The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Hello, some of you may have seen the post yesterday teasing at a new way of doing things at events, keeping updated with events, and watching a teams progression.

What we made was not only a nice website for anybody to be able to track an event live as its happening, but also a foundation for everybody in the FIRST community to build on. Our website not only houses an extensive database containing all of 2012 and all future seasons' data, but it also houses a public API for anybody to use and expand upon to develop their own websites/desktop application/mobile applications, etc.

There are many new features planned down the road, and many a bug fix as well, but all input from you is what will really make this website shine.

As of now, the website is definitely in an alpha/beta state and we will be continuing to update as per the community's requests. Please submit any and all feedback to contact@thefirstalliance.org

And.... Without further ado, we present to you
www.thefirstalliance.org

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

It's BEAUTIFUL! Thanks so much!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Try that... although the one in the post is working for me.
http://thefirstalliance.org/

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Wow guys this is completely AWESOME!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Thanks! We've got a ton of other features planned down the road. We'll share the roadmap with you guys a little later. As of now, the site is just a sweet wrapper for what our public api can do.

Can't wait to show you guys what's next. So excited!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Thanks alot! We're really excited to be bringing a gorgeous and professional webapp to FRC teams/members. Honestly, some of the other services out there have seriously neglected usability. It's sad...

As we move forward, we're going to make this thing a heck of a lot prettier too! The next major release we're going to be pushing the boundaries of what you can do with web interfaces.

Thanks again man!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

You guys planning on hosting match videos to be accessible through your api as well?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

That's something we've talked about, but honestly they'll have to be user submitted. Videos aren't a priority right now, as we're going to focus on some other really exciting stuff.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Care to share?

Looks like a good start.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Were working on putting an official roadmap together that should be up in the next day or two.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Looks awesome guys. Any plans on short URLs ala frclinks?

Also, posible bug report: Looks like the W/L/T column is only colored in the first row on team pages.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Cool site. Data for some events seem to be missing?

Example:
http://www.thefirstalliance.org/even...event-code=CAF

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I'll take a look at it tomorrow. Thanks!

If anyone else finds anything just send us an email at:
contact@thefirstalliance.org

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I have to agree with everyone else, this is a fantastic tool. Thank you so much. I have a couple of comments after a brief look.

1) I may have missed it, but is there a way to access data from past years? If not currently, will this be added later?

2) Currently on the elimination pages, it lists the alliances ranks as 0-7 instead of 1-8 when listing them in the upper left. Not a big deal, just something I noticed.

Again, great job with this, and I look forward to seeing how it progresses from here!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Thanks for the feedback. Our database has records from previous years, but we're still building the api to accommodate that. That's one of the features I can tell you will be released shortly.

Someone else just sent me an email about the elims. Thanks so much guys!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I was just about to ask about previous years data.

Anyway, really cool site, and I'm sure it's going to get a whole lot better.

By the way, links to team websites are pretty broken. It tries to go to http://thefirstalliance.org/www.greybots.com when you click the link, instead of www.greybots.com (to use 973 as an arbitrary example)

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

How is this different than the blue alliance? So far it looks like it shows exactly the same information.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Something I just noticed is that in the elimination section the pick numbers are reversed. So the #3 is actually #1 and #1 is actually #3. Also sometimes #1 is switched with #2.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I'd imagine they're touting the extensibility/access they are building into it?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

What browser are you using?

*EDIT: Nevermind, confirmed bug in multiple browsers. Will fix soon.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I can't really comment too much about this, but all I can say is that what you see is very much the tip of the iceberg. We're interested in building something much bigger than an statistics portal.

Roadmap will come soon.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

So, um, elimination brackets, elimination alliances (that aren't even close to 100% correct), and rankings are what separates this from TBA? I don't mean to be rude, but I really don't see why I'd use this website instead of the currently existing resources.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

We're aware of the bugs you mentioned and are working to fix them. To address your other thoughts...

