FRC Spyder for 2012

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by Deetman

The field was not communicating with the outside world today due to what sounded like web filtering at the host school. I heard a rumor that an 3G/4G access point might be setup for tomorrow so the FMS can communicate but don't count on it.

Must be some strict filtering. Are they blocking everything but HTTP?

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by jlindquist74

Dave, where do you want bug reports and feature requests to go to?

If you think you found a bug, you can send a PM to Mike or myself.

For feature requests, I'll be honest and say that there's basically no chance of any new features being added at this time. Mike's schedule and my schedule are essentially full for the time being, so barring a serious bug, FRC Spyder likely "is what it is" for 2012. If you'd like to propose feature ideas anyway I'd say just put them here in this thread.

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

If you'd like to propose feature ideas anyway I'd say just put them here in this thread.

It'd be nice to put back the previous year's data. I used those a lot to refresh my memory of 2010 & 2011 while we were planning our scouting.

This is incredibly useful; thank you for making it available. At one point we had 5 people sitting in the same area trying to get updates on rankings, on 4 different phone models. :-) Thd problem was FIRST wasn't updating data; nothing to do with you.

[sandiegodan]

Love this app, thank you for putting in the time and keeping it going year after year. When I meet someone from the public just watching from the stands, this app quickly downloads and lets them see the bigger picture very quickly. They can follow the rankings, look up teams, see how things are going. I hope you and FIRST realize how much this portable "program" means to the public acceptance of this competition! They should be advertising this throughout the matches for audience.

Oh, and of course, everyone on Team Spyder loves the name! Care to share how you came up with it or is that in another thread somewhere? (We always give you credit when folks ask about it, and we get asked a lot!)

[Dave Scheck]

Originally Posted by sandiegodan

Oh, and of course, everyone on Team Spyder loves the name! Care to share how you came up with it or is that in another thread somewhere? (We always give you credit when folks ask about it, and we get asked a lot!)

Glad you like the app. Mike and Dave (other Dave, I'm not talking in the 3rd person ) put a lot of effort into making a valuable tool for the community and I know that positive feedback is always appreciated.

To answer your question about the name, the app was originally intended to be named FRCSpy, but there was already a CD feature by that name that we didn't want to infringe on and cause confusion with. We knew we wanted to keep the Spy aspect of it, and since the app is basically a data crawler, like a spider, we merged the two and Spyder was born.

FYI, if you're into VEX, there's a counterpart named VEX via for both Android and IOS available for their larger competitions, (Pan Pacific, Mid Atlantic Championship, US National Championship, and World Championship)

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

It'd be nice to put back the previous year's data. I used those a lot to refresh my memory of 2010 & 2011 while we were planning our scouting.

I took it out this year because my approach to get 2010 & 2011 to play nicely together was a quick, ugly hack last year. I didn't want to perpetuate the ugliness and I didn't have time to fix it properly, so I took it out.

[charlie.drummer]

I really love this app! Works great on my Droid X2.

My team is developing a computer program for scouting to handle the huge amount of information we get. We would like to have it get the match schedule off of the FIRST site. Where does your app get it's data from? I know they post the match schedule and the results in an html file, but do they store it in any other form other than html. We are really not looking forward to parsing html. Thanks!

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by charlie.drummer

...do they store it in any other form other than html. We are really not looking forward to parsing html. Thanks!

What language are you using? Unless you're using something obscure I'd be very surprised if you won't have multiple choices about which HTML-parsing library routines you use. There's no reason at all that you should have to rewrite such a common piece of code.

[charlie.drummer]

We are using java, and I know there are many libraries out there. We wouldn't have to actually parse it our self. I was just wondering if they store it in a form that would be easier to read and pick out the information we want from. I looked at the source for the match schedule page on the FIRST site, and it would be a pain to have to find the proper html table out of all the others on the page.

[nathannfm]

My Droid Charge was the only phone on my team that could hold a signal at Chestnut Hill (and even then it was usually only 1x) so I got a lot of use out of it. I like how the app uses so little data that it can still update at that speed when every other data dependent app I have was useless. I did notice that the elimination bracket won't update until after the match is played even though some of the spots are known, that was the only "bug" I could find, over all great app!

[RobotBill]

FRC Spyder has the option for manual event updates. Is there a way to set it up for automatic, continual, updates (with a user provided periodicity)?

[jason701802]

Originally Posted by RobotBill

FRC Spyder has the option for manual event updates. Is there a way to set it up for automatic, continual, updates (with a user provided periodicity)?

If you use the widget, you can set the app to auto update up to every 15 minutes.


I've found a bug. The teams listed for the Seattle regionals no not match the team list on http://www.usfirst.org/whatsgoingon and it has been like this for at least a week. Either the app isn't updating correctly or it is using a bad source.

Also, push notifications haven't been working for me at all this year.

[IKE]

Just wanted to throw some kudos on the pile. I love this app at competition and watching from afar. At every event, I have a parent come up to me and ask me if I have seen this FRC Spyder thing. I find this really cool as these are parents I usually only see at events which means they are getting so excited, they want to follow other events as well (and you guys are making it accessible).

[Billfred]

Count me as a fan too. This is MUCH better than being camped out around the pit screen waiting to see our number.

Just curious, is it possible for FRC Spyder to work at off-season events? This would be an even bigger asset for events where the pit display is small/far/non-existent.

[pyroslev]

Working on the field at the VA regional, teams asked me what their station was. This handy little app allowed me to send the wayward drivers to their right station. VERY handy. If there is a way to donate to this app, I am greatly inclined to do so.