FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Teams 4030 Null Pointer Exception and 1983 Skunk Works are proud to present our scouting platform, http://FRCscout.com/. Designed to be user-friendly and easy to implement, our platform includes these following main features:

• Internet Connection: The platform is designed to work around spotty internet connection and the lack of Wi-Fi at competitions. Connect to the internet once to load the entire scouting process, leave the connection and scout an unlimited number of matches, then connect to the internet again to push your local data to the database.
• Website Advantage: It’s usable to anyone with a tablet, smartphone, or laptop. If your device can access the internet, it can scout. The screen will resize and orient to remain as ergonomic as possible. You will never have to update it, and your device already has an internet browser installed. Also, with the exception of uploading pictures from the pit, the website is not very data-intensive (it is basically just sending and receiving short text files).
• Easy Analysis: The platform has a built in connector to Tableau (data visualization software included in your KoP, click here for tutorials) for custom and quick analysis. The platform also shows basic analytics about teams.
• Built in Pit-Scouting, Commenting, and Pictures: You don’t have to connect it to additional apps to get a full picture of the robot, literally and figuratively.
• Intuitive, Easy to Use Interface: Also comes with a built in Match scouting tutorial.
• Team Management: Using an encrypted login system, the platform makes organizing and keeping track of scouts easy for a lead. Because every match has a scout associated to it, you can find which of your scouts are making mistakes and train them to fix it.
• Publicly Accessible Database: Not only will you have your own data, you can access data taken by all other teams using the platform. The more teams using the FRC Scout, the more balanced and accurate the overall data becomes. Data from all teams is accessible and can be easily filtered down to just data collected by your team if you want that. This feature also lets smaller teams work together to split the work and share the data.

The more teams using the platform, the better! Please try FRCScout.com at the link below and tell us what you think.
http://frcscout.com/login/

Note: This is a different and independent platform from the tablet app FRCscout, designed by team 1986.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

This is a really easy site to use. Great UI! Does it sync publicly at competitions? Like if a team uploaded information, I could see it?

Thank you! The database is publicly available and updated in realtime as soon as a team pushes data. So as long as you have internet access, you can access all of the latest information.

I am the lead web developer for FRC Scout -- if you have any questions about things specific to the website and its functionality, you can ask me.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Is there any way to figure out who has the manager role for your team? I thought I made the first account for my team, and everyone I've asked at our meeting so far says they haven't made an account.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

If you were the first to make an account, you should be manager. In your case, Robert Marshall beat you to the punch. I went back in and made you a manager. Hope you like the app!

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

...darn alumni. This looks like a great system for our team, thanks!

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Glad to help! PM me if you have any team-specific questions.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Prisoner's dilemma? :cool:

Hardly. Think of it as collective bargaining.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Love that it can be shared among teams. Very helpful for us smaller teams.

I do see the prisoners dilemma as noted above, but I don't think this will be an issue. You will have to CREATE a prisoners dilemma to have a prisoners dilemma. With multiple teams watching the same match, they would have to agree not to share that information with the other teams. If one team breaks that agreement, they will share with others and get more info back.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

You might want to include a walk through on how to use this app and scout a match.
Either step by step or youtube.

Lot of rookie teams could benefit from this and walking through the process of explaining it to someone new, you will find lots of improvements that can be made.

Video tutorial did you say?

FRC Scout Tutorial: http://youtu.be/DgRGNKkIbKM

A few things have changed since when we recorded this but the vast majority is still the same.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Hotdog!

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Really proud of you Quinn. Everybody did amazing work on this. I've heard nothing but great reviews about the new system. I'm excited to see how it works out this week.

Data quality is huge and this is a great step forward in that regard. The fact that it's easing the strain on teams Is a huge plus.

Thanks for all you do, you're amazing!

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

"[*]Publicly Accessible Database: Not only will you have your own data, you can access data taken by all other teams using the platform. The more teams using the FRC Scout, the more balanced and accurate the overall data becomes. Data from all teams is accessible and can be easily filtered down to just data collected by your team if you want that. This feature also lets smaller teams work together to split the work and share the data."

I really like the fact that the database is publicly accessible and that it is possible to write your own SQL queries to extract data from it. Being able to query the data that you've entered in anyway that occurs to you is fantastic. Thanks for this feature!

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Great website. Just made an account for my team. Will have to try this out at Waterford this weekend.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Could you explain some more about how it possible to scout the matches when offline? Where is the data stored what do you, as a user, to submit the data to the server?

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Once you have loaded the match scouting page, it never needs to reload. All of the matches are cached into local storage until you reconnect to the internet. At the end of each match it tries to push to the server. If you have internet at that time, it will push it online, otherwise you can manually push it with a button that is on the prematch page and a button on the main menu.

At the Auburn Mountainview district, two teams scouted offline all day without any problems. It works surprisingly well.

So you only really need to connect to the internet when you want to push or access your data. I recommend having a single phone with bluetooth tethering and pushing a different tablet (or laptop) between each match.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

One quick - foreseeable problem, what's to stop (Random guy X from Team X) from making a parent-manager account for (Team y)?

They will get an email for every user that signs up. If they do it on accident they can just approve another team manager and then delete their own account.