What you see right now is literally just the tip of the iceberg. An official roadmap is on the way, so I can't go in to too much detail. What I can say, however, our site is designed to be the most usable, reliable, and accurate (working on that one guys!), source for official FRC information out there.

We see the site's users being anyone who wants a quality and professional way to access important information they'll use for scouting or what not. We also envision creative types using our API for their projects, eliminating the painful process of writing their own solution to acquire FRC data.

We realize it's still pretty alpha right now, but we wanted to get it out to the community ASAP to build excitement, get feedback, and make The FIRST Alliance the best possible product it can be. Thanks for your feedback.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I like the "API first" objective. Having a standard API for all this data is a plus, and the website looks really clean. At the risk of making a judgment before you've laid out your vision and roadmap, I'm unsure what this brings to the table. TBA already has an API, and the results web pages on the FIRST site, while ugly, are stable and easy to scrape data from.

What we need is not more APIs or more apps, but more data.

If someone can come up with a stable API for the twitter data that works from year to year, or a means for teams to collaboratively upload their scouting data, then we'd have something exciting, perhaps even game-changing. But right now, it's just the same data over and over again.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I think that we offer something unique and fresh by starting over, getting a lot of input from the FIRST community early on (ie right now), and working from that angle.

Our API is totally public and transparent. Anyone can access it. The fact that you said "the results web pages on the FIRST site, while ugly, are stable and easy to scrape data from" says there's a major problem FRC teams are facing - there aren't any good APIs out there! Our site is built on top of our API. So as we grow the site, our API grows along with it. Our data is literally your data.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I imagined the elimination alliances are scraped from the FIRST event information so there would be no indication of which pick order were for each team.

I love the visual bracket of how elimination went. I don't know if you are already planning it but it would be neat to scrape data from twitter for individual matches of hybrid, tele-op, and bridge points for each alliance. I know there is missing data for entire events or just individual matches.

The ability to sort matches by scores seems to be able to compliment such a feature.

Very nice work with the programming.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

That API you link to for TBA is old. When I last tried using it, it did not provide current data.

There is a new API for the new version of TBA. This API does not require an API key and returns data using json.

An example request URL is:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/api/v...show?year=2012

Going back to the topic of this thread, are there any plans to open source The FIRST Alliance?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Thanks! That was Ben's last minute addition that caused us to launch at 12:20ish not 12:00! As you can see it's still pretty alpha, but yeah we're excited about the possibilities that feature has.

We're aware of the match data that's missing and we're trying to fix it as fast as we can. If you do notice anything wrong, please send us an email at:
contact@thefirstalliance.org

Thanks!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

A couple of things:
1. In the rankings section for the events, it has the order being …BP|TP|WLT|HP… I would suggest putting HP before WLT.
2. The alliance numbers aren't correct in the elimination teams section. It has 0-7 instead of 1-8. Who has heard of the 0th seeded alliance?
3. Possibly add links to TBA/TRA, webcasts, opr, other useful sites
4. Possibly include actual data per individual team. (Have people send in scouting data after the event?)
5. Looks pretty good.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Great website! It is already bookmarked and I'm sure it will be a useful resource for me. I really like e bracket diagram under the event page.

So far I only typed in our team number, but it wasn't showing data for the Las Vegas Regional on our team page. It was under the event page though. I'm using my iPad, so maybe the mobile version has an error- or of course it could be user error ;). Anyway, you said to let you know any bugs or errors, so I thought I should mention it. :)

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I don't know if it's too early to offer suggestions, and I know that this is reminiscent of The Blue Alliance, but if it was possible to go back and forth from a team's page to the data for the events they participated in and vice-versa, that would be nice. It would make moving around the website easier if I didn't have to go back to the front page every time I wanted to switch from looking at teams to looking through events.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Great job on creating another resource for FIRSTers!

One thing on your stats for Spokane...our third match (which was a win) was a surrogate and therefore needs to be removed from our win column (currently shows as 10-1-1 with 11 matches played).

