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Setting Up Your MAS Kit

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Setting up your MAS Kit can take a little practise - you may want to try it at home and do a test stream before trying to learn on-the-fly in the field.

There's no real "wrong way" of doing it, so you don't need to treat this as gospel (and your specific hardware may be slightly different) but this guide will go through the steps you can refer to.

Completed setup

A completed setup should look something like this - your specific hardware may vary.

Equipment Checklist

Please check that you have at least these in your kit:

✅ A fully-charged Chromebook (and you can sign into this device)

✅ Fully-charged camcorder, tripod bracket, and/or power cables for camera

✅ Tripod

✅ HDMI capture card

✅ HDMI cable with a small end that fits into the camera, and a big end that fits into the HDMI capture card

This is the minimum you need to get going, but for peace of mind while streaming, make sure you also have:

✅ A battery pack

✅ Power cable for Chromebook

✅ Tripod mount for Chromebook

✅ 4G dongle or access to good WiFi

✅ A USB hub/splitter if your Chromebook only has one input available or doesn't have a direct way to plug things into.

Laid out kit

This is a generalised layout of the above - your specific hardware may vary.

Setup Steps

Hardware

1. Extend tripod and wind up the neck. Check the level bubble if fitted, an offset picture will make it look like one team is playing uphill.

Camera atop tripod

2. Seat the camera into the provided bracket at the place this at the top of the tripod.

Make sure the tripod camera mount is attached to the base of the camera; the tripod bracket must be screwed into the bottom of the camera - the camera will not sit on the top of the tripod otherwise.

Camera upside down

This is a Sony camera upside down with the tripod bracket next to it. Screw the tripod bracket to the base of the camera using the matching holes on the camera.

3. Attach the Chrome logo Chromebook/tablet clamp to the base of the tripod's neck.

Tablet mount

Make sure it is nice and tight and at the bottom of the neck but ensure that the tripod next can still pivot.

4. Attach the Chrome logo Chromebook to the tablet clamp, if your laptop folds back/has a removable keyboard do bend this back/off so that you're in touchscreen mode.

Tablet mounted to tripod

Where applicable: your mount may require some assembly, such as some provided Laptop Holders. Do so now by inserting the legs into the runners top and bottom, the longer legs slide into the bottom track of the holder and attach to clamp. Note: When attaching to clamp make sure it clicks into place and the ball joint is tight so the laptop is stable and doesn't move from where you like it positioned.

Assembling a laptop holder

5. Fasten the battery to the inside of the tripod (so that it sits on the cross bar) of one of the legs using the rubber strap provided and then run the camera power cord from the battery to power the camera.

Mounting a battery

6. Plug the HDMI Capture Card and 4G USB Dongle (if using one) into the side of the Chrome logo Chromebook

Attaching USB

6a. If you have a USB hub or splitter, plug this in and then plug the HDMI capture card and 4G dongle into this.

Attaching a USB splitter

6b. The 4G dongle's lights should eventually turn on if successful.

7. Plug the Chrome logo Chromebook into the battery, depending on your model and battery this may only provide a "drip-charge", but is still worth doing.

8. Plug the camcorder's power cable into the battery if you haven't already. Make sure any lens cover is off/open. Open the camcorder's viewfinder and on the inside of the camera's viewfinder, pop open the HDMI flap (if applicable, some don't have this). Plug the HDMI cable's small end into the port it fits inside the camcorder's port marked HDMI. Plug the HDMI cable's big end into the USB HDMI capture card (that is currently plugged into the Chromebook).

HDMI cable plugged in

Make sure there is a picture on the camcorder's viewfinder - it should be showing an image of the scene in front of you.

You can now turn the Chromebook on (if it is not already) by holding its physical Power button (or tapping its screen/any input to turn the display on).

If everything is successful:

✅ The lights on the 4G dongle should be turned on

✅ The viewfinder on the camera should be showing a picture of the view in front of you

✅ The Chromebook should be asking you to sign in

Software

Your Chrome logo Chromebook will challenge you to login each time.

