TKD Scoring Wi-Fi (app)

[TrueJim]

Disclosure: I'm not associated with the product that's being discussed in any way.

Over the last week at the school my son and I attend, we've been playing with a cool piece of software. I believe it was originally developed by a dojang in Korea, but there's an English-language version as well. The software is called TKD Scoring Wi-Fi. It's cool enough that I think other schools might want to become aware of it too. It's generally useful, and reasonably affordable.

TKD Scoring Wi-Fi

Basically it's just an inexpensive app that allows you to use Android or iOS devices as controllers for judges to use during sparring. So instead of paying thousands for a professional tournament-quality system like KP&P or TrueScore, you can pay a hundred bucks for some apps. The software does NOT integrate with electronic hogus though - it just implements simple judge controllers that connect over the dojang's Wi-Fi network to a display.

Some details for folks who are interested:

• The judge controllers (which they call "clients") can be Android or iOS devices. At our school we went on eBay and just bought some old 4th generation iPod Touches to use as controllers, because we like their small size. In retrospect though, it probably would have been cheaper and just as good to buy some small Android tablets instead. Keep in mind, smaller is better, since you're going to be using these as judge controllers, so you want them to fit easily in your hands. $100 buys you a 5-client license if you're using Android devices.
  
  
• Then you need some device to act as the main server. This is the app that the Recorder (i.e., the Scorekeeper) uses. You can use PCs for this, or Android tablets. (not iOS) Again, at our school we just went onto eBay and got an old tablet for this. In this case, bigger is better, since this is the device that sits on the scorekeeper's table. This server app is free.
  
  
• Optionally you can buy a second Android tablet to act as a remote display. We did this, but it was probably a waste. If your server has an HDMI port, you're probably better off just using an external monitor and turning it towards the audience. We found the remote display app to be a little buggy.

Of course if you don't want to eBay some old devices to dedicate to this, you can just use whatever gizmos you already have lying around. That's all there is to it...you connect the devices to a Wi-Fi network and now for about $100 you have a scoring system for sparring.

Advantages:

• We've started to draft parents onto the floor to serve as judges during sparring classes. That's gotten the parents more involved and it's teaching them the basic rules of sparring.
• We've only used this a couple times so far, but the kids seem to be really energized by this in-dojang simulation of a real tournament sparring scenario.

Disadvantages:

• Even though you can change things like number of rounds, round duration, etc.. there's no way to change how many points are associated with a hit. So for example the software currently calls a technical kick to the hogu 2 points...there's no way to change that to 3 points, for example.
• Like I said, the remote display app is a little buggy. Sometimes you have to exit the app and restart it to get it to sync back up with the score.

For the price though, this is a great addition to a dojang. I'm not associated with the app in any way, so I'm not pitching this, just saying...it's only been in use at our school for about a week and we're already really enjoying this.