Old Project Write-up: Relay Tracker
Relay Tracker is an AutoIt3 application I created in my senior year of high school. It was made for one specific purpose: To computerize all the manual data entry involved in running the school’s annual 24-Hour Relay Challenge (a community fund-raising event that is pretty much exactly what it sounds like). For some reason, I still dive back into the code once a year to make small fixes or feature additions, though at this point it’s pretty stable and bug-free.
The external display screen (clipped from full height)
Relay Tracker uses a flexible client/server model that can accomodate multiple runner check-in stations, all synchronized to a central mileage database. It also has an “external display” feature, visible above, that uses a secondary monitor hooked up to any check-in station to display a live “scoreboard”, with team rankings easily readable from a distance.
Auto-What?
AutoIt3 is a general-purpose Windows scripting language focused on automation and ease of deployment. It wasn’t the first language I learned, but it was the first in which I wrote applications that were used by other people. While it has a number of fundamental limitations that can be annoying, its sheer ease of use and ability to create whiz-bang GUI apps with minimal effort made it a good learning language for me.
So where’s the download?
Currently, there is none. I don’t wish to broadly distribute the Relay Tracker code; if I did, it would only serve as an example of how not to write applications in AutoIt. The architecture is rather convoluted and difficult to maintain, though I’m sure it made perfect sense to my high-school self years ago.
At any rate, if you’re really interested in getting a copy of Relay Tracker, contact me and I’ll see what I can do for you.