Pit monitor idea
 

After reading this thread, I had the idea of putting a monitor in the pit that has information like team ranking, upcoming match or matches, and recent matches with scores and number of RPs. So I was wondering if any teams do this and if so how and how useful is it.

Re: Pit monitor idea
 

Possibly helpful is Sundial, which Pat Fairbank was the point-man for from 2005 until about 2008 when the switch from 900 MHz radios to wifi-based control led to a ban on extra wifi access points in the pits:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hlight=sundial
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hlight=sundial
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hlight=sundial
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hlight=sundial

Obviously, this hasn't been in active development for close to a decade thanks to the wifi ban. But there might be something in it for you still. :)

Re: Pit monitor idea
 

Another option I have seen is http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2654 courtesy of Joe Johnson and 246. It is actually just an excel spreadsheet, so it is pretty easy to use and does not require an internet connection.

Re: Pit monitor idea
 

I had plans to put something together like this (or give it to a student as a project). I would use either the FIRST event API or The Blue Alliance, then reformat the data as needed, like show only our upcoming matches and highlight our team number.

The issues I thought about were:
- live internet access for updates - would require tethering to a phone for connectivity, unless the venue had reliable WiFi in the pits
- match delays, as they add up, would make the upcoming match times less and less useful. I guess you could put in an interface to manually advance the "Next Matches" screen, or just always show everything.

At minimum you could just open up a PDF of the match schedule as provided to teams the day before the event.

(In the end this was left undone as, you can well imagine, we were very busy with other things, like getting our robot running)

Re: Pit monitor idea
 

The successor to Sundial appears to be https://pit.team254.com/ (for those that don't know, Pat Fairbank is now a mentor on 254)

Re: Pit monitor idea
 

When we setup our local District competition we actually had permanent ethernet lines dropped into our Pits Gym specifically for a rankings computer and a live (though delayed by a few seconds) video feed. Pit admin loves the later of the two as it makes queuing for matches much easier. :)

Re: Pit monitor idea
 

One of our members wrote some Javascript that displays our match schedule, actual match times, and ranking, along with some helpful visuals. Since it didn't use any internet connection, we had to keep updating it from the ranking displays, though.