Background:

It's really neat how one thing leads to the next! I originally added the FTP status upload feature to my contesting software with Field Day in mind, so that club members could see how their Field Day station was doing in real time when they were away from the Field Day site.

Before long, I started getting requests to add the status upload feature to all the contest programs. Soon folks, including our own club, the Northeast Maryland Amateur Radio Contest Society, started enjoying seeing how each club member was doing in other contests too. It really adds to the fun, camaraderie and competitive juices on contest weekends!

We quickly realized that instead of browsing to each individual upload to see how our club members are doing one by one, it would be even nicer to have all the essential information on one web page, with a current grand total club score displayed in real time! That thought was the genesis of this Club Score Processor software, which retrieves the pertinent information from each of the individual club member's web uploads, combines it and presents a total score and leader board! Most of us keep the page displayed on a corner of our desktops all contest weekend!

In short, only one member of your club needs to run the processor. Each station in your group automatically uploads a page of their current total, every 3 minutes. The processor retrieves each page from the Internet, adds up the individual totals and publishes a grand total for your club.

Here's an example of our actual club page that this Club Score Processor creates at the conclusion of 2015 November Sweepstakes SSB:

The total page will refresh automatically every 60 seconds, as long as one of your club members keeps this program running during the contest (it's okay to close and start the program again later if needed). When the program is closed, the web page will remain, but of course it will not have new data to display.

There are lots more details on how our club has really amped up our contest weekend fun, operating individually from home but sharing the contest virtually together in real time are here!

Our club also put together this video that helps explain how we contest together virtually in real time from our individual stations:

Registration:

Club Score Processor is free!

Setup:

Setting up Club Score Processor is easy. Only one club member needs to run it. If one individual in your club has ever put a web page up using an FTP program or basic web publishing tool, or they want to learn now, you'll be fine.

Here are the five easy steps for the one person in your group coordinating the Club Score Processor (no one else in your club need do this).

1. Obtain web hosting space for your club (if your club doesn't already have some for their web site). At last check, Directnic has hosting starting at $2.48 per month and GoDaddy has hosting starting at $2.99 per month. You can use this same hosting for many contests throughout the year, not just Field Day (as well as a web site for your club or personally).

2.A If the club member is running N3FJP Software: Start the contest software (not the processor yet). Click Settings > Web Contest Upload Status > N3FJP Formatted. Then enter the following four parameters:

- Your website FTP URL (This is basic information that any hosting site will provide their customers, so they know how to publish pages to their hosting space. Please see below for the formatting of commonly used services.).

- Your website FTP User Name

- Your website FTP Password

- The file name you want your contest program file to have on the web site, such as N3FJP-contest.html (remember, some sites are case sensitive).

- Click Upload Now. If everything works properly, you will see a message 226 Transfer Complete on the bottom status bar. With a successful transfer, you should now be able to browse to your upload using your Internet browser. If so, you have test data to work with and you are ready to start configuring the Club Score Processor.

Here's an example of my individual upload page at the conclusion of November Sweepstakes SSB (note the total score and Q total here are parsed and displayed in the first image above by the Club Score Processor):

2.B Or, if you are using any program that will upload to Contest Online Score (including N3FJP Software, N1MM, etc.):

- Enable your upload to Contest Online Score. If you are using N3FJP, instead of using step 2A, you would click Settings > Web Contest Status Upload > Other Online Sites > Enable Score Distributor. The advantage of this option is you do not have to issue sign on credentials for your club's web space, as you will be parsing directly from Contest On Line.

3. Start the Club Score Processor and enter the needed parameters. If you are parsing from Contest Online Score, click Check to visit the web page to obtain the URL for the current contest. For the individual uploads, only enter COL in the URL field for any calls you wish to parse from Contest On Line.

Use a file name like totals.html for the grand total page. Then click Upload Now. With success, you should be able to browse to your totals page with your Internet browser. If so, you now have the Club Score Processor up and running! This is the URL everyone in your club will monitor for your club's real time score, so be sure to e-mail this URL to everyone in your club.

4. E-mail each individual in your club the information in Step 2. Have them click Settings > Web Contest Upload Status > N3FJP Formatted, enter their settings and do an upload. The settings will be identical for each club member, with the exception of the their file name. The software will default to their CALL-contest.html, so it should be very easy for each club member to get their upload going. Please see below for a sample e-mail template that I use for our club.

5. Add the additional club member's URLs to the Club Score Processor. Remember, just enter COL for any club member from which you will be parsing from Contest On Line. You will see the additional stations listed on the totals.html page with each upload.

That's all there is to it!

Other Notes and Tips:

A couple other miscellaneous notes and tips....

