Getting Started Guide

Welcome to Trusty Track! This guide will walk you through the initial setup and help you create your first race event.

1. Welcome to Trusty Track

Trusty Track is designed to make running a Pinewood Derby race smooth and enjoyable for organizers, racers, and spectators alike. This application handles everything from racer check-in and automated scheduling to real-time race execution and audience leaderboards.

This guide is written for a Cub Scout pack, since that is who most people installing it are — but nothing about the app requires one. A school, a club, or anyone running the same kind of race day can rename "Den" and "Pack" to their own words; see the words on screen.

2. Opening the App

Trusty Track runs in your web browser. Once it is started, open it by typing its address into the browser — ask whoever set it up, or, on the machine running Trusty Track itself, it is usually https://localhost:8000. The installation guide for your platform gives the exact address, which differs a little between install methods.

Multiple volunteers can open the app on different devices simultaneously to handle different tasks, such as check-in or race monitoring.

The Home page before any races exist. Try a practice race builds a whole rehearsal on a fake timer; see below.

3. First-Time Setup: System Settings

The first time you launch Trusty Track, or when you need to adjust your organization's details, you'll use the System Settings page — headed Initial Setup until you have saved it once. You can access this at any time by clicking the Settings gear icon in the top right corner of the navigation bar.

The first time, everything below is on one page, in order — fill it in from top to bottom, starting with the two things that actually change anything before a heat runs: your organization's name and your track's lane count. Afterwards the page splits into sections listed down the left — General, Look & sound, Access, Tracks, Advanced and Backup — and shows one at a time; a nav lets you jump straight to any of them, so their order there matters less than it does on this first page. Save Settings saves the lot, whichever section you are looking at.

Organization Details

• Organization Name: The name of your Cub Scout Pack, school, or group (e.g., "Pack 123").

Setting Up Your Track

Trusty Track needs to know about your physical race track:

• Track Name: A descriptive name for the track.
• Lanes: How many lanes your track has (e.g., 4).
• Length (Feet): The total length of the track in feet — also what lets Trusty Track work out scale speed, a real-world MPH shown beside a heat's recorded time.
• Timer Type: Select the device connected to your track. Use Fake Timer (Manual Control) for testing or practicing without physical hardware, or No timer — I'll enter results by hand if your pack genuinely has no electronic timer. If you have an electronic finish line, the Hardware Timer guide covers plugging it in and checking it works — worth doing the week before, not on race morning.

If you run more than one track, + Add Another Track adds another to the same form.

Access

Next comes a security decision, and it's fine to skip it for a kitchen-table first run: by default there's no PIN, so anyone who can reach the app on your network can change anything — including deleting the race mid-event. Setting an Operator PIN locks that down; an optional Check-in PIN limits a registration-desk device to adding and checking in racers. Both can be added later before race day. See Access and Your Network for what each PIN protects and how to set one.

Look & sound

Collapsed behind a Look & sound — pick a look, or a sound disclosure, closed by default: every picker here already defaults to the app's usual look, so it's entirely safe to skip on a first run. Open it now, or come back to it later, if you want the wall display to look different for an evening race, a patriotic-themed derby, a print run that needs to save ink, or a different set of race-day sound effects. See Themes for the full list.

Advanced

• Debugging Mode: Off by default. Turning it on shows extra timer controls and logs during races — leave it off unless you're troubleshooting.
• Replays, collapsed behind its own closed Replays — keep finish-line clips on this machine disclosure, since it's a storage setting most first runs can skip: turning on Keep replay clips lets a camera's clip be played back later, on the Schedule tab or in Race Control, instead of being deleted the moment the next heat starts — see the Instant Replay guide.

Click Save Settings to apply your changes.

4. Trying a Practice Race First

Before your first real event, Try a practice race on the Home page builds a whole rehearsal in one click: a dozen racers with photographs, sorted into dens, all checked in, a qualifying round and a final — on a fake timer, so no hardware is involved. It drops you straight onto Race Control with the first heat ready to start.

Run a few heats, watch the standings move, let the final fill from the placings, and put a screen on the audience display. Nothing here touches your real event.

Clicking the button again reopens the same rehearsal — it reads Resume practice race once one exists — rather than building a second one. Want to start over instead? Open the arrow beside Resume practice race and choose Start a new practice race.

When you are done, open the practice race and delete it like any other race.

Tip

The night before is the time for this. It takes a couple of minutes and it is the difference between meeting the race control screen at a kitchen table and meeting it with sixty children waiting.

5. Creating Your First Race

Once your system settings are configured, you're ready to create a race event.

1. From the Home page, click the + Create New Race button.
2. The Create New Race Event dialog walks you through a few short steps. Each one has Next and Back, so nothing is final until the last. The list of steps at the top doubles as navigation: click an earlier one to jump straight back to it, rather than clicking Back over and over — the current step and any you have not reached yet are not clickable.
3. Start — only shown once you already have a race. Choose Start from scratch, or Copy settings from a previous race to reuse last year's dens, scoring, numbering, words and awards. What is copied, and what is not, is listed in Copying a previous race.
4. Kind of event — what is being raced (Pinewood Derby, Space Derby or Raingutter Regatta), who is holding it (Cub Scouts, Awana, a school, or something else) and, for Cub Scouts, whether it is one pack's own derby or a district one. The line at the bottom says which words the race will use — "Pack", "Den" and "Car" for a pack's Pinewood Derby. If you're setting up a district or council event — several packs racing by rank, with a grand final of the rank winners — see the District or Council Derby guide instead of this one from here on.

