ZRound Quick Start Guide
ZRound Quick Start Guide
Version 1.3
Table of contents
Welcome ...................................................................................................... 1
Training Quick Start ....................................................................................... 2
Single Race Quick Start .................................................................................. 4
Championship Race Quick Start ....................................................................... 6
Championship setup.................................................................................... 6
Race setup ................................................................................................. 6
Your first race ............................................................................................ 7
ZRound – F.A.Q............................................................................................10
Interface with automatic detection systems ..................................................10
How long can be ZRound timing working? .....................................................10
Public & Drivers Monitor .............................................................................10
Alarm Sound System..................................................................................11
Voice System ............................................................................................11
Training mode ...........................................................................................12
Race Start modes ......................................................................................13
Qualifying modes ......................................................................................13
Information saving.....................................................................................14
Drivers identification ..................................................................................14
ZRound Manager – F.A.Q...............................................................................15
Championship creation ...............................................................................15
Race creation ............................................................................................15
Drivers registration ....................................................................................15
Race Formats ............................................................................................16
Generating Qualifying Heats ........................................................................16
Generating Finals.......................................................................................18
Championship scoring ................................................................................18
Transponders and frequencies validation......................................................19
Drivers identification ..................................................................................19
APPENDIX A –PN Racing race format ............................................................21
APPENDIX B – Heats, Semifinals & Final .......................................................22
LEGAL NOTICE: All company and products names are property of their respective owners.
ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
Welcome
Welcome to ZRound Suite, I hope you’ll find it of your convenience and it will make
your racing experience more exciting covering most of your timing and
management needs and giving you extra functionality to make things funny and
easy.
This is FREE software, please read carefully the license agreement before installing
and using it.
You can find more tips and information in www.zround.com site. There are no more
documents like this about using it but I think its concepts are easy to understand.
Please don’t doubt in posting your comments, suggestions and questions in the site
forums. Unfortunately I haven’t free time enough to write a complete guide nor
online help system. All contributions are welcome.
ZRound has been built by racers thinking in racers. Many thanks to all the people
who have make ZRound possible, thanks to Susana for her patience by the robbed
time and thank you for using ZRound.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
1) Start ZRound using shortcut in your desktop or the ZRound programs group
in windows start menu.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
4) Now you are ready for training so click in the training button. All cars
detected are automatically added to the training session.
NOTES:
To use voice system you must first have MS SAPI and your favourite TTS
engine installed on your PC. You can setup voice settings in the ZRound
“Speaker” configuration page where Speaker, reading speed, events to
read, text by events, etc. can be customized.
Every time you can show/hide monitoring window to allow public and
drivers to view laps and times if you own a two monitor video adapter.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
3) Register drivers in the race. System warning you about choosing a filename
to save race configuration. When you click OK a file dialog box let you define
the folder and requested filename. The folder holding this file will hold all
race information files (log, lap times, html, etc) too. A description for the
race must be entered. It is used in main window, html output and reports.
4) Now you must choose each race driver in the list and click “Select”.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
5) Change starting order using popup menu if you want. Menu items “Up” and
“Down” will move drivers to achieve the order you want.
You may customize other parameters related to the way ZRound start counting and
working like countdown time, time between cars in staggered start, enabling and
customizing sounds and alerts, etc. Please read the F.A.Q. section for more
information.
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Championship setup
Number of races: Number of race competitions to complete.
Number of worst races to discard: You can ignore the worst races of each driver in order
to calculate the championship scoring. This number is the amount of races to ignore.
Number of race assistants: Number of assistants needed to help during the race (this is
not used now)
Max. time to complete last lap: This is used in ZRound to manage timing. It is an extra
time given to drivers to complete their last lap after the race total time has gone.
Training Duration: Duration (time) of the training before the race. If a value
is given (not zero) it will be mandatory (it won’t be changed) in ZRound
Time between drivers in staggered mode: Time elapsed between drivers start in
staggered mode.
Number of drivers promoted to next final: It is a way of giving an opportunity for better
qualifying to the bests drivers of each final.
Min. drivers by Final: When Finals are generated it is possible to have a little number of
drivers in the last Final. If there is not enough drivers to complete the group all of them will
drive in the previous Final group. (See F.A.Q.)
Race setup
Race setup is based on championship default definitions. When you create a new
race you can override that values and only the race setup is modified. There is
another parameter defined for races.
Min. Lap Time (sec.): It is the amount of seconds needed to complete a lap. It is supoused
than a driver never can drive a lap under this time and timing ignore any laps with a time
under this value considering it an error (a post will be wrote in the ZRound log window).
