Scouting Help
 

Hi my team has been trying to constantly to improve our way of scouting for the last couple of years. Our current method of scouting was having a binder where we have our pit scouting information stored. Besides this binder we match scout by having 6 members fill out a match sheet for each team when they play. Once the match is finished we have someone on a labtop input this data into excel.

This year we are hoping to go all electronic.

Goals for 2014 Scouting:
1. Database where all the pit and match scouting information for all the teams will be located. (Currently we are learning how to use microsoft access 2007 and we are novice using it.)
2. Use 6 labtops,tablets, or smartphones to fill out a match scouting form for each robot in a match, then get that data sent over to a main labtop which all the information will be stored into a database.
3. Take the data and place it into tableau to analyze.
4. Get this data on to a tablet for our members in the pit area to have it. Also these team member are able to access the data to strategize for matches and alliance selection.

Re: Scouting Help
 

Do you have your team members rotate scouts? If you only have the six you'll exhaust them and data recording will progressively become poor and sloppy.

Re: Scouting Help
 

Last year we were not able to completely rotate out the 6 people scouting. (Either 1 or 2 members were able to be switched at a time.) At our home tournament rotating members out will be easier this year because our team has grown from 30 to 37 members. However, when we attend our the out of state tournament this year, we will not have enough people to rotate.

Will a router without internet be legal?

Re: Scouting Help
 

According to the rules, no. It still creates a wireless 802.11 signal.

Re: Scouting Help
 

Any advice or suggestions would be helpful.

Re: Scouting Help
 

Blue Tooth is legal though, or am I way wrong on this?

You are correct, a bluetooth network is legal.

Re: Scouting Help
 

For the last couple years, our team has switched to an approach using Android devices, and had a lot of success in this. We've found that using an intuitive GUI for data recording makes things much easier on our scouts, and I have even had a group of students requesting to scout. In previous years it was viewed as a chore.

If you have access to enough Android devices, I've published the app I have built on Google Play, and also released the source on Github. (The version on Google Play and the master branch on Github are still the 2013 version)

We are still working on the version for this year, but we intend to only have 2 scouts instead of 6 due to the nature of the game. We also intend to add Bluetooth support this year, but that comes after updating the app for the new game.

Re: Scouting Help
 

When do you plan on releasing the version for this year?

Re: Scouting Help
 

It should be done, at least the data entry portion of it, by President's Day.

Re: Scouting Help
 

Sounds a lot like what my old team implemented...
Some ideas:
- You can't use wireless (and Im not sure bluetooth is really that reliable for data transfer like this), but you can use wired. You can buy an 8 port switch, and disable any wireless features (if it has it) to set up a network. This does have the downside of usually requiring AC power.
- Check with the venues at the places you will be going, make sure you can use their AC power and that there is a good place for you to setup (sometimes they cannot allow teams to use AC power) There are ways to get around this, but building a big battery based power supply or having enough battery to last for a 10 hour day can be difficult.
- Make your input simpler than you think you need! Its often hard to know exactly what info your drive team will need, so a lot of databases collect an awful lot of data. But think back to your match discussions and ranking discussions from past years. Usually you only end up relying on a couple of key statistics, and maybe a photo of the robot. Try to simplify and take out what you can for your first shots at electronic data entry.
- Finish EARLY and test YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM at least a WEEK before you get to competition. Set up all of your laptops exactly as you plan to have them setup, have your 7 people sit and watch webcasts of scrimmages or events weeks before yours and test everything out. In THEORY all of your SW & HW will work fine, but you DON'T want to be fighting silly software bugs, packet transfer issues, bad cable connections or inability of scouts to input data fast enough to keep up with matches. Make sure you have a reliable way to transfer the info to the tablet without interrupting the flow of the database. Test it ALL!! I cannot emphasize this one enough.

Good luck!

Re: Scouting Help
 

I agree with Kims Robot. We always used wired connection at competitions and we never lost connection or got in trouble.

If you want to collect data using the computers, I would strongly recommend using a combination of MySQL and Access. Last year we set it up so that data collected on several laptops would all sync to the same database in live time. Then, we would connect to the MySQL sever with Tableau. MySQL is free and can be connected to with a standard OBDC connection in Access. This is a tutorial I found: http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?65,148441,148441

In addition, if you have any questions about Tableau or connecting it to any datasource, feel free to PM me. I am trying to find some common problems so I can make another video.

Re: Scouting Help
 

My team is creating an Android App specifically designed for scouting. W'll be able to enter information on other teams and sent it to a central database for other members to look over.