Displays

Three things work together to put content on the TVs and projectors at your event. A display device is a client device authorized with the Display role, such as a TV with a small computer attached. A display group is a named channel that shows one screen at a time. A screen is one view, such as the rankings table or a field timer. You assign each display device to a group and pick a screen for the group, and every device following that group shows the same thing, so changing the screen once changes it everywhere. All of this happens on the Displays page under Displays, which requires the Admin role. Every other role is kept out of the page.

[Screenshot: Displays page showing the Audience Displays, Remote Displays, and Field Displays sections]

Display Groups

The page is divided into sections by group type.

Audience Displays hold the group for the main projector or arena screen. Competition Control creates the default audience group with the event and tags it Default. Slides from the award ceremony always play here, and this group follows the running alliance match automatically. It cannot be deleted.

Remote Displays are groups you add yourself for pit rankings TVs, a check-in monitor, a hallway schedule screen, and anything else that needs its own content. Click Add remote group, type a Label that describes where the screen is (the label is required), and choose a screen under Initial display. If you skip the screen, the group starts on Inspection. Click Add remote group to finish. Name groups by location rather than content, since a group called "Rankings TV" stops being accurate once you switch it to the schedule. To delete a remote group, click the trash button on its card. Devices assigned to it show Display group missing until you reassign them.

Field Displays hold one group per field, created and named from the Fields setup step and tagged Field. Use them for the monitor at each field, where teams and referees watch the timer, match intro, and score review. Field groups only offer their own field's screens plus Logos and Blank. Renaming a field renames its group, and deleting the field removes the group. See Fields.

You can edit a group's Label in place on its card; the change saves when you click away. Field group labels come from the field name and cannot be edited here.

Assigning Devices

Authorize the TV or computer as a client device with the Display role first. See Client Devices. Until it belongs to a group, the device shows Awaiting assignment with its device name in large type so you can tell which screen is which from across the room.

To assign it, click Assign device under Assigned devices on the group's card and choose the device in Pick a device. The list only offers Display devices not already in this group. The device switches to the group's current screen right away. You can also work from the Display Devices section at the bottom of the page, which lists every Display device with a status dot (green for Assigned, gray for Unassigned) and a list to pick its group. If the section reads No Display-role devices authorized yet, no device has the Display role.

A Display device follows one group at a time. Assigning it to a new group removes it from the old one. To remove a device from a group without reassigning it, click the X on its name chip.

Choosing What to Show

Click the screen name under Now showing on a group's card to open the Choose a Screen dialog. Screens are listed under Event Screens and then under one heading per field, each with an icon and a short name. Click one and every device following the group switches within a moment. Field screens only appear once a field exists on the Fields setup step. The Slides page has live thumbnails of the selected slide and of what is currently on the audience group, so you can check a slide before taking it. For a description of every screen, see Display Screens.

A typical day looks like this: during qualification matches, leave the audience group on the main field's Intro/Timer and put Alliance Rankings on the pit TVs. Put Queueing near the queue line and Match Schedule in the pits. Switch to Alliance Selection and then Elimination Bracket in the afternoon, and use Logos during lunch.

Some screen changes happen without you:

• When a match is queued on a field, that field's group switches to the field's Intro/Timer screen.
• When an alliance match starts, every audience group switches to Intro/Timer for that field.
• When a scorekeeper clicks Show to teams in the scoring dialog, the field's groups switch to Score Review for that match. Done showing returns them to Intro/Timer.
• When a scorekeeper clicks Send to results displays after saving an alliance match, every audience group switches to Match Results for that match.

See Field Control and Scoring for the scoring dialog. If a screen does not switch when you expect it to, the device has lost its connection to the host computer; check that it is on the same network and reload the page.

Slides taken from the Slides or Award Scripts pages go to every audience group and to any remote group whose Now showing is Slides. Set your pit and hallway groups to Slides before the ceremony if you want them to follow along. See Award Ceremony.

Opening a Group in Any Browser

Each group card shows a Kiosk URL, a web address that shows the group's current screen full screen with no sidebar. Click Open to launch it in a new window on this device, or click the copy button and paste it into another browser or a streaming program's browser source. The device opening the address must already be authorized with any role. The address contains a short version of the group's label, so renaming the group changes it. Assigned Display devices move to the new address on their own; update any copies you saved elsewhere. If a device shows Display group not found, the address it opened does not match any group, so copy the Kiosk URL from the card again.

Every display screen has a small toolbar in the top-left corner. It fades out after 3 seconds and reappears when you move the mouse. Fullscreen toggles full screen. In the desktop application on the host computer, the button opens a menu listing each connected monitor as Fullscreen on Display 1 (1920×1080) and so on, plus Identify displays, which shows a number on each monitor. Pressing Esc leaves full screen in the desktop application window. Sound on and Sound off mute or unmute timer sounds on this screen. Browsers block sound until you interact with the page, so click the button once on any screen that should play match sounds, and leave pit and hallway screens muted so sounds only play at the fields.

Overlay and Chroma Key

Turn on Overlay (Enabled) for a group your streaming computer opens as a browser source. Match screens then render as compact graphics over a solid chroma key color so the streaming program can key out the background and show a camera feed behind them. Overlay also adds Blank to the screen picker, which clears the screen down to the chroma key color. Screens without an overlay form look the same either way, and slides marked Always show solid (never as an overlay) still fill the screen.

The color comes from Chroma Key Color on the Settings page. The default is a bright magenta, and Transparent removes the background for streaming programs that accept transparent browser sources. See Settings.

Important

Leave Overlay off for groups shown on ordinary TVs. On a TV the chroma key color appears as a solid magenta background behind the graphics.

For a description of every screen, see Display Screens, and for the small and large logos that appear on them, see Sponsors.