Overall a great start on what I am sure will prove a valuable resource...

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Just as a quick update, we already surpassed over 10,000 individual API requests since the launch a mere 20 hours ago. I thank all of you who support us and we will be bringing more and more content and fixes to the site over the next few weeks, and well into the future.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I like the site. Easy to navigate your extensive database.

Just one issue. When clicking on a team's website via their team page, the url which it points me to is always prefaced with a second http://.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Yup we've found the issue and are going to fix it when we update the site tonight. Thanks for the feedback!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I think I found a bug....that or I don't understand the API....

When hitting this URL:http://www.thefirstalliance.org/api/...event-code=OHC

It returns:
{"result":true,"data":"MySql Error for query(SELECT t.number, t.id FROM\n((SELECT red_1_id as id from Matches m, events e where m.event_id=e.id and e.api_name='OHC' group by red_1_id)UNION\n(SELECT red_2_id from Matches m, events e where m.event_id=e.id and e.api_name='OHC' group by red_2_id)UNION\n(SELECT red_2_id from Matches m, events e where m.event_id=e.id and e.api_name='OHC' group by red_3_id)UNION\n(SELECT blue_1_id from Matches m, events e where m.event_id=e.id and e.api_name='OHC' group by blue_1_id)UNION\n(SELECT blue_2_id from Matches m, events e where m.event_id=e.id and e.api_name='OHC' group by blue_2_id)UNION\n(SELECT blue_3_id from Matches m, events e where m.event_id=e.id and e.api_name='OHC' group by blue_3_id)) as team_list,\nteams t where team_list.id= t.id)Error: Table 'db409593564.Matches' doesn't exist"}

Every other time I used an incorrect parameter it returned with result = false and not an SQL error.

Aside from that, great job this site has a lot of potential.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Okay, fixed that bug, thank you very much for notcing that.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Ok big update!

First we want to say a big "THANK YOU" to everyone in the FIRST community who has given positive and negative feedback, we've taken everyone's suggestions into account and are working on making The FIRST Alliance even better.

In the past five days we've averaged 5,000 API hits per day, and currently are slightly over 20,000 total hits.

The Big Announcement:
We've finalized an official roadmap for the site!
Check it out at: http://thefirstalliance.org/roadmap.php

Let us know what you think by replying to the thread or sending an email to contact@thefirstalliance.org

**We've fixed several bugs as well. Elimination brackets are mostly fixed, however we suspect they will break under certain edge cases, so if you notice anything please let us know. The team website issue has been resolved. As far as we know, all data has been downloaded and put into our database, but if you notice any oddities let us know by emailing contact@thefirstalliance.org.

Thanks to all of you again! We can't wait to show you what's next!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Something doesn't add up here. Is there a typo?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

There is a little bit of rounding up and a little bit of rounding down. The current total as of right now is 23,000 requests, but the average is pretty effected by inrush from the first day.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Sorry about that. Here's how it breaks down:

At the end of today we're on track to receive 25,000 total API hits.
It's been five days since we launched.
That averages out to 5,000 hits per day.

My brain seemed to turn into mush there, thanks for pointing that out!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Would it be possible to add a team robot photo to the team page (user uploaded, of course) sometime down the road? Also, will outside scouting data eventually find its way on this site, or will it be based more on official data?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Update: Team pages now have a section where you can upload an image of a robot along with a caption to be viewed by all. As of right now, all images need to be verified first by an admin due to the public nature of the website. If we don't have many incidents after a while we will talk about removing the verification process.

Does anybody have any suggestions of things they would like to see on this website?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Dude.....I literally started working on that feature last night and finished it this morning, you can go have a look at the website.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

upload mechanism works great! Thanks :D

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I like the overall OPR and DPR. Any chance of including rankings or doing it by event as well? And/or by auton, teleop, end game (Twitter-dependent)? Other cool OPRnet like features would be great, too--sched, or even selected matches. (OPRnet is fantastic, but I tend to do better with GUIs...)
Ok, I like OPR. Flawed as it is.


