Means to inform the tablets

[madduck]

Now that MQTT works quite nicely, would you consider opening up the "reverse channel", i.e. let me publish data to the tablets?

I could think of two use-cases right away:

1. Start a new match on a tablet. I think you already allowed this with FCM, but that seems to be broken, and doesn't work offline anyway. If a tablet receives a message with a new match, then it should prompt the user whether to start that match. Obviously, if there is currently a match being scored, then maybe that shouldn't happen, and the match can simply be queued? In an ideal world, the users don't even have to browse the feeds, because they do make mistakes, and I'd prefer to send the next match to the tablets from TC.
2. Inform the user of an error, e.g. if the wrong match is started, possibly even forcing them to abort that match by loading the planned next match.

What do you think?

[obbimi]

First version. Give e.g. something like this a try

mqttx pub -t 'tptools/Squore/VYB5SX-1-C07/newMatch' -m '{ "players": { "A": "X1", "B":"Y2"}, "countries": {"A": "BEL", "B": "GER"}, "colors": { "A": "#ffff00", "B": "
#00ffff" }, "server": "B" }'

App will accept the match only if no match in progress. If the pub reached the app, the result (accept match or not) is published back onto tptools/Squore/newMatch

[madduck]

Oh man, this is opening up a flurry of possibilities!

Am I right in assuming that a finished match is not a match in progress?

I am now envisioning a flow: TCBoard (which I have yet to show you!) tracks a match, and when a match is finished, it prompts TC to enter the result into TournamentSoftware. Once done, the next game is dragged on court. tptools can actually pick up on that and react by pushing a new match to the tablet, starting the timers. When the previous players toweled off and are ready to ref the next match, the tablet will already be all set up to go. That would be amazing. In combination with kiosk mode, that would eliminate all possibilities for the players to screw up or get confused.

Might it make sense to use remoteControl instead as the endpoint? I am just thinking there might be more ideas and more commands in the future…

I understand your limitation that no match must be in progress, else a stray packet could really mess things up. The remoteControl endpoint should certainly ignore retained messages. At least in my scenario, we need not worry about unauthorized use of these remote control functions, and building authentication/authorization into this would totally blow the roof off.

And yet, it may be helpful to actually force-push a match. To mitigate problems of this powerful technique, it might already just be enough to display a prompt to the ref, maybe even with a timeout and default-yes: "A new match is being pushed to this tablet, do you accept?"

I'd probably prefer a different UI than just tapping the screen, as that is too close to normal operation in Squore. Maybe the ref should have to swipe right/left on the notice?

And it will happen that the person does the wrong thing. "Undo", if that is possible, should restore the state prior to the prompt.

This is incredibly exciting. Thank you for your hard and relentless work, @obbimi!

[obbimi]

Small improvement. An informative message can be send to the device. Two examples of what is now possible

Publish a match/Push a match to a device

deviceId=ABC123
topic="double-yellow/Squore/${deviceId}/remoteControl"
mqttx pub -t $topic -m '{ "players": { "A": "X1", "B":"Y2"} }'

Send an informational message to a device

deviceId=ABC123
topic="double-yellow/Squore/${deviceId}/remoteControl"
duration=60
jsonMsg=`cat<<EO
{ "Message" : "Hi from remote. This message will remain for ${duration} seconds, or next message"
, "Duration": ${duration} 
}
EO`
echo $jsonMsg
echo $jsonMsg | mqttx pub -t $topic --stdin

[madduck]

I cannot get this to work:

mosquitto_pub -h 172.21.22.1 -t double-yellow/Squore/KRVCHH-1-C06/remoteControl -m '{ "Message": "test", "Duration": 5 }'

and neither using the device ID without the custom suffice, i.e. just KRVCHH. Nothing happens.

PS: How about a simple ping command?

[madduck]

It helps to fix the ACLs. Sorry, I got messages working.