Now you know these concepts and you can setup a championship race …
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
3) A Race setup window will be show with the default values provided for the
championship. You can now customize the race modifying some of these
parameters if you need it. When setup is saved (clicking Save button) two
new pages are shown in the race window to let you to register drivers and to
control Heats and Finals.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
The registration process consists in two steps like in ZRound single race.
First you have to create a record for new drivers. Then you can register it in
the race.
• You only need to create one and only one record for each driver. This is
used system wide in all race of all championships. The system needs
unique drivers definition to control championships scoring and reports.
Please pay attention in registering process to avoid drivers record
duplication. When a driver is selected an historic report is listed to make
easy identify him and to distinguish from other drivers. Filling in the
nickname can help too.
5) Once you have all drivers registered Heats must be generated clicking in
“Generate Heats” button. If there are conflicts due to repeated transponders
id or frequencies in Heats you will be warned and assisted in their resolution.
Qualifying Heats: Information about general Qualifying of all Heats after each
round is viewed. The button Generate Finals is available only in this view. You
can generate the Finals when were needed and even if there were pending
rounds you can anticipate them.
Heat “X”: Driver registration information for Heat “X”. Transponder &
Frequency conflicts are shown in paired colors. You can edit the driver
registration properties. Also you can print it. You are asked about printing the
present Heat or all of them and you can print labels for cars too.
Round “N”: Information about round results after it is complete. You can edit
these results for corrections due to errors, penalties, etc. You can lap times,
position chart by laps, and lap time chart by driver from the driven race clicking
in “details” button.
Finals: Information about Final Qualifying after each final is complete. When all
Finals are driven you will see the definitive competition results.
Final “X”: Driver registration information for Final “X”. Transponder &
Frequency conflicts are shown in paired colors. You can edit the drivers
registration properties. Also you can print it. You are asked about printing the
present Final or all of them and you can print labels for cars too.
7) Now it is time to drive. Select the Round you want to start and click in “Go”
button. You will be asked for opening ZRound for timing. If you click Yes
ZRound will be opened with the round configuration. You only have to start
the race from ZRound and when round were done and ZRound were closed
all results will be available for editing, printing and qualifying. Click on
Refresh button if results are not updated successfully after closing ZRound.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
8) Repeat previous step until all Rounds were completed and select “Qualifying
Heats” item in the left panel. You will see ordered the drivers by qualifying
and marked in blue the drivers expected to be in Final A. You can print it
and click on “Generate Finals”. All Finals groups will be generated following
race setup. If the distribution is not of your convenience you can edit it or
may be you want to change race setup and click on “Generate Finals” again
for a new calculation. You can repeat this step as many times as you need.
9) When Finals are ready you can click on Final A item in the left panel to print
Finals driver distribution and labels if you want. Next you have to timing all
Finals (beginning in the last one) until Final A is completed like were done
for Heats rounds.
10) All Finals are completed. Select “Finals” item to view competition race final
qualifying and scoring and to print them.
11) Close the race. This prevents future race changes, edition and starting any
closed round by error. Championship scoring will be update, you must
“refresh” championship view if it were opened during race control and
timing.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
ZRound – F.A.Q.
Interface with automatic detection systems
Also you have the “automatic LapZ bridge reset” in the configuration (using the
bridge alarm clock).
LapZ bridge needs 2 secods to complete the reset operation safely. If you cannot
provide this safe margin you can follow next procedure:
- "Pause" the race (click on pause button) and order drivers to go to boxes
- Reset the bridge
- "Contine" the race (click on continue button)
It’s possible to choose which information will be shown and font size in ZRound
configuration window.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
Voice System
ZRound supports Microsoft SAPI 5.1 interface. If you have a Text to Speech
synthesis engine then ZRound will use it to speak. If you haven’t SAPI installed
you can download it for free from Microsoft site.
If you want voices in your language or with a better quality and performance may
be you want to test some of these products:
- Loquendo: www.loquendo.com (GREAT!!)
- ATT Natural Voices: www.naturalvoices.att.com
- Nuance: www.nuance.com
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
The Speaker button let you to enable/disable voice system and it doesn’t affect to
alarm sound system so you can interrupt voice system but lap detection sound (and
all selected sounds) will continue working.
Training mode
- Free training: You only have to start training without drivers registered.
