[TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Greetings from your friends over at The Blue Alliance!

As we head into the 2016 competition season of FRC, we'd like to announce some improvements and new features we've been working on for a while now.

Website

• Refinements and bug fixes for the whole web stack to make sure everything's running smoothly
• You can now submit Imgur images for use as team/robot pictures
• Keep an eye out for more myTBA integration throughout the site in the coming weeks

Android
Version 3.0 was launched last fall, as many of you probably saw. The big feature: a rewritten data layer that should make the entire experience better, faster, and more reliable
Version 3.1 is now rolling out. It includes…

• Fixes for a host of bugs that cropped up during Week 0
• Support for displaying Imgur images
• An event-specific GameDay live ticker for each event so you can see what’s happening in real time
• We’re planning to add native team image uploads. From within the app, you’ll be able to take a photo and have it automatically uploaded to Imgur and submitted to the admins for review

If you have an Android device, be sure to download the app or update it if you already have it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....androidclient

iOS/Windows
We’ve had an iOS app in the works for a while now, and there’s been some interesting in starting development on a Windows 10 app. If you’re a developer for either platform and want to help get these apps out into the FRC community, we’d welcome your contributions.

As always, The Blue Alliance is fully open-source, and we welcome contributions from the FIRST community. If you have any experience with web development, design, Android, iOS, Windows, or you just want to learn any of the above, we'd love to have you on the team! Check out our GitHub repositories to get started: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance

We hope you enjoy the enhancements we've made across all of The Blue Alliance! If you have a feature suggestion or bug report, let us know in the comments, or file an issue on our GitHub page: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance.

Good luck to everyone in the 2016 season!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

1 question. Right now our TBA page is displaying our robot name from last year. Is there any way to change that?

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

If you update your robot name in TIMS, it will update on TBA as well.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Thanks, Ill ask my mentor to update it.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Just want to say a HUGE thanks to the entire TBA crew for their hard work work on what is a great resource for the FIRST community!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I'm really looking forward to working with anyone who wishes to contribute to the Windows app, especially on the design front. I'm horrible at it. If you know C#/.NET/XAML (or even if you don't) please feel free to contribute!

You can check out the WIP here: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance...ndows/tree/mvp

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

How long does that take to update?

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

In theory 24-48 hours, but if it's been longer than that let us know and we'll take a closer look at your team

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Okay. I just updated the robot name last night, but the team sponsors have been different for months.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I really like the blue alliance, and have been using it to get my students to watch events so that they can learn what the best teams are doing in week 0. Thank you for your service. I have a request though. When I go to the webcast part of the site, there are all these pop ups and live tickers and chats that overwhelm whoever goes on there. My students are easily frightened and logging on to the webcast part of the site scares them. Would you consider setting those all off by default so that you could just have a single screen when you log in and do not have to close so many things and change so many settings to watch a single event?

Thank you and god bless.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Similar to FarmerJohn...

We were watching Week 0 in Gameday up on the projector at the school. Unfortunately the resolution isn't all that great, and when we moved the browser window over it resized it to fit... The problem is the bar at the top of the page (to toggle webcasts chat etc) disappeared due to the width of the screen.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

We'll investigate. Thanks!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

You're right, I've confirmed your full name doesn't match what the API is returning, so we'll investigate the cause. Thanks for bringing it up!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I'd also like to mention once again - The Blue Alliance is totally community built and maintained (I do it for fun), so if anybody out there is a developer and wants to help build TBA, reach out and get involved! It's a great way to make an impact in the community and to build some really cool things.

If anybody is apprehensive about "jumping in the deep end", let me know and I'd be happy to mentor you through your first contributions.

So either shoot me a PM, or reach out on GitHub: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

By the way, all of the app/site repos have green "Help Wanted" labels to mark issues that should be fairly easy for anyone new to contribute to. If you don't know where to begin, those would be a good place to start.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I'm having Gameday issues as well. The chat function won't close, and when the Live Ticker closes, the webcast gets shifted left, with a large blank bar to the right of it. I can't change the layout either.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

The layout changes, but the feeds don't resize until you refresh the page.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Hmm weird. What browser/os are you on? Did you have this issue last year?

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I've been using it in Google Chrome with Chrome OS, and the same thing happens in Google Chrome and IE on Windows 8.1.

And no, I didn't even have this problem last week.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

GameDay hasn't been touched since kickoff, and that was just minor stuff so it's still mostly last year's code... I can't seem to reproduce your bug at the moment either. I'll investigate further.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Same issues.
Win 10(ouch!), Chrome.

