Audience display views

What a screen on the wall can show, and how telling it what to show works. For the setup walkthrough, see the Observation Displays guide.

The ten views

Every screen with the Live page open can be switched between these, from Race Control → Displays or by its own URL:

View	What it shows
Standings	The live leaderboard, plus the Now Racing / On Deck / After That panels
Last heat's times	The most recently recorded heat: every car in finishing order, with place and time
Cycle between both	Standings and last heat's times, alternating on a timer you set
Projector	The full-screen, high-contrast layout: the live heat large on the left, top five standings on the right, and a brief results overlay after each heat
Racer photos	A slideshow of the check-in photos: headshot, car, name, number, den
Standings only	The leaderboard alone, filling the whole screen — no Now Racing / On Deck panels. For a pack whose standings are too long to share the screen with anything else
Check-in progress	Who has checked in and who has not, grouped by den, on a screen at the entrance or the gym wall — see below
QR code	A large, scannable code that opens this race on a phone — see below
Broadcast overlay	A transparent graphic for streaming this race on OBS Studio — see below
Awards ceremony	The ceremony, one award at a time. Unlike every other view, it only moves when a person does — either at the screen, or with the ‹ and › buttons on its row in the operator's list

The ceremony only appears once you have awards. A race with none is not offered it, because the screen would land on a page saying there is nothing to announce. Add the awards on the Awards page and the choice appears the next time you open the Displays list.

Driving the ceremony. A screen showing the ceremony gets ‹ and › buttons on its row, so the operator can move it on without walking to it. They send a step rather than a slide number, which is why the arrow keys and a presenter remote at the screen keep working: both drivers move the same ceremony, and neither jumps it somewhere the other did not expect. The buttons are dead while the row says Not connected — a screen that is not listening cannot be told anything.

When a heat breaks the track record, the Projector view's results overlay and the Last heat's times view both carry a banner, in the theme's own accent colour, naming the new time and the record it beat. It fires only for a record that stood before today's race.

When a track has scale speed turned on, the Projector view's results overlay and the Last heat's times view show it too — a rough real-world MPH beside each recorded time, worked out from the track's own length and scale ratio. A track with no length recorded, or with scale speed turned off, shows the time alone.

Lane colours

Set lane colours on the track's own card in System Settings and a small coloured dot appears beside every "Lane N" label on these screens — the Standings view's Now Racing / On Deck / After That cards, and the Projector view's own line-up. It matches whatever a lane is called in the app, not the timer's own wiring: on a track whose timer cable is reversed, the dot still follows the track's own lane number, the one painted on the ground.

The dot is always beside the lane number, never a fill behind it — a filled badge would fight whichever theme a screen is set to, so the number stays readable either way. A track with no colours configured shows the lane number alone, exactly as every track always has.

The colours every screen here uses — including the projector's high-contrast dark background — come from whichever theme Display is set to in System Settings, not a fixed palette.

Taking a break

A break called from Race Control (see Taking a Break) takes over every screen showing this race, whichever of the nine views above it was on — a break is a fact about the race, not about which view a display happened to be assigned. Each screen shows a countdown, the break's name (or "Intermission" if none was given), and a faint preview of the next heat's line-up, so a room that has wandered off to the snack table still knows roughly when to come back and for what.

The overlay clears itself the instant the countdown reaches zero, or sooner if the operator clicks End now — there is nothing to acknowledge on the display's own end. A paused break shows the time it was paused at rather than counting down.

Notes on six of them:

• Racer photos goes in car number order rather than shuffling. Families are watching for their own child, and in order everybody comes round once per cycle. Racers with no photo are skipped rather than shown blank, and a race with no photos yet says so. Set the seconds-per-racer on the display's row — about five suits a small pack.
• Projector hides the app's navigation entirely, whichever way it was reached.
• Standings only moves through a leaderboard too long for one screen in one of two ways, chosen on the display's own row next to the seconds control: Page cycling flips to the next page after that many seconds, and Auto-scroll scrolls the whole list smoothly from top to bottom, pausing briefly at each end, over that many seconds per pass. Both keep going for as long as the screen is left open — walking away for an hour and coming back does not leave the list stuck partway through or drifted off schedule.
• Check-in progress groups the roster by den, each with a progress bar and the count of cars still to come — see the next section.
• QR code points a phone at this race's own Live page by default, or at the voting ballot if you switch its row to Voting ballot — see the section after Check-in progress below.
• Broadcast overlay has a transparent background rather than a solid one, so it disappears everywhere it is not actively drawing a bar or a banner — see below.