When a new car is detected the driver name and details are searched in the
database (by transponder number). All session data is stored under
“Entrenamientos” folder. If you give a time limit to the training each driver
will have that total time to compete his training session. When the time has
gone speaker will warn to finished driver. A new session will be started when
driver will be detected again.
The system can talk the best drivers times if this event is checked in the Voice
system settings.
To unregister a driver you can choose “Unregister” from the popup menu in drivers
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
list. His timer will be disabled until a new detection were done. After the elapsed
minutes configured in the Settings/Options/Display window check “Time to remove
car registration from training” without detecting the car it will be removed from
training.
Staggered
Each car has its own times. The drivers times starts the
first time their car is detected.
Le Mans
All the cars have the same race time. There are two ways of starting timing (it’s
controlled by a check near the start mode combo).
1) Time starts when you click on “Start race” button.
2) Time starts when the first car is detected.
Qualifying modes
Lap Count
The first qualified driver will be who drives more
laps in the race duration.
Each car has the duration (time or number of laps to go) for completing the race.
When race is over duration the drivers has en extra time to complete the last lap
configured in the “Time to finish (sec.)” setting.
Usually you give a time high enough to complete last lap after detection (three
times the minimum lap time is a safe value).
Best Lap
The first qualified driver will be who drives quickest in the total lap count given to
complete the race.
In training mode, always best lap will be use for showing better drivers.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
Information saving
After complete a timing session all information registered by ZRound is saved in
differents ways:
Free Training sessions: A file is created with lap times for each driver in the folder
“Entrenamientos\YYYY\MM\DD” under ZRound installation path (Y=year; M=month;
D=day) saving training session files by driver an day.
ZRound race: When registering drivers ZRound ask for a filename to save race
configuration file (.rcf). A file with the same name but extension .dat is saved with
lap times.
FLaCo race: A “.dat” file is saved for each round/Final generated following FLaCo
specifications (see www.flaco.org)
It is common to all type of races/training to save a log file with the detais written to
the log window and a HTML output with results and drivers detailing lap times and
position chart.
Drivers identification
There are three way to registering a driver:
- Using ZRound (you are not using a championship Manager, i.e. FLacO or
ZRound Manager) drivers are assigned the firs low number available
beginning with 1.
- Using FLaCo: the driver number is generated by FLaCo
- Using ZRound Manager: Two numbering system are available:
o Dorsal: Number assigned to each driver for all races in the
competition.
o Number in Heat/Final: Relative number for each Heat/Final (from 1 to
total drivers in the group). This is usefull to count laps using the
keyboard (pressing F1 .. Fn each time a car must be counted).
You can choose the numbering model using the checkbox “Show race car number
instead of Dorsal” in the Options/Display window
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
Championships manager controls scoring and let you print them or export them to
the clipboard (you can paste in a spreadsheet or text editor). Also it generates
HTML output for championship status and a javascript/HTML document with a menu
for navigating around all races, heats, rounds and finals HTML output generated by
ZRound. The HTML files are saved in the “Class\Championship” folder under data
folder of the ZRound installation path.
Race creation
First you must have a championship created. Then you can create a race inside the
championship. When you create a new race a window will be shown with the default
values defined in the championship settings. When “Save” button is clicked two new
pages will be available to let drivers to be registered and to control race times.
Drivers registration
You can register drivers in the “Driver Registration” page:
You only have to click on “Register” button, to press “Ins” Key or to use the popup
menu in the registration list. The drivers database will be open to let you to search
and to register drivers. If the driver doesn’t exist you can create a record for him in
the database in this window clicking on “add”.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
Searching by name (any name which contain the string searched) is allowed and a
history of the selected driver in all his competitions are reported to make easy
registering process and driver identification.
Race Formats
You must choose a race format for each race and a championship allways has a
default race format.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
After Heat generation you can adjust them manually editing the drivers properties
(Heat 1 = A; Heat 2=B; etc.)
You can print a Heat alone or all together (you will choose the way in the print
dialog) if you click on “Print” when the Heat or Final item is selected. You can print
labels too to glue in the cars. Numbers to print depends on your preference about
numbering drivers in the competition and it can be the driver dorsal or the number
of car in the Heat (or Final). To print frequencies is optional according some
associations regulations (like AECAR does). If there are conflicts these will be
marked with an asterisk near the offended value.
When slot interface is selected in ZRound, slot assignment will be done by driver’s
ranking. You can get a random slot assignment using the popup menu in the
drivers list when a Heat or Final is selected.
Why?