Also, any thought in including the team's standings & awards on each event page and/or an overall team page?

In elimination mode for an event, is there any particular reason that the teams listed in "Elimination Teams" are not hyperlinked?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Could you also include a paper explaining how you're calculating OPR and DPR? And on that note, could you include separate columns doing OPR by hoops/bridge?

It's still great though :)

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

It isn't in the roadmap yet, but we're working on it now actually.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

OPR and DPR are calculated as described below. This is the same way that they are calculated for OPRNet and all other opr programs.

Take all teams at an event, count this set as T.
Create a matrix which is TxT, so you end up with a column and row for every team. We will refer to this as M and will describe how many times a team plays another.
So if T was (1,5,9) the M would be
1 5 9
1 - - -
5 - - -
9 - - -
Also, make a matrix that is 1xT and this will be O and will contain sum of all points a team scored
and thirdly, made a matrix 1xT which will be called D, and will contain sum of all points scored against a team
Now, for every match at an event follow the next few steps of logic
1) Increment M[A,B], if A!=B, increment M[B,A]
2) do 1 with A = red 1, B = red 1
3) do 1 with A = red 1, B = red 2
4) do 1 with A = red 1, B = red 3
5) do 1 with A = red 2, B = red 2
6) do 1 with A = red 2, B = red 3
7) do 1 with A = red 3, B = red 3
8) 2-7 with blue instead of red
9) for all red teams, O[red 1-3] += red_score
10) for all red teams, D[red 1-3] += blue_score
11) for all blue teams, O[blue 1-3] += blue_score
12) for all blue teams, D[blue 1-3] += red_score

then take inv(M) * O, and you get OPR's
and take inv(M) * D, and you get DPR's

this write-up may be a bit flawed, but thats the general flow of how OPR's and DPR's are calculated.

Also, right now we do have OPR's and DPR's per-team per-event, but as of now, we don't really have a clean place to put those details. So the power-rankings page is just the highest average OPR/DPR.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Yes.....a VERY good reason......I forgot, its fixed now, thanks for the bug report.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Glitch in eliminations view: The X's cascade back. For example, the second alliance won the regional in the finals vs the first. The first alliance is listed as losing all previous matches in the diagram.

I really like where this website is going. While you're doing OPR, as someone above mentioned, Teleop OPR and Bridge OPR are really the only useful ones this year. While you're at it, CCWM is another measure of team performance.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I've never heard of CCWM, I'll look into it a bit.
Second, the way the X's work is showing how a team is eliminated, so instead of showing where they won up to and crossing them out there, it crosses them out over the whole thing as soon as they no longer make it to the next level. I was probably thinking of doing it more like the former, but probably just use green for all 'won' sections, then red where they were eliminated.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

If I recall correctly, CCWM = OPR - DPR. Calculated Contribution to Winning Margin (predictably) uses the team's alliances' winning margins rather than points score by (OPR) or on (DPR) them.

As far as how you're calculating OPR & DPR, this is actually a more loaded question than most years. I don't know if it's what slijin meant, but people are indeed calculating it differently this year, mostly by weighting Co-Op as bridge points. The conversations happened in a few of the different OPR threads, but the general gist was 5 or 10 points per CP.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Looking at the eliminations page, what is the W-L-T column meant to represent? In its current implementation, it appears to be whether the blue alliance won, lost, or tied, but I guess I fail to see how this data is relevant.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

After seeing the robot picture feature, what if The FIRST alliance had a robot reveal video feature too? I know that people are asking for matches, but I think a reveal would be interesting and different.

