Coaches (ChronoFEED-COACH)

What this panel is for

Where: menu SessionCoaches (ChronoFEED-COACH)…

A coach requests access to their athletes only once per athlete: the tablet shows them the athletes of the current session in FINISH, they tick theirs and send an access request; you accept it (fully or partly) and the tablet receives these athletes at once. Afterwards, it receives their training sessions from any FINISH that accepts ChronoFEED-COACH (the same athlete is recognised everywhere by a key derived from their identity), live during the session, then the final version, and catches up on everything it missed at each connection. Nothing goes through the Internet: the tablet and FINISH talk over the arena's network, encrypted.

The option and the settings

• Accept ChronoFEED-COACH (unticked by default): ticked, FINISH listens for the tablets and announces itself on the network. Unticked, no tablet can connect; those that were connected receive a refusal and are disconnected (FINISH asks for confirmation).
• Port: the TCP port, encrypted (TLS), 8216 by default. The Windows firewall must let it in, as well as UDP port 8217 for the announcements.
• Group gap (s): two skaters who cross the line less than this gap apart (and so on, in a chain) form a group; 1.0 s by default.
• Under the option: the state of the service (port, certificate fingerprint of this station). An orange banner warns if saving races or laps is stopped (Settings: without it, nothing is kept or sent), or if the session's activity is not Training.

Access requests

1. Who is asking: the device name, the coach's name (set in their app), and the holder of their ChronoFEED-COACH licence, which FINISH checked (signed: the device cannot make it up), with the licence fingerprint and the device's address.
2. The time left: without an answer within 5 minutes, the request expires and nothing changes (the tablet says so).
3. The requested athletes, all ticked at first: untick those you refuse. Only athletes of the current session, with a complete identity and whose record has Data visible to their coaches, can be requested.
4. Accept the selection (the ticked ones are granted, the others refused), Accept all, Refuse all. Close without answering: the request stays in the panel until it expires.

The window opens by itself as soon as a request arrives, whether the Coaches panel is open or not. In the panel, on the left, the list Coaches' access requests shows those waiting (who, how many athletes, time left); Answer… (or a double-click) reopens the window. The tablet receives the answer at once: the granted athletes (identity and key) are added to its own, then their sessions are sent. A request is tied to the tablet's connection: if it closes, or if the coach cancels it, it disappears without changing anything. A tablet has only one pending request at a time (a new one replaces the old one), at most one every 10 seconds; at most 20 requests wait at the same time. An accepted access stays valid the following times. Step by step: Pair a coach's tablet.

Security: your acceptance establishes trust

• Before accepting, you see who is asking: the holder of the COACH licence (checked by FINISH, offline), the device name, the coach, the address. Your acceptance is the consent: only grant the athletes you know this coach coaches (if in doubt, ask them to show their tablet).
• Before any access, the tablet only sees the name, club and colours of the session's athletes, never their date of birth or key; it only receives the identity and key of the athletes you grant.
• The tablet keeps this station's certificate when you accept its request, then requires it at each connection: a station pretending to be this one is refused. A reinstalled station (new certificate) must accept a new request to be recognised.
• The tablet's ChronoFEED-COACH licence is checked first of all (refused if invalid or expired), and nothing happens if Accept ChronoFEED-COACH is unticked. A lost or stolen tablet: Revoke.
• A ChronoFEED-COACH app older than version 2.0.23, which would try an old pairing (6-character code or QR code), receives “Update ChronoFEED-COACH”; it keeps receiving the sessions of the athletes it already has.

The tablets

The list: tablet name, holder of the COACH licence, state, last contact, number of athletes granted by this station. States: connected, live, connected, paired, recognised (paired on another FINISH), revoked.

• Resend to the tablet…: all the training sessions of its athletes since a date (YYYY-MM-DD), right away if it is connected, otherwise at its next connection. As a backup: catching up is automatic.
• Revoke: the tablet is cut off on the spot and refused at each connection; Reinstate the tablet accepts it again.
• Forget the tablet: it and the list of its athletes (withdrawn accesses included) are removed from this station (the log stays). It is still served for the athletes it already knows (their key is enough); to get others, the coach sends a new access request.
• Refresh: rereads the list and the log.

The athletes of the selected tablet

The athletes granted to the selected tablet by this station: name, birth, country, club, and a note (“granted on …”, “access withdrawn: nothing more is sent to this tablet from this computer”, or ““Data visible to their coaches” unticked on their record: nothing is sent any more”).

• Withdraw access: nothing more of the selected athlete is sent to this tablet from this station, even if it already knows their key; what it already received stays on the device. The row stays, in italics, and the tablet sees “access withdrawn by FINISH” in the session list.
• Give access back: the athlete is sent to the tablet again (next sessions; Resend to the tablet… for earlier ones). A new accepted request gives it back too.

To stop sending an athlete to any tablet: untick Data visible to their coaches on their record.

The log

Each connection (licence fingerprint, never the licence), each athlete list read by a tablet, each access request (coach, requested athletes) and how it ended (accepted, partly, refused, expired, cancelled), each access withdrawn or given back, each session sent (number of athletes, session; live, catch-up or final), refusal of a connection (invalid or expired licence, revoked tablet), old app, revocation, resend, change of the option.

What the tablet receives

For each granted athlete: their identity (first name, last name, date of birth, country, club, sex) and the colours of their record (the tablet shows them in these colours). For each training session (race with Training activity, free training included), and for each of ITS athletes, each lap:

• the lap time; a suspect lap (about twice the normal duration: missed passing; or much too short: double read) is marked and excluded from the calculations;
• its place in the group at the line and the size of the group, the gap to the one in front and to the leader, whether it led (and the number of laps led);
• the overtakes won and lost within the group, apart from those of a lapped skater (very different pace);
• the times at the intermediate loops, if any.

Races and laps must be saved in the database (Settings): that is where FINISH reads the sessions back, live as well as when catching up.