Check-in progress

The gym-wall answer to "are there any more Wolves who haven't checked in?" — one card per den, a progress bar and a count for each, and the cars still pending listed by number and name underneath. It reads live off the same check-in status the roster's own Checked In / Edit button sets, so a car checked in at the desk drops off this screen within a second or two, on every screen assigned to it.

List everybody, or pending only. By default a den's card lists every car, a small ✓ against the ones already through. A large pack can switch a screen to Pending only on its row in the Displays panel — the same control Standings only's paging/auto-scroll choice sits next to — which drops the checked-in rows entirely and keeps the card down to the cars still needed at the scale.

Before anyone is registered, it says so rather than showing an empty grid of dens. Once every registered car is through, it says that too — "All 42 checked in!" — instead of leaving an empty list where the missing names used to be.

It keeps working once racing starts, quieter rather than gone. A car can arrive after the first heat and still join the schedule (see Mid-race changes), so this screen has no reason to disappear the moment racing begins — nothing on it could switch itself away even if it should, since a display holds no PIN and can be told what to show only from Race Control (see "How assignment works" below). Once the first heat is recorded it shows a small note that racing is underway and cars can still check in at the desk, and shrinks its own type a little to say, without words, that the room's attention has moved on.

These screens are on a gym wall, in a room open to whoever walked in — worth knowing if a child's full name showing there is a concern. Names on public screens, in System Settings (with a per-race override on the race's edit form), can show "Jordan M." or just "Jordan" instead of the full name across every view above, and the same choice hides a racer's own photo when it is set to anything but the default — see Race and track settings for the three choices and exactly where each one reaches.

QR code

The answer to getting fifty parents in a crowded gym onto the right address without walking around holding up a laptop screen: a large, high-contrast code they can scan from their own seats, with the address printed underneath for anyone whose camera cannot read it.

Points at this race's own Live page by default. Switch a screen's row to Voting ballot instead and it points at the voting page — the same address the Awards page's own Copy button and QR code share — so a screen at the entrance can invite people to follow along, and the same screen (or a second one) can be switched over once judging opens.

The address is worked out the same way the Awards page's ballot share step already does it. The browser running Trusty Track usually shows localhost, which means nothing to a phone on the venue wifi — Trusty Track substitutes this machine's own network address instead, and says so plainly if it could not find one to substitute (try typing the printed address into a phone's browser to check it works before relying on it).

A headline and a Wi-Fi line, both optional, set on the race's own edit form (Edit race from Home, or Edit Details on the Roster page):

• QR code headline — the call-to-action above the code, e.g. "Scan to Vote for Best in Show!" or "See Live Results on Your Phone". Left blank, the screen shows a sensible default depending on which page the code opens.
• Venue Wi-Fi guidance — a line under the address, e.g. "Connect to the guest Wi-Fi first". Left blank, nothing is shown — most venues have open wifi or none worth mentioning.

A shortcut from the Awards page. The Voting panel's Project QR code button opens a brand-new display window already pointed at the ballot — for when the screen you want to use is not already open, or you would rather not hunt for it in the Displays list first.

Broadcast overlay

Every other view on this page is meant to fill a screen on its own — a wall, a projector, a phone. This one is meant to sit on top of something else: camera video, in a streaming program like OBS Studio, for packs streaming the event to family who cannot be there. Step-by-step setup instructions are in Access and your network; this section is what the overlay actually shows.

Its background is transparent, not merely dark. Every other full-screen view paints a solid colour behind everything it draws; this one does not paint anything behind its own panels at all, so whatever your streaming software is compositing underneath it — the track, the crowd, a starting gate camera — shows through everywhere the overlay itself is not actively drawing something.

A lower-third bar names the current heat and its line-up. Round and heat number (or, for a run-off, what it is racing off to decide), each lane's car number and racer name, and a live status badge — Ready, Staged, Racing… — the same one the operator's own screen shows. Nothing is armed between heats, so the bar says Between heats rather than sitting empty.

