MERCS

Introduction

Entries/results software for UK Badge or Championship events (or any age-class based event); or relay events. Handles EMIT, SportIdent or conventional control cards. Special facilities and/or scoring for JK, British Championships, BSOA Score Championships, British Schools Orienteering Champinships, Harvester Trophy amongst others.

MERCS is capable of Random Allocation of Start Times (ROAST).

Commentary modules (Link and Eiderdown) handle input from controls either by direct serial line, radio receiver (serial input) or via internet (for GPProjects Eider unit - requires internet access, e.g. mobile broadband dongle). Commentary module View handles display of punches through control, course leaders and scrolling results. Ask Michael Napier for details. MERCS has a 'View' option to view or scroll results.

This software is available as part of a results service or by annual licence. Please contact Michael Napier if you want a results service or if you want to use MERCS.

Installation

For a quick quide to installation and running MERCS see Installation Guide

Download

Install files

Update files.

Download, then use WinZip or similar to extract contained files into the MERCS installation folder (e.g. "c:\mercs" or "c:\shared\mercs") or the MERCS files folder (e.g. "c:\mercs\files" or "c:\shared\mercs\files"). Please note that by default Windows extracts files into a subfolder of the same name as the zip files.

MERCS v3.16r update files uploaded 03/10/19 replacing v3.16e and other releases. v3.16r various fixes especially correctly handling manual punches where same control code appears twice.
MERCS v3.16e update files uploaded 20/09/18 replacing v3.16 and other releases (uploaded since 24/08/18). v3.16e adds SWOA Championship report; v3.16d fixes Fabian4 export for Caddihoe Chase; v3.16b fixes column swop in Fabian export file

Licencing

A single licence covers the use of both MERCS and Colour (and ancilliary programmes such as Link, View, Live0, LiveFTP). The annual licence is £50 to £100 plus VAT depending on the Club's BOF membership numbers. The licence includes telephone and e-mail support and you may request specific enhancements.

PDF Support

MERCS (and Colour) now supports PDF output. For Windows Vista, 7 or 8 please contact Michael Napier. For Windows XP, two extra components are required: dll0611.zip and library7.app (if browser won't let you download library7.app, download library7.zip and use WinZip to unpack library7.app [do NOT unpack dll0611.zip]). Download and save both into the same folder as mercs.exe (or clr.exe). Then, in Maintenance, select PDF and Install from the Settings menu. Thereafter, in any report window showing a PDF button you should get a PDF output for that report. However, please view any such report in Adobe PDF Reader to check that the report has created properly: especially check that landscape reports are not cut off at the 8 inch margin. Please forward any faulty reports to Michael Napier.

Time Synchronisation

I strongly recommend NetTime as a simple and suitable SNTP client to ensure that networked PCs are synchronised to GMT/BST (as appropriate for time of year) and to each other. See NetTime.doc for further details.

Michael Napier tel TBA,