaches working with our Swim & Waterpolo Camp. Parents and guardians are asked to give notice to the staff by clicking this link:

Links[]

Mentions Elsewhere[]

Part of a blog that lists 1,001 things one can do with LiveCode http://livecode1001.blogspot.com/2013/02/keep-track-of-kids-at-summer-camp.html