Lesson 1: What Tournament Manager Is

Tournament Manager Overview

Tournament Manager is a program you install on a computer and run at the event itself. It is not a website, and once it is set up, it does not need to be online to do most of its work. Your whole event lives in a single tournament file on that computer — the team list, the schedule, every score, the rankings, and the awards are all stored in one place.

That computer is the main one. It holds the schedule, the scores, and the rankings, and it connects out to the displays, each of which runs on its own computer, usually over a cable:

• Audience display — the match timer and the game sounds
• Pit display — current rankings, for teams to check between matches
• Field display — the teams up next, on a screen beside a competition field

All three of these displays are optional, though most events want an audience display, since that is where the timer lives. A small event can run everything from a single laptop; a larger one adds a computer for each screen.

At a VEX V5 event, Tournament Manager is wired to the Field as well. That is how it starts and stops robots at the right moments rather than only keeping time.

Event Qualifying Criteria lists Tournament Manager among the requirements for an official qualifying event. You download it from the Admin dashboard on events.vex.com. It becomes available once you have earned your Event Partner certification and are an approved Event Partner.

What You Need on Hand

Here is the equipment an event needs for each part of Tournament Manager's job:

• Scoring the event. One computer running Tournament Manager, at the head table, plus a printer for match lists and reports.
• Showing information to the room. One screen per display, and a computer to drive each one. That computer does not have to be a laptop: Tournament Manager can run its audience, pit, and field displays on a Raspberry Pi, a small single-board computer that can be used to keep costs down. If you run only one display, make it the audience display.
• Scoring from devices instead of paper. Tablets or mobile devices for your Scorekeeper Referees, running the VEX TM Mobile app, and a wireless network for them to connect over.
• Running the Fields at a VEX V5 event. One Smart Field Controller for every Match Field and every Robot Skills Field, each connected by USB to a computer running Tournament Manager. The V5 Smart Field Control System section of the Global Robotics Library covers ordering, firmware, and wiring.
• Connecting it together. Everything above talks to the main computer over a network.
  • Hardwire anything that would stop your event if its connection dropped, like the Fields and the main audience display.
  • Wi-Fi is fine for the rest, including the pit display, and it is the better choice anywhere a cable would cross a walkway and become a tripping hazard.

What the Software Does

Across the day you planned in Chapter 4 and ran in Chapter 5, Tournament Manager is responsible for:

• Before the day — holding your team list, pulled from your event listing.
• Check-in and inspection — tracking which teams have arrived and which have passed inspection.
• Qualification Matches — building the match schedule from the time blocks and cycle time you set, once check-in shows who is actually there, then printing match lists, running the match timer, holding scores as they are entered, and updating rankings as matches are saved.
• Robot Skills — holding Driving Skills and Autonomous Coding Skills attempts and scores, and keeping skills rankings separate from match rankings.
• Finals — creating Finals Matches from the rankings at a VEX IQ event, or recording Alliance Selection and building the Elimination Match bracket at a VEX V5 event.
• Awards — holding your award list and winners, and putting award slides on the audience display during the ceremony.
• After the last match — producing your reports and uploading results to events.vex.com.

The Excellence Award Candidates Report

If your event offers judged awards, your Judge Advisor needs the Excellence Award Candidates report before deliberations can finish. Tournament Manager can produce it once Qualification Matches end and the rankings are final.

It sits with the Award reports under the Reports menu, in two versions:

• Excellence Award Candidates – Combined — one list for the whole event.
• Excellence Award Candidates Grouped By Age — separate lists by grade level, for a blended event offering an Excellence Award at each level.

Getting the report to your Judge Advisor is your job as the Event Partner. Ask your Tournament Manager Operator to print the report as soon as Qualification Matches end, then hand it over. You do not evaluate what is on it. The decision belongs to the judges; your part is making sure they have what they need.

Tournament Manager Resources in the Global Library

On event day, your Tournament Manager Operator runs the software. It is not a certified role. Most Event Partners fill it with a volunteer who is comfortable with technology or has used Tournament Manager at a competition. If possible, also recruit a backup volunteer who can cover breaks. Install the software and build the event file with your operator ahead of time, and test the equipment before the event whenever possible.

The VEX Tournament Manager Software User Guide is the reference for everything the software does — setup, running the day, awards, and the advanced topics you may never need. It is a downloadable PDF, and it is also built into the software once you have it.

The guide and additional resources live in the VEX Tournament Manager section of the Global Robotics Library:

• Installing VEX Tournament Manager — where to find the download, and why to get the current version before every event.
• Installing VEX TM Mobile and the VEX TM Mobile User Guide — the companion app for scoring from a tablet or mobile device, and its user guide.
• Tournament Manager for Raspberry Pi — running displays on low-cost hardware.

Field control has a section of its own, V5 Smart Field Control System, covering ordering, firmware, wiring, and displays. (Note: This section is the current source for field control at a VEX V5 event. The hardware examples in the user guide show older equipment.)

Next, you will learn how your Tournament Manager file and your event listing on events.vex.com exchange information.