If they are being malicious, both me and our lead developer are very easy to reach and we can appoint some new managers and remove the troll.

If this becomes a big issue, we can add more tools for account creation and team manager reclamation. Right now though, we are focusing on more analytics and for ways for teams to edit and manage their own data.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

How do we connect to the database?

On the website there are two buttons.

Integrate with Tableau lets you download a connector file. Opening this connector file with Tableau connects you to the most recent data and preloads some calculated fields and pictures of the field.

Connect to Database gives you the logon credentials to connect pgadmin (a program for connecting to Postgre sql databases) to your data.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Hi everyone! So I wanted to post some visualizations and usage statistics I made with the frcscout.com database.

Please check it out!
https://public.tableau.com/profile/p...botRoleScatter

Disclaimer:

• All data is collected by scouts (not just my own team) and therefore might not reflect the true results.
• It has all of the data currently (8:00 PM PST 3/7/2015) in the database. I will refresh it and upload it on Monday to reflect this weekend's scouting.

Also, shout out to team 360 who scouted the Auburn Mountainview regional almost entirely offline (at one point a scout went 23 matches in a row without pushing data).

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

I'm trying to access the database through Tableau, and getting the following error:
See attachment 1

I'm using the file downloaded from frcscout for the login information.
See attachment 2

Any ideas on why I can't access the data?

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Looking at your logs, I think it is mostly that you lost connection during authentication. Try restarting your wifi and connecting again. It is working for me and our other developer right now so I think it might be on your side. Your logon information is correct.

Also, we provide a connector file for Tableau that should handle the connection and give a few pre-made calculated fields to help you get started.

Just to make sure, you downloaded the PGSQL driver right?

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Yes, I do have the driver, and I am using that file for the connection. I'm trying to use the public wifi available at the event, and that may be the problem.

That would probably be the problem. It takes a bit of time to extract the data. Bluetooth tether to your phone and use a data extract to avoid having to reconnect every time you move anything. Just refresh the extract every 5 matches or something.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Note that the organizers close down the public WiFi at many events (they did at CVR).

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

To the owners of frcscout.com:
First of all, love your website, kudos!
At competitions, the data is stored locally, and I was wondering if there was a way to access these files so that they could be sent over bluetooth. That would be a good way to get around the wifi problem at competitions.
To everyone:
Does anyone know an app or website where this could be done? We're looking for any scouting system that can send data over bluetooth or anything that could get around the wifi issue.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

I made a quick walk-through to find the local storage and posted it to Imgur. Here is a link to the album: http://imgur.com/gallery/lvNY8/

If you want to make an add-on for your browser to use this raw data, be my guest.

If you have bluetooth though, you should consider just tethering your devices to the internet with bluetooth. It's what we do at competitions. As long as you have even one bluetooth enabled internet device, you are set.

While sending the data can work on very sketchy connections, for analyzing the data in Tableau, I strongly recommend USB tethering to your phone to minimize the chance of dropping a connection. Our database is getting pretty big so having a faster, more reliable internet connection is your best friend.

Please PM me if you have any more questions or if there is any way I can help you out for your specific case.



Happy Scouting!

Quinn

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Thanks for the help! I eventually just used a phone as a mobile hotspot, and was able to get the data that way. Unfortunately, I had to borrow another person's phone, as mine doesn't allow me to make a hotspot. I'll have to try using bluetooth tethering.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

this looks great - we brought it to our members at our team meeting today and they were all "finally, we get a chance to be involved in an easy way!"

thank you thank you thank you!!!!!

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Thanks, my team started using bluetooth tethering to scout at Buckeye Regional. We submitted pit scouting data but we can't seem to access it from Tableau. It appears on the Website but whenever we download to Tableau nothing from Buckeye Regional appears. I've tried refreshing and redownloading. Any ideas? Thanks a ton.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Update: Instead of Downloading the data, I connected to the database from Tableau and it now shows everything. Still not sure what happened, but it's working.

I'm so sorry. In the recent version of the connector file, the pit scouting data isn't included because it messed up the match scouting data.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

You will have to do bluetooth tethering at most venues including Champs. We use that method with our tablet-based system.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Of the 60-some teams that used the system this year, it looks like 24 of them will be competing at World's (With at least one team on every division!)

One of the best things about this new system is that it makes joint-scouting and pooling resources a lot easier. Hope this helps teams find others to work with:

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Do you plan to update this program for the 2016 season? I've been looking at it and I like the idea for our team if it gets updated. Thanks for all your hard work.

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

When will this site be updated for this years game? :deadhorse:

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Bumping thread

Will FRCscout be updated for 2016?
It looks great and we would love to use it!

Re: FRCscout.com A Different Approach to the Scouting Platform
 

Hi guys,

I was the lead developer for FRC Scout last year. But I'm now graduated, and can no longer actively maintain the app.

However, from the beginning, this was intended as a community effort. The codebase is open-source and on GitHub, so if anyone is interested in helping to maintain it, please let me know. We are currently in talks with other local teams from the Seattle area to find ways of managing the server-side components of the app, but any code contributions would be much appreciated as well.

Source code for 2015 app
Fork for 2016 (wip)

Please let me know if you have other ideas for contributing. You can also email sam@ingrahamrobotics.org.