FRC Spyder for 2012
 

The Android and iOS versions of FRC Spyder are back again for the 2012 season. You need to go to the Android Market or iTunes App store to update the apps to the latest version, last year's version will not show this year's data.

As always, let us know if you run into problems or if you just want to tell us how much you like Spyder. Enjoy :)

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Update works great on my RAZR. Keep up the great work guys, this is an excellent and extremely useful app.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Just to let you that Gull Lake's team list is outdated since 123, 247, and 904 are registered raising the total teams to 36.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I loved FRC Spyder last year, so I'm very interested in using it this year. I just went to the Android market (2/25/2012 at 5:02pm EST), and it's not offering me an update. Do I need to uninstall and start over? The About screen doesn't give me a version, build date, or something that would confirm I have the latest. I just know I can only get 2010 and 2011 events, so I don't seem to have the latest.

I really want to use it again, so please tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Once again, I cannot wait to use this app. It is by far my most-used app during competition season, and I am sure that holds true for many people.

Keep up the good work, and thank you very much!

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

You're not doing anything wrong. I just uploaded the new version before I posted, it takes a while for the market to sync. Check back later or wait for the automatic update (if you have it enabled).

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I got the iOS update this afternoon about 4:30pm eastern. As before, this app rocks! Any chance of adding robot photos in the future?

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I'll get the app soon, as it's been an invaluable resource in past years. In the meantime, I have a pretty important question for this year: does the app calculate OPR with or without penalties?

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I got the app updated successfully :) Awesome now I dont have to go to my laptop to get rankings.This will definately save me from running into the pits to check our ranking :)


Thanks Mike

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I updated mine today, thank you so much for your work on this app. I use it heavily during our competitions and it is extremely helpful.

Thanks!

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Sounds great, just got mine updated :) First year with a phone, so I expect to use it quite a bit :p

On another note, any news about a possible Blackberry version? Some of our mentors are desperately hoping for one :o

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I just updated this morning, it worked fine. Added my events and team, can't wait to see it in action. Thanks, Mike!

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

This is one of my favorite pics from last year. This is us after a match at Smoky Mountain last year. Thanks for your hard work.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

REFRESH REFRESH come on.

What I did last year was use the frc standings website and got the match scores before they posted them on the screen.

My teammates got annoyed because I would tell them if we won or lost a match before the scores were projected on the screen. :)

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Will there also be an FRC Tracker this year? Both apps work well together in that Spyder lets you see rankings, but Tracker lets you see what the robots actually look like...

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Thank Dave Flowerday too, he writes the iOS version.

FRC Spyder does not calculate OPR. Our focus is match results and rankings. Maybe in the future.

Nope. None of us have a Blackberry and we're too busy with work & other projects to take on another platform.

That's not developed by us, but Tom tweeted a couple days ago that he submitted the new version to the App Store.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

To repeat what everyone else has said, thank you very much for this. I hadn't known about this last year, but it'll be awesome to use this year.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Works on the Casio Commando. Gonna be a nice addition to the traditional scouting arsenals.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I really appreciate you making the Spyder available; it looks like a great app. I didn't have an Android phone last year so I've only used it for after-the-fact lookups, but it's helpful even for that. I'm looking forward to current data.

I've only a couple of minor suggestions:
1 - It'd be nice if my favorites carried over from year to year.
2 - A search feature in the team list would make it a lot quicker to find a team. Both by number & by name would be helpful.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

The best part was, no one knew how I was doing it for the 1st half of the district we were at =)

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Anyone have a direct download to the android apk? My market isn't working right.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

For the record...FRC Tracker 2012 is now in the apple app store

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Does anyone else have a problem with the app clearing favorites after refreshing stats?

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Clears favorites everytime i update results and such. Otherwise its awesome great work!

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I fixed it last night. Grab the update.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Good job guys, had the android version last year and that was perfect and i haven't found anything wrong with the ios version

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I'm sure this question will come up soon, so to head it off now:

The incorrect match times for the Alamo Regional are coming from FIRST. My guess is that the scoring computer there was incorrectly set for the Eastern time zone instead of Central.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Love the app (android version), I was using it along side the quad stream of the regionals today =)
But I saw that Hatboro didn't have any real time data :/ I assume that's not the apps fault but that the data is not available online. I hope the rest of the new MAR events have live feed data, it makes scouting SOO much easier.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.

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.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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! :cool: 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!)

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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)

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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!

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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!

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)?

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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).

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

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.;)

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

They have been working fine for me and based on the server statistics, a bunch of other people too. I didn't even know 217 was competing last weekend until I got a score notification while sitting at my desk.

Why does FRC Spyder show 402 teams going to the championship and it shows 4 divisions of 100 teams each?

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Is there any chance you can build in support for Android tablets? It's a small market, but I would love you forever.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I second this notion. :D

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Are you saying it doesn't work on tablets or are you asking for a tablet optimized version? If it's the former, let me know what the problem is because it works on my Xoom. If it's the latter, I'm sorry to say it will be low on my priority list since life has gotten in the way of many "nice to have's" these days.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Mike,

Works great on my Xoom, didn't have an issue this season with FRC Spyder.

Can't thank you enough for this app, it really gets people engaged. Especially parents in the stands.

-RC

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

I was unable to get it to update on a friends Xoom the week before worlds. It would get half way through and then stop. Still, It's a great app and I use it all the time. Keep up the good work!

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

The latter. It's not a huge issue, but I don't think it looks like a hard fix either.

I'm on a Nexus 7. Here's a screenshot: here

I didn't experience any other problems. Updated just fine. Bracket, Rankings, and Team List all work as advertised.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Well that's ugly. I'll get around to fixing it some day.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Spyder 2013?

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Hopefully soon :)

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

In time for FLR and other week 1 regionals? I really hope so; using the app is so much better than attempting to follow the ranking monitors.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

That's the plan.

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Mike, let me know if you need a beta tester. And, of course, as soon as we can download the released app.

I have a countdown on my home page: 2 days, 18 hours, 30 minutes to FLR...

Can you tell I'm excited?

Re: FRC Spyder for 2012
 

Thanks for having the app ready before Week 1 Regionals. I updated the night before Finger Lakes Regional, and it worked flawlessly all weekend. Great work!