When choosing layout, no changes made w/o refresh. Once refreshed, I get selected layout, but I also get Ticker and Chat open again if they were closed.
Same response whether using "Gameday" or just "Watch Now".

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Ah, I think I can reproduce the error. It only occurs when I drag and drop a webcast (e.g. Palmetto) to a particular view. Working on a fix.

Edit: Should be fixed. It might take a while for caches to clear. If you see "SCMB No matches yet!" on the Palmetto webcast, then you have the updated GameDay and layout changes/chat/ticker should be fixed.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I am in my office now and it appears to be working normally.

Win 7 with Chrome.

THANKS Eugene!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Works for me too :)

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Is there any chance you can gets stats like these up on each event page. I believe the current API gives you access to this data. (Chart lifted from this thread: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=144709 )

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

After seeing that table. I've been working on a script that can pull that data for each event. Would people be interested in a living white paper this season?

If TBA can do it live, even better.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Good idea. We'll try to get that in for this weekend. Are there any other event stats that may be of interest?

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

If which defenses the audiences select are available in the API, it would be interesting to know which defenses they tend to go for.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I don't believe they are. ):

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I like the idea, opened an issue for tracking implementation: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance...ce/issues/1374

EDIT:
If we don't end up doing it on TBA, I'll hack up a webapp that uses TBA webhooks and calculates it in realtime. Because live data is awesome

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

The audience-selected defense is always in position 3 and the API gives the defense at each position (only after a match score is posted, though). So we can actually know which defense is audience selected and crunch numbers based on that

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Ah right.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I'd be interested in working with you on this.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

First I would like to thank all of the creators of and contributors to The Blue Alliance. The site is amazing, and I can't imagine trying to do certain stratagey things without it.

I have a few suggestions.

1) Allow teams to upload a team logo in a similar fashion as robot images are uploaded. Ideally this would show up somewhere at the top of a team's profile for all years and the team history section. The robot image is nice, but a logo is more recognisable, and better represents the team. It also doesn't need to be updated every year, just when your logo changes.

2) Allow teams to link their social media and youtube under the section for team website. The section where you have "search for #frc(team number here)" seems somewhat inefficient, when not all teams actively use all if the listed types of social media. It is, however, much better than nothing.

This would also need to go through some kind of new admin approval process, making it much harder to implement than number 1.

3) Add more stats in insights section. I love this section. But there can always be more, especially in the overview section. Just a few that come to mind...

-Most total Dean's list finalists
-Most total Woodie flowers finalists
-Most total Einstein appearances
-Most total Entrepreneurship award wins
-Most total Imagery award wins

Again, thanks to all of the people that make TBA what it is today.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016waell

This is the Central Washington University PNW district event. it leads to an "500 Internal Server error" at the moment. Think you can fix this?

Edit: Two other PNW events:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016pncmp
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016orore

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Not the prettiest table ever, but here it is under "Insights": http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016week0

They will update live during a competition.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Yes I broke something and currently fixing it.
Edit: should be fixed now.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

They're back up. Thanks a ton!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

This is actually in progress (https://github.com/the-blue-alliance...ance/pull/1320), we just have a few technical kinks to sort out before we ship it. Hopefully it'll ship soon - when it does, we'll support FB, Twitter, YouTube, and GitHub links.

I like the idea of supporting team logos, but moderation and size constraints get tricky (how do we verify it's actually the right logo, it's tough to require standard sizes, etc). We were thinking of using the team's FB profile cover photo once if we can get social links down.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

You guys are the best. Thanks.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Except FIRST's API endpoint that provides the score breakdowns is currently throwing errors. So this may be spotty/out of date until they get that fixed. Sorry.

Here we go again...

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Something's up with Alliance Selection results of Palmetto: http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016scmb

EDIT: It's been fixed. Thanks!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Might have been due to an issue where we were still assuming the 2015 playoff structure. Recycle Rush keeps rearing its ugly head :P

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Welcome to week 2, which brings a ton of big changes for TBA!