Just an idea.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I second that. There needs to be a place on the internet where all of the unveil videos are kept together, and it may as well be the FIRST Alliance.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Hmm... really interesting idea. We'll look into it.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I really like this idea, we should have something up in the next day or two.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Okay, that went a little quicker than expected. You can now link any youtube video on TFA.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I was wondering if the videos, or photos that are posted are moderated and how it would be possible to remove either a picture or video? And if this isnt possible if it would be able to make some moderators or allow users to remove team photos

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Yesterday I had it so images had to be approved by an admin before they were displayed, but after many annoying emails from my system, I decided that for now images will be open, until there is any sort of issue. If there are any issues/incidents in the future, I will re-enable to approval system. As far as videos go, those are also immediate and will fall under the same rules of unrestricted until first incident.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Quest a quick update:

We just rolled out new features to our api. See them on our documentation at the end of the page. Now you can get the opr/dpr of each team at an event.

Also, you can compare a team's OPR/DPR by event. Click the "OPR/DPR History" link on the team page. Ex.

http://thefirstalliance.org/team.php?team-number=3357

Keep sending in your suggestions, you guys are coming up with great ideas!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I'm learning how to use the api, and have hit a bit of a snag. I'm requesting the "team-details" and all I get back are team info and no match data. I'm supplying team number and either the event id or event code and not getting any match info. Any ideas?

So far I've been very impressed, you guys have done well!

Keep up the good work.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

It somewhat is, but not specifically - although I was requesting "hoop/bridge OPR" based on similar reasons. :) What I was requesting specifically - and should have been explained better - was an OPR based on only points scored in hoops and an OPR based on only points scored from balancing (with some sort of weighted addition for coopertition balancing). The reason is that, in my opinion, a general OPR doesn't really capture how well a team is at a certain aspect of the game - whether a team can consistently score 20 points by hoops or 20 points by balancing in qualifications, their OPR will come out to be ~20. The reason for asking DPR was because I've seen quite a bit of discussion on how it should be calculated.

It would indeed be great to see Power Rankings updated with CCWM and various such OPR ratings. Would it also be possible to see Power Rankings extended to all teams (placed in a scrollbox or something of the sort)?

As Siri pointed out, this year just a general OPR is somewhat flawed, as it doesn't take into account coop bridge balancing, which is why I asked for this explanation. For the ease of similarly interested viewers though, could this be posted at the top of the Power Rankings page?

You may also want to consider including an explanation of what these terms are. For people familiar with them, it's easy to understand what the numbers mean, but for people who're just looking around, columns with teams, OPRs and DPRs must be quite bewildering.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Looks like there was a mis-type in the API doc, it should be team-matches and not team-details.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Thanks for the help Ben; my project is complete (at least the first phase).

I've used the FIRST Alliance API to produce a nifty spreadsheet of all the teams on Newton.

See this topic on our team's website:

http://comets.firstobjective.org/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=5&id=6 6&Itemid=138

Thanks again for the help, you guys have done an awesome job!

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

There were a couple problems in the spreadsheet I created. The problems were incorrect Wins / Loss record. The problem has been fixed and the updated version can be downloaded from the link in my previous comment. Look for the file "Newton_2.zip"

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Just a quick update:

We're working on a mobile version of the site. You can visit it here, but it's no where near being complete. http://m.thefirstalliance.org

Also, you can now view a team's OPR/DPR per event by clicking "OPR/DPR History" on a team's page. This functionality has also been added to the API, see the documentation.

Also, a new stats mode has been added to the event pages. You can sort teams in an event based on various metrics we've gathered. Enjoy!

http://thefirstalliance.org/

EDIT: The layout and design of our stats mode page was inspired by FRC Data Miner. Thanks to Zach O for doing such a great job on the site.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Looks familiar

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

How so?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I think it's funny that 3357 does not have a robot picture posted on the FIRST Alliance.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Haven't seen that site before, but I'm not suprised that there is something similar out there, I'ts the most compact way to show that information.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Don't worry. Grant has.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

It's been a pretty popular site launched a couple weeks ago. FRC Miner has gotten a lot of publicity.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...7&postcount=11

-Clinton-

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I think it show a lot of interest and great work, but with large number of new FRC resource sites showing up, I'm left wishing that teams would have worked together on a single site.