PIN

Chromebook PIN

Ideally, the device will have a PIN set on it. This is likely 1234 - or someone set it for you during setup.

If there is not a PIN on this device, login with the email and password below.

Email and Password

Chromebook Login

Please use the relevant email address for your club/team/you. This will be a Google logo Google account, so please make sure you/someone has access to it if the sign in prompt challenges you to prove who you are.

Extra for Experts

For future reference, consider adding a PIN by following the tutorial here:

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/create-a-pin-to-sign-in-to-your-chromebook/ 

Set the PIN to 1234 to be helpful to other users.

Sign in as guest

If neither of these work, and you don't have a Google Account you could sign in to, click Browse as Guest at the bottom of the screen.

Chromebook Guest

Open Chrome

When you have successfully logged in, your Chrome logo Chromebook dashboard should look like this (the background may be different):

Chromebook Dashboard

Open the Chrome web browser from the bottom task bar (or your MAS shortcut if available).

Signing into MAS

This link will take you directly to start scoring:

https://scoring.myactionsport.com/ 

If it does not work, make sure your device is online by opening a webpage (e.g this one  ).

MAS Login

If you have been provided it, enter in your "Business Code" into the input field.

MAS Dashboard

If someone else is already streaming, it will look like this:

MAS Dashboard with Match

Please don't click on their match as you will interrupt their stream if you try and attach your camera. Click "Start New Game" instead.

Extra for Experts

Consider saving a shortcut to MAS for future by following these steps:

MAS Shortcut

  • Click the vertical dots ( ) in the top right
  • Click More Tools
  • Click Create Shortcut

This will save the MAS icon to the desktop, you can then click that next time to go straight to the Scoring App.

Troubleshooting

Refresh page

"Turn it off and on again" is usually sage advice.

Sometimes the best remedy is to reload the current page and try again. If you are streaming a game, you will need to rejoin and re-latch your camera, but it is often the fastest way to fix problems.

The following steps are largely kit-specific, please also check out general troubleshooting docs for more:

Playing many back-to-back games

Refresh page

Consider refreshing the app/window manually after hitting End Stream. This will forcefully flush all A/V inputs and prepare MAS fresh for your next match.

Camera viewfinder is blank

  • Please make sure the camera's power cable is plugged into the battery and that the power light on the camera is turned on.
  • Take the HDMI cable out of the camcorder
  • Close the viewfinder
  • Turn the camera off
  • Turn the camera on
  • Open the viewfinder
  • Double check that the lens cover is open

Camcorder only showing a blank screen/can't find camcorder

Trying pulling out the HDMI capture card from both the camera and the Chromebook. Refresh the page, plug everything back in and try again.

Empty capture viewfinder

Make sure you are hitting the blue tick to select the camera and/or manually selecting it. The device name will be a little weird, but is usually something like:

FY HD Video

Camera list

Internet not loading

  • If you have a 4G dongle plugged in, please check to make sure the lights on it are powered on and that there is a SIM card in it.

  • If you are tethering, please make sure your phone stays alive for the duration of the game - many will timeout the connection after an arbitrary period of time:

  • If you are on WiFi, ensure that you can load other pages on the internet reliably, consider running a speed test.

  • If you are running an ethernet cable to your device, check that the connection to the router is undisturbed and that the lights on the router are on.

Internet is slow or picture is laggy

You can check this by trying to open a non-MAS webpage, for example:

Open google.com and run a speed test 

Speed test result

Consider running a speedtest, higher upload/download numbers are better. Lower "latency" numbers are better. These results are good and unlikely to actually be replicable in the field.

Your speed test needs to achieve ~1.5mbps upload speed and a Latency value less than ~250ms to reliably stream video.

Screen has locked up

If your screen is no longer responding to button presses, or the view coming off the camera has frozen, reload the page and re-attach the camera.

Refresh page

If even this is now unresponsive, you can hold the physical Power button on the Chromebook for seven seconds to force a reboot.