On the web

• Added a bot in GameDay chat that will give you information about currently competing teams. Type !commands in the chat window for a detailed list.
• Newly designed Account page that lets you manage myTBA on the web among other things. Visit https://www.thebluealliance.com/account
• Robot photos on Event pages for easier scouting
• We've added a ton of event-level insights that show defense cross stats, average match scores, and more, split across qual and playoff matches. See them in the "insights" tab on event pages: http://www.thebluealliance.com/event...event-insights

TBA For Android
Version 3.2 will be rolling out tonight with the following new features, see screenshots below:

• You can now suggest robot images directly from your phone! Snap a photo with your camera or choose one locally and submit the suggestion to TBA.
• We've added the detailed score breakdown (same data you see here) to the match details screen
• We've added the detailed event insights into the event stats tab so you can see defense cross percentages on the go!
• If an event is live, a "view webcast" button will appear on the details page, deep linking you to the stream
• Teams you've subscribed to will be bolded in myTBA notifications, so you can pick them out of the list more easily

Good luck to all competing teams this weekend!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Thanks for adding photos to the event pages.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

We hope to see robot images for EVERY robot competing this weekend! Let's work together to make this happen!

Also, I just added detailed statistics for the 2016 game by week and yearly totals to Insights. Check it out here: http://www.thebluealliance.com/insights/2016

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Thanks Eugene!

Interesting to see how the defense stats are reasonably consistent across events...I wonder if they'll change significantly as the season progresses. (I'll bet that the percentage of breaches will go up by quite a bit.)

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I was hoping someone would do this. Thank you.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Another thing that would be nice to have, just in general, is how often each category was damaged. Like, the damages of both defenses in a category combined into one stat.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Dude.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I think the "Average Auto Score" Insight is messed up...I haven't checked, but I don't think it was 44.94 in the Playoffs of Mount Olive...

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Yeah Mike Corsetto pointed this out to me earlier. Some of our averages were doubled. It's fixed, but it may take some time for cache to clear. I manually cleared Mount Olive, and it looks much more reasonable now.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Thanks! :D

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Any chance of adding the webcast links to the mobile version of the site for us iOS users? Also, the link at the bottom of the page that says "Desktop Version" doesn't work in mobile Safari or iOS Chrome. Thank you.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I know it's not NEW for 2016 but holy crap Web Hooks are slick.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

We'll work on it. The issue is being tracked here: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance...ce/issues/1410

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Wow people actually use our webhooks? There are only 31 set up and I'm sure the majority of those are from last year :P

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Depends if you think Schreiber qualifies as "people."

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I'm wondering if there would be a way to show on the master list of teams if the team is active this year or not.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

And Lythgoe... He's using an API that is driven with data from web hooks! There are literally two of us!


Though we all know how you both feel about Lythgoe so maybe that's not helping my case.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

The latest version of the Android app (3.4.5) is in the Play store just in time for Champs! Nothing huge in this version, just some bugfixes.

In addition, we're introducing a couple new things on the website.

The first is the myTBA Dashboard!
This will give you an at-a-glance overview of your favorite teams that are currently competing. Simply click "myTBA" in the top navigation bar.




The other is match and ranking predictions, which will update throughout the event.
Note that these are JUST FOR FUN and perhaps to be utilized as a tool to pinpoint pivotal matches, not to discourage teams from performing to their best. To view predictions, click on the "Advanced Insights" button at the top of an event page as shown below.






Here are direct links to all 8 divisions:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016arc/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016cars/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016carv/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016cur/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016gal/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016hop/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016new/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016tes/insights

Currently, the Championship division predictions have the team numbers redacted because the match schedule is preliminary and we want to respect FIRST's request to not rehost the schedule until they are final. Once the official schedule is out, the numbers will appear.
You can see an example of a past event here: http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016necmp/insights

Good luck to all teams competing! For those of you at home, you can follow the action on GameDay right here: http://www.thebluealliance.com/gameday#champs

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Very, very cool!!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I always love using TheBlueAlliance when I need to get my fill in on robotics information. However during the competition season I use a team built website by 537 called At The Control. The site has been around for two years, not 100% sure... I've been using it for two years. Regardless that fact its the best site you can use to follow a single team.

This most recent update to TBA tho kind of drew the line for me. I'd much rather support a FRC team made application. This site has been doing match predictions for the entire time I've been using the site and now to see TBA which isn't a FRC team made application including match predictions in my mind is a little ridiculous. Its almost like the developers of TBA are taking candy away from kids... but in this case the chance for an FRC team to build something that will never be viewed or used by people because TBA has such a large viewership. Very un-gracious in my mind.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I haven't looked at them all, but based on a few spot checks on Newton- are red and blue alliances reversed? or am I just reading these incorrectly?

http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016new/insights

Edit: Nevermind! Found my (major) problem. They look predictions look good.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

...


Can everyone please just ignore this post clearly from someone from At The Control. Cool thanks.