25 drivers / 7 drivers/heat = 3 heat (module=4 filling 1->A, 1->B, 2->C)
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
Generating Finals
When all Heats are completed (you can do it before with provisional qualifying if
you want) it is time to generate the Finals.
First you must select the “Qualifying Heats” item to display qualifying results and
print them if you want. The “generate finals” button will be enabled to make
possible the generation process when clicked. This button is only available in the
Qualifying Heats view.
The number of drivers by Final is defined in the competition parameters and it will
be generated as many Finals as “total drivers”/”drivers by final” division. In
contrast with qualifying heats the lasts drivers (the division module will give the
total count) fill the last Final group. If this value in less than “min. drivers by final”
parameter then all of them will be drive the previous one Final.
You can move drivers between finals after generation process using the popup
menu in the drivers list when the desired Final item is selected.
The Finals are launched in inversed order (first you will run the last one). When a
final is done the firsts drivers ( “number of driver promoted” parameter) are
registered automatically in the previous Final. If you don’t want work with
promotions you must set that parameter to 0.
When all Finals are completed you can select the “Finals” item to show the
competition results to print them if you want. Then you can “Close” the competition
to avoid editing Heats, results, etc. and to restart any race.
You can choose if your final results are grouped by final/result or simply by results
to allow be the first one qualified the driver with best results although this is not in
the Final A
Total drivers: 25
Drivers by Final: 7
Final A = 7 drivers
Final B = 7 drivers
Final C = 11 drivers
Championship scoring
Championship scoring is under AECAR (Spanish association of radiocontrol cars)
regulation giving to each driver points depending on their final position in each
competition. You can edit this position-points table (PUNTOS_AECAR) with MS
Access or by using the “File/Scoring” menu in ZRound Manager.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
When conflicts are detected a detailed report will be listed with information about
offended values and the driver who must change it. A detailed list of drivers with
available (no used) frequencies will also displayed. Finally you can see in the
Heat/Final race view offended values in colors (by pairs) to make easiest (if
possible) the conflict resolution.
HEAT A
FREQUENCY CONFLICTS
AVAILABLE FREQUENCIES
CLUB PILOTO
--------------- -----------------------------------
Pedro García 27.045
HEAT B
Drivers identification
When qualifying heats are generated a dorsal number is assigned to each driver.
Also a number will be generated relative to each Heat or Final to make easy to
timing races without an automatic detection system (ZRound lets you to count laps
by pressing F1 to F12 keys). System let you to use any of the two numbering
types. You can print Heat/Final distribution and labels for cars using both of them
methods.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
You can see how Dorsal are the same in Heats and Finals but the driver “Num” is
different.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
- Two qualifies (PreClasificatorias), the second one will run in reverse grid.
- Third qualify (Clasificatoria). A re-sort will be done based on the best
laps/times in the first two qualifies.
- Finals: The best laps/time of any qualify will be used to fill them.
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
The qualify heats are generated following the “Heat & Finals” rules. This new format
is usually applied in race control scales bigger than miniZ and it makes more
competitive in order to reach the Final.
- A) Drivers in each final: Amount of drivers who run each semifinal, cuarter,
etc.
- B) Drivers in the FINAL: Amount of drivers who run the Final.
- C) Drivers qualified to the Final: Amount of drivers who directly run the final
based on the best qualifying.
- D) Drivers promoted: Amount of drivers who promote to the next final level
(just until the semifinal)
- E) Drivers promoted to the Final: Amount of drivers who promote to the
Final from each semifinal.
For generating the “semifinals” (semi, quarters, etc.) is used the qualify following
these rules:
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
FINAL
Posición 1
SEMIFINALS
Posición 2 Semi A Semi B
Posición 3 Posición 2 Posición 3
Posición 4 Posición 4 Posición 5
Posición 5 Posición 6 Posición 7
Posición 6 Posición 8 Posición 9
Posición 7
Posición 8
Posición 9
QUARTERS
Posición 10
Posición 11 Quarters A Quarters B
Posición 12 Posición 10 Posición 11
Posición 13 Posición 12 Posición 13
Posición 14 Posición 14 Posición 15
Posición 15 Posición 16 Posición 17
Posición 16
Posición 17
8th
Posición 18
Posición 19 8th A 8th B
Posición 20 Posición 18 Posición 19
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ZRound & ZRound Manager Quick Start Guide
All “semifinals” will have 4 drivers (except the Final & 16th). We have 2 promotions
so these groups will have really of 6 drivers (parameter A)
When “semifinals” are gone 4 drivers will be promoted from each one to the FINAL.
We will have:
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