Personally I've always been a fan of TBA, and they've always looked for more people to help out... seems people are choosing to go on their own instead.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

That's why TBA is open source, as opposed to many of the newer sites popping up. This way, developers can contribute to a single resource and make it better as opposed to having a fragmented developer community.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I'd be cool if we could have seen the same continuity between watchfirstnow.com (since 2011) and madstream.team1323.com (since 2012)

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

So a couple of things I should clarify guys.

First, we've been getting some feedback about our stats mode on the site recently. Specifically people have been accusing us of copying FRC Data Miner. There is also evidence that I saw the page and liked it a lot.

Ben never actually saw the site, I just suggested incorporating a layout and design like Data Miner's into this page we were already planning on building. Having said that, we're constantly pushing forward and incorporating new ideas into the site so when we see something good and that fits into our vision of TheFIRSTAlliance.org we try to incorporate it into the site. We also make plans to improve what is already out there and tailor it to our needs. There's nothing wrong with that guys, competition makes all solutions better.

Now to address why we're not releasing TFA as open source or trying to work with other existing services.

1. We're still starting out. We have a vision and a strong following already, but we're not ready to let many other people have control over our idea that we recognize is still young and fragile.
2. We're committed to building the best stats portal on the Internet. Doing so requires a determined, fast moving team (Ben and I right now) to make changes on the fly, respond quickly to feedback, and build a truly awesome service. The reason we don't find the existing services adequate is because of what we see as design or usability flaws, technical flaws, or both.
3. This just summarizes points 1 & 2. We envision a unified system. A single go-to place for FRC stats. When we started this, our vision was building a killer API. It still is. Everything you see on TFA is utilizing our publicly accessible API. Anyone can build what we've built! Just use our own API. As we move forward, we're going to be expanding our API's and site's abilities and features. You can get a general idea of where we're headed by checking out our roadmap.

I hope that addresses some of the concerns or maybe even anger we've been hearing out there. We're always looking for new ideas to bring into TFA, so if you have something to tell or show us drop us a line! We're super excited to be working and interacting with so many passionate FIRSTers to make the best stats portal out there. Thanks again, hope this clears things up.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

On hindsight, that might have been good. MadStream started as just a webcast service for a few California off-season events, but it grew quicker than we thought. Before we knew it, the competition season had started. However since then, we've open sourced our code and are looking into contributing to TBA's codebase to provide a more seamless user experience hopefully sometime in the future.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

While I understand where you're coming from, lately FIRST data has felt a little like this...

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Hahaha yeah I definitely understand that feeling. However, we just need to make the best standard and hopefully people will adopt it. So far it seems like that's happening.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

My thoughts exactly.

I almost just posted that exact same comic, but scrolled down before hitting Submit.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Why does it seem that way?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I too, almost linked to the same comic. xkcd always seems to have something appropriate... I just feel like there are too many websites out there that do similar things, and if we focused our resources as a community, we could build one superior site. This looks like a cool resource and all, and it looks like some quality coding, but I'll stick with good 'ol TBA for the time being.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

So far we've got several people who are constantly writing in to us with their ideas or bugs they've found. Users have started uploading photos and videos as well. Since launch (which is closely approaching the two week mark), we've been getting 5,000 api hits per day.

What we're super excited about also is how many people have emailed or PM'ed us asking us about our API and how we've helped them and guided them as they've built their ideas. It's exciting to think about how we're helping empower so many other people do amazing things with our work.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Maybe a good question to ask is why? Currently the only things we are missing are stats from previous years (which I don't think many people use anyways) and videos (which are a priority right now).

What features would The FIRST Alliance need for users to switch over?

