TV Console

Our "TV Console" is a simple way to get titles onto local TV and big screens. You can display meeting timetables, start lists and results. The solution is a single web page, designed to have a transparent background so it can be overlaid on live action.

It's available on https://tv.opentrack.run/

History

This was conceived as a low budget way to get titles on the TV. Thanks to Matt Quine of Vinco for giving us the initial requirements and using it at the Loughborough International in 2017. It was written by Tom Conlon, and he has rewritten and modernised it in 2020. Despite minimal investment, it made it as far as the BBC during Night of the 10,000, and Maltese television.

We see this as a valuable piece of technology which could grow without limit, making expensive TV hardware and operators unnecessary. We can potentially have scaled output for many screen sizes, from full TV to dedicated boards for field events; and update it with live info with websockets.

Installing a local copy

These commands should get you going:

hg clone https://hg.reportlab.com/hg-otr/ottv
cd ottv/src
npm install
npm run copybuild    # builds a copy under htdocs
npm run start   # runs a local server on port 7000

Guide to the code and deployment

This is written in vanilla Javascript ES6. We assume anyone using it can choose a modern browser.

However, we do use rollup. So the source code can be broken down nicely, and an output javascript file is produced by the build process which includes needed dependencies. The build process will catch gross syntax errors.

Start reading the code at app\js\app.js.

It uses less, a CSS preprocessor.

The built output under htdocs includes and index.html and a bundle.js.

Update the deployed website

To update changes to tv.opentrack.run click here.