Recent Posts

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1
General Discussion / Time for a Pairs Bridge Playing App?
« Last post by Gravitino on May 13, 2020, 18:31:43 »
For some weeks I have thought that there will be no more face-to-face bridge until there is a vaccine. This week, Vallance said there may never be a vaccine. Bernard Magee said this morning that he believed club bridge is probably a year away.  We face a near-term future in which duplicate bridge with physical playing cards is impossible.

I was thinking: how about a bridge-playing app to supplement the BridgePal scoring program, in which all players have a tablet, rather than a hand of cards.  They would conduct the auction and play through that tablet, which would be linked to a server in the same room. So long as all the players are in the same room, within WiFi contact distance, they needn't be very close to the opponents or their partners.

Is such an app feasible?
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General Discussion / Re: LOCKDOWN
« Last post by Alaric on April 28, 2020, 16:30:06 »
Sounds interesting - thanks.
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General Discussion / LOCKDOWN
« Last post by Mirna on April 28, 2020, 12:13:25 »
If you play bridge in BBO tournaments, you can now extract the results from BBO and upload them to your website or NBO, with full scorecard and traveller details, and hand records, using our new BBO Extractor software. See here
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Release Infomation / BridgeDealer App Release
« Last post by johng on March 13, 2020, 19:14:12 »
There is a new app called BridgeDealer available for download from the link on this page of the BridgePal website (the app is not yet on the google play store). BridgeDealer can be installed on android devices running android version 4.4 or later.

BridgeDealer allows manual dealing of preset hands created by a random deal generator or downloaded from a website. It uses the phone or tablet's front camera to recognise the suit and value of each playing card in a deck. It directs the user whether to place the card in the N,S,W,or E hand. Since the device views the card from underneath the bottom of the deck, the user does not see which cards are being dealt to which hand. With practice, it is possible to deal a deck of cards in less than a minute. There is a link to a YouTube video demonstrating this on the page referenced above.

At the moment this is a standalone app but we are in the process of integrating it into the next release of BridgePal. This may be of interest to clubs that do not have a dealing machine, currently shuffle hands at the table before Round 1, and then manually record them via BridgePal. There will be a Deal button on the contract entry screen which can be used to invoke BridgeDealer in order to deal the current board before it is played at the first table. The app also provides a Read function, which will be able to read a manually shuffled deck of cards into BridgePal.

BridgeDealer is a further development and enhancement of an earlier app called Bridge Card Dealing, which was developed by Frank Wolf of Germany for PlayBridgeWorld. It is largely a rewrite of the original app, including enhancements to Frank's card recognition module. I have taken over development of the app with agreement that it can be distributed free of charge to users.

I will not be issuing further release notes for this app until it is integrated with BridgePal, though I may upload new versions. I would be interested to receive any user feedback by email, for example which makes of card it can or cannot read. The following is a selection of card brands which have been tested with the app, and which were successfully recognised:

- Carta Mundi
- Jannersten bar coded (the app reads the symbols, not the bar codes)
- Piatnik
- Mr Bridge
- Waddingtons
- English Bridge Union
- PlayBridgeWorld
- AL Fleming
- Bridgemate
- Hong Kong

John
5
Support / Results missing when using EBUScore
« Last post by Mirna on March 13, 2020, 09:50:34 »
From recent emails::

User question:
We had an 8 1/2 tables, played a Mitchell, forgot to input arrow switch so one of our members who uses EBU Score updated the movement. All ok on the tablets and final result shown ok but there was nothing in EBU Score, just names. How can we recover the scores from the Tablets ?
It was EBU Stratified pairs so if we can?t recover the scores there will be a lot of annoyed and disappointed members .

John answer:
I don't think anything will have been lost. Whoever made the changes in EBU Score probably forgot to return to the scoring screen in EBU Score. EBU Score only reads results from the wireless database (which is on the PC) while it is in the BridgePal scoring screen. You just need to restart the event in EBU Score and it will read the results from the wireless database. If it doesn't, then use the "Read All Results" function. You don't need to have the tablets connected in order to do this, as no data is stored in the tablets.
If you need further guidance, let me know.

User:
Brilliant, many thanks, something else I?ve learnt !

John answer:
Great ! By the way, I would try to avoid making changes to the movement once BridgePal Server has been started - we wouldn't recommend it as the server may not cope with all types of change that are possible, particularly adding or deleting tables. It would also be problematic if some of the boards have already been played and the change in movement affects where they are placed. Assuming any setup errors are detected early on, it's best to stop wireless scoring, define a new event, then start wireless scoring and have people re-enter results for any boards played so far (hopefully, only one or two). After you start the new event on the PC, BridgePal will automatically switch to it when the user taps OK on the current screen - they will find themselves back on the start screen again.

If you think a pair may turn up late you can include an extra pair when you set up the movement. If they don't turn up, just enter "No Play" on the BridgePal for the boards at the tables where they would have played.
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Support / Re: Problem resetting the system
« Last post by DaveA on February 20, 2020, 10:06:03 »
John

Thank you for your help.  After carefully reading your notes, we came to the conclusion that we must have let the laptop hibernate when we stopped the trial event, rather than shutting it down properly.  We have paid attention to this point, and have successfully run two club events.  We are very pleased with the system.

Thank you

Dave
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Support / Re: Names not displaying
« Last post by DHDunford on February 17, 2020, 17:28:16 »
Thanks, Mirna. I'm not sure which part of your advice did the trick - or in which order I had to do things - but I've now got names showing on the tablet. So, thank you very much.
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Support / Re: Names not displaying
« Last post by Mirna on February 16, 2020, 21:31:17 »
Did you set up the correct location of the BMPlayerDB.mdb file in the Admin Tab of the BridgePal Scoring screen in EBUScore ? It should be C:\BridgePal\xdb\BMPlayerDB.mdb. Also see BridgePal/EBUScore Guide (Initial Setup) on www.bridgepal.co.uk

You also need to make sure that in the BCS settings (BridgeMate II tab) "Name Source" should be set to "Player & EBU Names Table", or just "EBU Names Table" if just using national ids. If you check the BridgePal Server Settings screen after starting wireless scoring it should match this. BridgePal should then display the names corresponding to the national ids providing that the BMPlayerDB.mdb database has been populated by EBUScore. To do this on EBUScore click on "Player Database", then "Download EBU Database" after starting EBU Score.

Mirna
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Support / Names not displaying
« Last post by DHDunford on February 16, 2020, 21:18:26 »
I'm just trying out BridgePal with EBUScore, with which I regret I'm not particularly familiar. I've downloaded the EBU player database into EBUScore and am entering the EBU number for the player on the tablet. This registers within EBUScore and shows the name of the player along with the EBU number. But the tablet just shows "noname noname". Everything else, so far, seems to be working OK.

Any suggestions to where I've gone wrong?

Thanks.

10
Club Tips / Newmarket BC
« Last post by Mirna on February 10, 2020, 11:36:19 »
Email from Newmarket BC 2019:

Just to let you know that Newmarket BC have given the go ahead for your wireless scoring and I'll have them configured in the next two weeks.
We shall be using Amazon Fire 7 tablets, a new 179GBP HP laptop and a redundant Netgear router. For an 8 table set around 700GBP and a few hours of hard work setting it up!!
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