Here are some actual FTP URL examples that users have sent along, demonstrating how to format the FTP URL for various services (if the hosting service you use is not listed, please send your info along!):

Directnic (note that public_html must be inserted)
ftp://n3fjp.com/public_html/fd/

GoDaddy (note that you must use the IP address for your hosting space and append :21/)
ftp://107.180.51.43:21/fieldday/

InMotionHosting
ftp://narstexas.org/

Our club's privately hosted site (we have a separate folder with its own login credentials called members on our nemarc.org site)
ftp://members.nemarc.org/

When you close the program with upload enabled, it will write one more upload with a note indicating that the uploader is currently off line.

Not every club member works every contest. Since you only want data to total for the current contest, I've added optional filter criteria for the upload title and date. In the case of the title, just enter any portion of a string that is required, such as CQ-WW. That's not always enough filtering, as someone may have worked the SSB version of CQ-WW, but isn't working the current CW version you'd like to track this weekend. As a second filter, you can also enter a date in the date field, so that any upload date must be equal to or later than that date. If you leave the filter fields blank they are ignored.

If the destination directory doesn't already exist on your web site, you will have to create the directory with your web site publishing tool before this software is able to upload.

If your web site host uses a different port than 21 for your uploads, include the port in your URL. For example, if your are uploading your file to a directory named fd and your site uses port 7200, instead of this:

ftp://yoursite.com/fd/

Format it like this:

ftp://yoursite.com:7200/fd/

Also, some hosts require public_html in the upload path, along the lines of this: ftp://yoursite.com/public_html/fd/

If you've never published a web page before, don't start here. Instead, using an FTP program, publish a test page to your web hosting space manually so that you can figure out all of your upload settings more easily. Once you have the settings working in your FTP program and you've verified you are successfully able to upload files to your hosting space, you can transfer your settings here.

I'm not able to extend support to include teaching folks how to set up hosting sites and upload files, but you can Google the process for more details.

Sample E-mail Template:

If you are going to have everyone upload to Contest On Line, you only have to ask them to enable the upload in their respective software. If you are going to have them upload to your club's web space from N3FJP Software, here is the e-mail template that I use for our club that has worked well, so please pass this along to the person coordinating the Club Score Processor, to use for your group. Just change the bolded values, which will be specific to your group, as needed:

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Hi Bob,

Thanks for joining in! Setting up the web contest upload in N3FJP Software is easy and only takes a minute. From the menu options in the contesting software, click Settings > Web Upload Contest Status > N3FJP HTML Formatted. Then copy and paste these settings (case matters):

FTP URL:
ftp://yoursite.org/

User Name:
xxxxxxx

Password:
xxxxxxxx

File Name on Website:
W1AW-contest.html

Leave all the other values to default and click Upload Now at the lower right. The status of your upload will be displayed at the bottom. If all goes well, it will include words along the lines of "Transfer Complete".

I can't add you to the processor on my end until you do a successful upload, so once you do, please let me know and I'll update the total processor. Then you will see your call sign in the list here:

http://www.nemarc.org/members/totals.html

Thanks and 73!
Your Call

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Documentation for Logging Software Developers!

Good news for folks running logging programs other than N3FJP, who would like to see their scores included in the real time club total! With version 1.2 of Club Score Processor, I've added code to check the uploaded file for an alternative XML format that is very easy for other developers to upload and for Club Score Processor to parse. Just ask the developer for your logging software to include your current statistics, along the lines of the following example in an upload:

<CONTESTTITLE>N3FJP ARRL-FIELD-DAY Status</CONTESTTITLE>
Club Score Processor can be optionally set to filter for specific case insensitive strings in the title, such as Field, CQWW, IARU, etc., to make sure only logs active for the current contest are added to the club total.

<STATION_CALLSIGN>N3FJP</STATION_CALLSIGN>

<DATEUTC>2020/06/27</DATEUTC> UTC date of current upload.

<TIMEUTC>14:28:20</TIMEUTC> UTC time of current upload.

<SCORE>1832</SCORE> Current score.

<TOTALQSOS>1683</TOTALQSOS> Current QSO total.

<RATEHR20MIN>66</RATEHR20MIN> QSO rate per hour over the last 20 minutes. Number of QSOs logged in the last 20 minutes X 3.

<RATEHR60MIN>72</RATEHR60MIN> Number of QSOs logged over the last 60 minutes.

<FREQ>21.35000</FREQ> Current frequency in MHz

The above can be displayed in an HTML page, remarked out in undisplayed HTML, or even uploaded as a simple .txt file. As long as the XML values are somewhere in the uploaded document, in any order, Club Score Processor will find and parse it! The default upload frequency from the contest software is every 3 minutes.

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