• Dens — a ready-made list from your answers: the six Cub Scout ranks for a pack, each with its rank color and a block of a hundred car numbers. Rename, recolor, remove or add to them here, or leave the list empty if your race does not group racers. They can all be changed later from Manage Dens on the Roster page.

• Details — the race form itself. It is one page, in three groups — the same groups you will find down the side of the edit form later on:

  • Under Event:
  • Event Name: A name for your race (e.g., "2024 Pinewood Derby").
  • Date & Time: When the race will take place.
  • Location: Where the race is being held.
  • Track / Timer: Select which track you'll be using for this event.
  • Under Scoring:
  • Scoring: Four methods — Timed (average heat time), Points (finishing places added up), Cumulative time (heat times added up), and Fastest single run (each racer's single best time). Every option shows its own one-line description right on the form. See Scoring & Championships for what each means on race day.
  • Drop worst run(s): 0 is off. Set it above 0 to drop each racer's worst counted results before scoring, once everyone who has raced has enough runs to spare.
  • Ties: How a tied score is settled where it decides something. Leave it shared is the default.
  • Championship Trophies: How many cars go into the final (3 by default) — and how many trophies Trusty Track creates on the Awards page for you once that final exists.
  • Under Check-in:
  • Car Numbering: Choose how car numbers should be assigned (Manual allows you to enter numbers during check-in).
  • Check car weights at inspection: On by default at 5.0 oz, the usual pack rule. Change the limit, or turn the check off entirely if your pack does not weigh cars.

  Every field is explained in Race and track settings.

1. Click Create Race. The race and its dens are created together, and you are taken to the Roster page.

6. Following the Setup Checklist

A new race opens with a Setting up this race panel at the top of the Roster page, listing the four things that have to happen before you can run a heat, plus two more — marked optional — worth doing before the trophies are handed out:

1. Set up dens
2. Add racers
3. Check in cars
4. Generate a schedule
5. Set up awards (optional)
6. Print anything you need (optional)

Most items tick themselves off as you do them — there is nothing to mark complete by hand — and the panel shows a button for whichever step you are on. Check in cars stays open, with a live count, until every racer on the roster is checked in; it does not tick at the first one, since check-in usually runs all morning. Print anything you need covers whichever of the Printables page's documents your pack actually prints — pit passes, driver's licenses, check-in codes, a heat sheet — and it never ticks at all, since nothing tells the app a sheet actually came out of a printer; it fades to a muted "no longer needed" line, with no tick, once check-in starts or the race is locked, since whatever printing would have helped with already has. Set up awards fades the same muted way, with no tick, once the race is locked with none defined — a pack that hands out no trophies has made that choice, and locking the race is how it says so. The panel disappears once every step is either done or faded that way, so a locked race with no awards does not get lectured about them.

Once you start checking racers in, the panel collapses to one line naming whatever is still outstanding — "Setting up: 2 of 4 done — Check in cars · Generate a schedule · optional: Set up awards", say — so it stops sitting above the roster table for the rest of the day. Click it to open it back up. The count is over the four required steps only, so finishing them reads as "4 of 4 done" even with awards or printing still to decide; anything optional still outstanding is named afterward, under its own "optional:" label, rather than counted as a fifth or sixth obligation. "Print anything you need" drops off that line as soon as check-in starts, whether or not anything was printed; "Check in cars" stays on it, counting, until the last racer arrives.

If you set the race up with the wizard, the first step is already done — the dens it made are there. If your pack does not use dens, skip that step: it counts as done as soon as you have racers.

7. Changing Your Dens

Racers are grouped into racing groups, typically called "Dens" in Cub Scouting. The setup wizard has already made yours; this is where you change them — or add them, for a race that started with none.

1. On the Roster page, click ⋯ at the top right of the roster and choose Manage Dens.
2. Click the pencil beside a den to rename or recolor it, or + Add New Den to add one.
3. Each den is offered a car number range to itself — 100–199 for the first den, 200–299 for the next. Change or clear those numbers if you number cars some other way.

With your dens in place, your race is ready for racer registration and check-in!

A race with no racers yet. The setup checklist at the top is pointing at the next thing to do; it will remove itself once everything on it is behind you.

What's Next?

Now that your race is set up, you can proceed to adding racers and managing the event:

• Race Setup Guide — Adding racers and managing dens
• Race Day Operations Guide — Check-in and running the race
• Observation & Audience Displays Guide — Setting up kiosks and displays
• Instant Replay Guide — Turning a phone into a finish-line camera

You don't have to keep this page open while you work: every screen carries its own ? icon, near the top of the page beside its title, that opens the guide for exactly what you're looking at.