A compact standings ticker, on by default. The top five, by rank, along the top of the screen — what fills the gap between heats a bar alone would leave blank. Turn it off on the display's own row in Race Control → Displays (Heat only) if you would rather the overlay showed nothing but the bar.

A finish banner reveals the result and lingers for ten seconds. Longer than the Projector view's own version of this (five seconds) — someone watching a stream has had none of the lead-up a person standing at the track has had, so the banner gets more time to actually be read. A broken track record is called out on it the same way it is everywhere else.

No racer photographs. Every other panel here is text — names, numbers, times — by design: this is meant to be read at a glance over moving video, and a stream is not the place to spend bandwidth on a picture nobody asked for. Names still respect names on public screens exactly like every other view — a stream reaches further than a gym wall.

Names, and telling one screen from another

Every screen gets a default name the moment it connects — an adjective and an animal, like Plucky Puffin or Brisk Badger — so the Displays list is usable before anyone has typed anything.

• The name is tied to the screen, not drawn at random. The same physical display gets the same name across a reload, a restart of the machine running Trusty Track, and a laptop swap — so a name you have been saying out loud all morning ("put the standings on Plucky Puffin") does not turn into a different animal an hour later.
• No two screens in the same race share an animal. If a fresh name would collide, the display gets a different one; only once every available animal is already taken does a screen get a number after its name.
• Rename it any time, the same as before — click the pencil. The 🎲 button next to the rename field offers another animal, for the rare case where the room has a real Badger in it and the coincidence is confusing.

Identify

Each row has an Identify button. Press it and that screen's name flashes across it in large type for a few seconds — press it, look up, and see which physical screen just lit up. It is dead (greyed out) while the row says Not connected, since there is no screen to flash a name on.

This works on the awards ceremony too, even though it is its own page rather than a tab on the rest of the display — the projector at the front is usually exactly the screen an operator wants to find.

A screen also names itself briefly, in a small corner badge, the moment it first connects — plugging it in and opening it is the cheapest moment for whoever is standing there to learn its name. The badge fades on its own.

How assignment works

• A screen registers itself by having the Live page open. There is nothing to add and nothing to install; every open screen appears in the Displays list on its own.
• An assignment wins over the screen's URL — that is the point, since the operator is across the room. Until one arrives, the screen shows whatever its URL asks for.
• A screen nobody assigns is untouched. It follows its own URL exactly as before, so ?view=timing and ?projector=true keep working. There is no state where a screen cannot be reached from the operator's laptop.
• Names stick. Rename a display and the name survives a reload of that screen.
• A screen that goes quiet stays listed, marked Not connected — that is how you find out the projector at the back dropped off the wifi. Trusty Track cannot tell a switched-off screen from a dead network, so the row stays until you clear it with the ✕.
• Assignments and a hand-typed name do not survive a restart of the machine running Trusty Track. Screens fall back to their URLs — the same behaviour as before they were assigned — and can be renamed and re-assigned from the list. A screen's default name is the exception: it comes back the same, because it is derived from the screen itself rather than stored (see Names, and telling one screen from another above).

Two screens, one computer

A computer with two monitors — a projector next to an operator's own preview, say — can drive both as separate screens. Opening the Live page a second time on the same computer used to report the identical screen twice, because every browser tab on one machine shares that machine's stored identity: assigning a view to one moved both windows at once.

• Race Control → Displays has an Open a new display window button. It opens a second window that is already its own screen — nothing to type, and nothing for it to contend with the tab that opened it.
• Reloading a display window keeps its identity. A genuinely new tab or window, opened the ordinary way rather than with the button, still becomes a screen of its own on the list — it just does not carry over a name or assignment from the tab it was opened alongside.
• A link with ?displayId= in it always names a specific screen, which is what the button's new window carries — useful if you ever want to bookmark a particular monitor's address rather than opening it fresh each time.

Connection behaviour

Displays hold a live connection and update themselves; nobody refreshes anything. If the wifi drops they reconnect on their own and catch up, retrying for as long as it takes. What they cannot do is show a race they cannot reach — see which network to use.

A free race heat takes the "Now Racing" spot like any other — the audience sees a demonstration run, labelled Exhibition — and the leaderboard beside it does not move.