...

TBA is awesome, I wish FIRST would just let you guys run their sites and apps.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

And API.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way. It was never our intention to replace ATC, and I still don't think we do. I believe ATC makes it easier to follow one specific team at an event, which TBA doesn't do well. TBA has also been linking to ATC on every team page for the last few years. It's the only other community built site (aside from CD) we link to, so calling us un-gracious is uncalled for.

And to address your "team made" concern, TBA is also team made. Shout out to Greg and Tom who started it when they were still high school students. It sure has grown since then, since they made it their mission to open source and involve others in the development and give us an opportunity to work on something on such a large scale.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Phew, you had me worried for a second :D

---

For those who are interested in how the predictions are calculated, take a look at the discussion in this pull request, Eugene explains it pretty nicely.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

This better not be some one from my team. Probably not, 90% of my team calls "At The Control" ATC... Still.

The guys at TBA have been nothing more than gracious the couple of times I've talked with them. And to say that they are "taking candy away" from kids is really not an appropriate way to view the situation. In fact a good portion of our traffic comes from TBA. And we use TBA's API!

ATC which has been around for the past five seasons was developed by one person... (me:D) and this past season it's been a project that I've worked on with my team. TBA isn't taking the viewership away from our site, our target audience isn't the audience TBA is servicing. We target more of the team followers vs the hardcore FRC watchers. Which is where I give them props about their predictions. Our predictions just predict the win/loss probability, this is where someone other than "grandma" would find TBA a better application than ATC.

I myself use TBA alot vs my site. TBA has way more information than ATC will ever have.

... I apologize about this guys post and making this thread about ATC.

- Nick

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I spent today building the newly-announced pit addresses into the Android app. They will be visible on the team or team@event page for any team at champs. Here's what it looks like:



This will be rolling out tomorrow, so keep your eyes out for an update!

We're using the crowdsourced data that was produced this morning, so accuracy is not guaranteed. If you spot an error, let us know and we'll fix it. Thankfully, we have the infrastructure in place to do a remote update of the list if errors are found!

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

No.

Being un-gracious (whatever that means) would mean not providing an API for teams and individuals to make awesome apps/sites like ATC, FRC Division Notifier, and FRC Spyder.

Being un-gracious would mean not being open-source, allowing students to help fix and improve TBA, while also showing them how a well-run OSS project is organized, a valuable skill, IMHO. There are some very smart people working on TBA (excluding myself :P), so one could almost liken it to having programming mentors remotely. How often do you get the opportunity to work with an engineer from Facebook?!

Alumni of the program give back in many ways. It's not to "take candy from kids", it's to provide something back to the program after we've gotten so much from it. If a student or team wants to make something, go right ahead. More power to them! And who knows? Maybe it'll be the next big thing.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

Many thanks to those who have worked so hard to keep TBA continuously improving! I've loved all the data and features that have been added (robot photos, easier video linking, TBA insights, match scores broken out by type, etc.) in recent years.

I've also appreciated having results posted for various scrimmages and off-season events... but one minor nitpick I have, is that I'd prefer the record (or average scores in 2015) shown for teams' seasons be only the "official event" record. Week 0.5 <-> Championship events. Teams often compete very differently at Week 0 events and off-season events, so I think including these unofficial events in the overall record is a little misleading... or at least not representative of their competition season performance.

What do you - particularly the TBA contributors, but also CD community - think about limiting the season record to official events?

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

You make a good point.

Both might be the answer. I think it would be fairly simple to have both an "official" and "total" record for each season.

Interested to hear if the TBA peeps have given this thought in the past.

-Mike

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

In sports, a lot of times they will present the official record with an unofficial record in parens, so for instance if a college hockey team played 3 scrimmages against a traveling US hockey team, they might be shown as 12-6-3 (13-8-3). Obviously it's their call, but something that presents all the data in a concise way would be nice.

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I actually thought TBA did this already (didn't realize we didn't until I went and checked :P). So yeah, this is definitely a good idea.

I like this way of displaying it, maybe with an asterisk explaining the difference. This approach probably won't work for 2015 because the scores are already split between quals/elimsplayoffs averages, but we could come up with a creative solution to that.

Here's an issue to track the feature: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance...ce/issues/1549 - this is a pretty small change that would make a great starter task for someone who wants to get involved in TBA development

Re: [TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates
 

I haven't been using TBA nearly as much lately, but I noticed this feature hadn't been implemented... not a big deal or anything, but I just figured I'd "bump" it.