Raspberry Pi 3B
Ethernet from router to Pi
Micro Usb from Smart Field Controller to Pi
Ethernet from laptop to router
Latest Tournament Manager version.
I can get the field controller to work over USB and I can get the raspberry Pi to connect fine and show everything from my TM Server on Laptop.
But I can’t for the life of me get “TM Connected” to show when I’m using the field controller to raspberry Pi USB connection. I’ve powered on the field controller first, run the program, Turned on the Pi. On some Micro USBs it says the cable might be bad, on others it does not give this message. The cables I’m using get a good connection when connecting the Field controller to the laptop directly.
When I power tournament Manager on the laptop and it just doesn’t see the field controller on start up when run through the raspberry Pi.
Did you configure the rPi using TM as field control? This is under Displays menu “Configure Remote Displays (raspberry pis)” - make to configure the rPi as Field Queue (forget exact wording escapes me). You will need to select field set and field.
are both the Laptop and rPi getting valid IP addresses on the same network? you can verify this on laptop under help menu “Get IP address” and watching the rPi boot up…
It may be possible your laptop is on Wifi and not on hardwired ethernet to your router, or your router is not on a network, so not valid IP address served to rPi. Is your router connected to the school’s network?
I did set up the raspberry pi in the menu that enables you to select how you would like the raspberry pi to function. I did select field or field display. And I selected the field that it should be connected with.
The raspberry pi does show a valid IP on the screen and in tournament manager. In fact the raspberry pi works perfectly for everything that I want it to do. The problem is that the field controller is not showing up red on the match control screen. It should show that there are no controllers connected. But it is just blank.
I’m on a dedicated router that is just for tournament manager and not connected to my home router. Wired ethernet connections from raspberry pi to router and from router to laptop.
I have operational setup in my classroom, will do some checks to see what is displayed in TM… My attention from earlier test were diverted to broken monitor
Tested this morning - I did have an issue with the Match Control panel on TM not synced with TM after laptop was asleep over night and all rPi repowered . I closed the Match Control panel and reopened for the field set and everything works as it should.
Thank you for posting Iacsap and working with me on this. Also much thanks to Clint Matlack for his emails and helping me to think through it. Every person will likely have a different story, but for me this is my story.
It was the Micro USB Cable.
Here’s all the things that it was not.
Reimaged my SD card with the Raspberry Pi Imager.
I was using the auto-update feature of the Tournament Manager software, instead of a manual update.
I was using a Raspberry Pi 3B (not plus)
I was trying different combinations of order of operations for Field controller powered, Pi powered, Pi updated, Field controller running match program, Tournament manager started. None of these turned out to be the issue, once it was fixed, I didn’t even need to restart tournament manager. If the field controller was running and I swapped the cable it showed up in tournament manager as standby/active, rather than blank which was what I was getting.
Trying on wireless vs Ethernet. (I was using wired to the Pi and wired to the laptop)
Removing possible network interference from other Networks that my laptop was connected to.
Allowing TM through the firewall on my Laptop. Resetting firewall settings. (At first use of TM, Windows firewall asks if you want to allow it through the firewall.)
Turning off SPI firewall on my router.
Rerunning the Tournament Wizard.
Having my tournament set up as a small tournament vs. Scrimmage vs. Medium tournament.
Making sure my raspberry pi is set up as “Field Display”.
I was using a dedicated router just for my tournament setup.
I was using a Micro USB cable that is designated for “data transfer” not just charging.
I even swapped Micro USB cables and used a more robust one. I’m not sure why my robust cable is working now, but wasn’t previously. My only guess is that I just didn’t plug it in far enough.
Here was the real problem. I checked my Micro USB cable by plugging it in from my laptop to the Field controller. It saw the field controller and when I started tournament manager, it wanted to add it to a field. It was showing a standby/Active field and I assumed it was a good cable.
However, … when my raspberry pi starts, for just a quarter of a second it displays this:
It’s hard to see because it goes away so quick, had to take a picture to see what it was saying. Don’t ignore this message! Because no matter what USB port on my Pi I use, this cable which works fine on my laptop, does not work with the Pi.
Providing all the ideas and suggestions I got from multiple places so that hopefully it will help someone else to diagnose their issue.
Thanks for all the help everyone. We are good to go and I’m going to be buying some very robust micro USB cables very soon.
Ben Yee
Seymour, IN
PS. I did notice that they rolled out a new Tournament Manager Version this morning which I downloaded and used. I don’t think that impacting things because I was able to duplicate my experience with my bad cable.
