ScoreCast
An offline-first digital judging and live scoring system designed for Bihu competitions, school/college events, stage programs, and cultural festivals. Real-time scoring, live leaderboards, and multiple display outputs with 100% offline resilience.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Stage events like Bihu competitions, dance contests, and school programs traditionally rely on paper tallying or internet-dependent spreadsheets. At crowded, real-world venues, WiFi drops, power fluctuations, and judge device drains cause lost scores, calculation delays, human errors, and organizer panic.
PROJECT IMPACT
Powering dozens of cultural and academic events across Assam, providing error-free judging, secure biometric-level token validation, sub-100ms updates, and absolute visual transparency for audiences via live LED walls/projectors.
Overview
ScoreCast replaces paper-based tallying with a professional, lightning-fast digital judging and live scoring system. Tailored for regional cultural committees, school functions, and large-scale talent shows, the platform manages contestants, synchronizes multiple judges, calculates complex weighted averages, and projects live leaderboards instantly.
Crucially, the entire architecture is built offline-first, engineered to withstand the challenging physical environments of live regional events.
Key Core Capabilities
1. Live Judge Scoring App (Android)
Judges score contestants directly from their own Android devices.
- Zero Paperwork: Eliminates handwritten tally sheets and manual desk collation.
- Biometric QR Enrolment: Judges securely register their devices by scanning a system-generated QR code at the venue.
- Bi-directional Sync: Syncs categories, contestant orders, and grading sliders instantly.
2. Instant Mathematical Collation
The core scoring engine automatically aggregates submissions as they occur.
- Pre-defined Logic: Auto-calculates totals, averages, weights, and high/low score discards.
- Tie-Breaker System: Deterministic ranking logic handles complex tie scenarios instantly.
- Instant Result PDF: Generates court-admissible, fully-signed final PDF reports seconds after the final contestant finishes.
3. Multi-Screen Display Engine
Engage the audience and keep the stage moving.
- Unlimited Displays: Connect multiple projectors, TVs, or LED walls over local WiFi.
- Custom Screen Roles: Configure different screens to show different views (e.g., live leaderboard, judge submission status, current contestant profile, or sponsor advertisements).
- Sub-100ms Updates: Leverages WebSockets for immediate rankings updates.
4. Native Bilingual Interface
Built specifically for regional pride, supporting both Assamese and English interfaces.
- Custom Unicode font preloading ensures crisp, legible Assamese typography on public projector screens.
- Judges and organizers can easily switch languages dynamically.
Event Resilience Engineering
Most web-based scoring engines fail during crowded events when mobile networks congest. ScoreCast is architected specifically to overcome these vulnerabilities:
1. WiFi & Connection Auto-Recovery
If the local WiFi router drops, judges can continue scoring seamlessly. The Android app buffers all scoring actions locally in an encrypted SQLite database. The moment connection is re-established, the app automatically syncs the buffered scores back to the server using high-priority sync queues.
2. Hot-Swap Judge Phones
If a judge’s phone battery dies mid-event, administrators can revoke the active token, generate a new QR enrollment code, and onboard a replacement phone in under 30 seconds. All previously submitted scores remain preserved on the server.
3. Deterministic Snapshot Recovery
The local Go server takes transactional snapshots of the active competition state. In the event of a total power loss, as soon as the server restarts, it automatically restores the complete event state, active contestant details, timer states, and judge caches.
4. HMAC-SHA256 Result Integrity
To prevent tampering or unauthorized score injection, every transaction between the judge app and the central server is cryptographically signed using HMAC-SHA256, guaranteeing absolute fairness and trust.