TargetTalk

Posting this topic came to mind as I read the posts in the topics MATCH AND FINALS USING THE INTERNET I, II, & III.

As soon as I started looking into scanning and scoring systems I wondered why no one has thought of starting an open source competition database similar to Orion Scoring Systems.

I don't have a problem buying the software, or buying the required targets. But the annual fees? Ugh.

If every target printing company paid a small royalty (a couple of pennies on every target) surely there would be enough income to host and maintain an open website and database and encourage the most clubs and individuals possible to join as possible.

An opensource database and web front end could be used by all the different shooting forums to run their own competitions and servers could share results.

My IT knowledge is better than some, but unfortunately it has been a long time since I last programmed (or scripted) and I have no HTML or database experience. But it seems every hobby or group I get involved with I see the possibilities if associations, clubs, and individuals pooled their resources to create some kind of common IT infrastructure.

The simplest of my observations is the failure of organisations to provide services hosting, design, and webmaster service for club webpages. Mind you, I've seen a number of national associations that can't even seem to get a decent website for themselves together.

Looks like I owe my apologies to Orion Scoring Systems. Their targets are cheaper than the Canadian Shooting Federation of Canada targets.

I'm not sure any company would be happy to pay royalties to maintain such a system. That said, I think your idea is brilliant and deserves exploring. Something like the TargetScan app integrated into a database like you propose would make things very inexpensive. This way it might be more feasible to find a way to pay for it. User subscriptions, maybe?

Try to get Target Scan to score a tight 5X clean bull on a 50yd/ meter target. I have and it will not score correctly. It give a 30-3x score every time.
Ed

Ricardo wrote:I'm not sure any company would be happy to pay royalties to maintain such a system. That said, I think your idea is brilliant and deserves exploring. Something like the TargetScan app integrated into a database like you propose would make things very inexpensive. This way it might be more feasible to find a way to pay for it. User subscriptions, maybe?

Any company selling targets is a the mercy of the associations and federations that determine whether a target is "official" or not.

The Orion Scoring Systems just use a bar code to identify the correct targets.

And considering the price of TargetScan compared to the Orion Scan software and annual fees, the only thing lacking is the ability to run local and central servers.

With a nation wide system supported and encouraged by national bodies, how many really good shooters might be discovered and be encouraged or helped to go to higher level competitions?

efoleyjr wrote:Try to get Target Scan to score a tight 5X clean bull on a 50yd/ meter target. I have and it will not score correctly. It give a 30-3x score every time.
Ed

I would take that up the application developer. Can you not add the missing two shots manually?

I have no experience with either the Orion system, TargetScan, or any other scanning and scoring system. I tried to start using a plotting app where you enter each shot manually and found it too tedious.

The TargetScan developer seems very open to suggestions and improving the product from what I've read.

I guess that the degree of sophistication expected of the proposed system would depend on whether we're talking about a grass-roots, user-developed effort or an association-sanctioned official thing. I think the former path has a better chance of getting done than trying to get a large organization involved. It would also have a better chance of staying open source.

This is all possible with ordinary targets using computer vision (OpenCV background subtraction) to digitise a target and map using polar coords.

3000€ netto per month and I quit my job to be able to do this :-)

P.s.
Here is my app for Android for 25m scoring with no extra functions except CSV-Export. It is my developer preview to test the idea. There is no google play version of it.

It is for 25m events on paper targets... for register keeper. Who helped at 25m shooting ranges knows what I mean. Typically every series is announced and register keeper writes scores down. Later score-cards must be entered manually in Excel... or any other software. We want to skip this step and enter scores using app. Final step is to import CSV in Excel (in our case).