What other features does the FIRST community want to see? If you're looking for ways in which the community can help build a great site, then help us out here. We're two committed individuals who have so far proven they can respond quickly and release updates in very little time.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I disagree, i'd like to look at a teams performance over time. It can show you their consistency and if they are trending up or down as well.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I'll tell you what TBA has that you don't have yet: a proven record. What are your plans to keep this site going? How is it being paid for? Is it sustainable if it starts getting heavy use? There would be nothing more frustrating to me to develop a cool mobile app using your API and then have it disappear from underneath me because you get sick of paying the server bill or something. Or if you change the API in some way that breaks my app.
You've quoted that number a few times now. Let me give you an idea what you'll be up against if your service actually grows. The private FRC Spyder API server that we run (which provides similar data, obviously) receives 5,000 hits per minute during some events. We received 8 million hits during the 7 weeks of regionals. We can handle that kind of traffic with a modest server because we tightly control the client and make extensive use of HTTP headers to only send data when it's absolutely needed. Even then, it's a server instance that costs money. We used to run on a free App Engine instance, but we quickly outgrew that (especially after they changed their pricing model last fall).

Basically, what I would want to know is: how do you plan to survive? If you had all the traffic of FRC Spyder plus a few dozen other custom apps, and you have high school kids hitting your server who aren't respectful of the amount of traffic they're generating, how do you plan to handle it?

Although we don't use TBA for FRC Spyder, they've been around long enough to prove to me that they can deliver on their promises. Right now your service looks like a hobby project, and I would constantly have to wonder when you'd get bored of it and shut it down.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I too use previous years' data for many purposes. It's quite handy to have it all in one place.

As to other reasons I'm not switching over, one (not necessarily the only/biggest) is simply integration and habit. You see that little TBA-> beside your team number in your user title? Convenient, no? I probably use frclinks.com/tba/nnnn almost as much as I use ChiefDelphi. It's amazingly convenient. (And maybe I'm just an old fogey at heart.)


All that said, I'm loving the OPR/DPR history charts. Is there anyway the events could be displayed in chronological/reverse chronological order? For instance, 357's is (reading down): DC Regional (week 5), MAR Championship (week 7), Hatboro-Horsham District (week 1), Chestnut Hill District (week 2). I guess you're displaying them in FIRST's "Regional Event" page order now? Maybe it's just me; that order really bugs me. :o

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Thanks for the great feedback/insight, Dave. When you say TFA looks like a hobby project, what do you mean by that? Is it the fact that we're just the new guys on the block? Or is it something in the site's design or functionality that makes you say that?

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

I see where you're coming from, but teams are developing products, not standards. Competition is good and improves overall quality.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

The only reason competition is good in the sake of capitalism is because people are motivated to make money. When people want to make more money, in theory they will deliver a better product/service to gain more market share.

When people are working on open-source or community projects for the benefit of society/larger group of people, it's better that they work together on a unified approach, otherwise a large part of their resources and man-hours of work are simply spent on duplicating what already exists.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

The economics of this are a bit sketchy. Check your premises as to why people work and compete. Also, TFA isn't really an open source project or project for the community in the sense that you're thinking it is.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

That's part of his point... he's arguing against the merit of having multiple competing standards, when there is already one that is both well established and open source.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Frankly, those are pretty much the only things that get me to TBA these days. Even if you replicate their database, TBA remains the easier option for me. For current year results, I go to Spyder. Advanced stats, I do myself. What's left? I don't know.

That's what would bring me to TFA: original ideas, give me something useful that I've never seen before. Or, at the very least, collaborate instead of bragging about your great success. People other than you two working on this project isn't going to dilute the mission; it will only make it stronger. You're not exactly being welcoming to the FIRST community here.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

That's really not a fair statement to make. If you go back to my previous posts where I outline exactly why we're not collaborating or making this open source you'll hopefully see why.

If anything we're being extremely welcoming to the FIRST community by providing rapid changes, support, and fixes as soon as we can. It's because of our small size and commitment that we can do this. Right now that's something we're just not willing to give up.

Re: The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play
 

Competition is always good. Why settle for an inferior standard? Also, don't confuse standard and product.