HeatWave - Scouting made EASY
 

Well Its that time of year again! Team HeatWave has been working diligently on its handheld scouting application for release to the public.

This year, we switched development environments from Sat. Forms to App Forge Mobile VB, and we are very pleased with the new abilities of our software. As of tonight (Tues March 4) we have the handheld beta version a few hours away from completion. In the end, the software will have handheld, desktop, and web interfacing components. What we will be releasing tomorrow on our web site (www.heatwave312.com) is the first beta release of the handheld software only. This software will work on both palm powered pda's as well as pocket pc.

The handheld software has the ability to view all the teams according to their corresponding regionals and then collect and save robot and match information on each team. There is also a search form which allows the user to find specific teams that fit any of the given criteria (according to what is saved for each team in their robot info page). The last two main features of the software are a strategy recorder, where you can draw on an image of the field and save up to ten different strategies, and a scoring calculator.

Once again, this is simply a beta version of the software, there will be much more to come!! And we are more than open to any and all constructive criticism. Our goal is to make this the most efficient and simple way for everyone to obtain info on all the teams. Check under the strategy link on our website tomorrow throughout the day, for the first release. Any questions please feel free to ask, we want this software to be used as much as possible so download it, put it in our pda, give it a try this weekend at the regionals and let us know what you think!!:D

To anyone that wants it our beta version of the handheld software has been released on our website at www.heatwave312.com Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

BTW here are a few screen shots:
http://heatwave.cat.pinellas.k12.fl.us/homeimage.bmp
http://heatwave.cat.pinellas.k12.fl.us/teamsimage.bmp
http://heatwave.cat.pinellas.k12.fl....tinfoimage.bmp
http://heatwave.cat.pinellas.k12.fl.us/searchimage.bmp
http://heatwave.cat.pinellas.k12.fl.us/fieldimage.bmp
http://heatwave.cat.pinellas.k12.fl....hinfoimage.bmp

Nice Job 312. I know you've put a lot of time into it. It looks very cool.

When you have the web part online, be sure to post here. :D

Thanks Jack.

Yeah this type of application takes alot of work to put together. We will definetly be sure to notify everyone when we get the web and desktop software complete. I just hope some teams will take advantage of the software because, as i'm sure you know, the more teams that use the database the better it becomes.

Thank you this is what I have been looking for. I am downloading right now.

Does it have the ability to HotSync/Export to an excel spreadsheet or somthing else that could be given to other team members?

Yeah the software that we will release early next week will have the ability to sync. There will be a desktop interface simliar to what is on the palm, and all the information that is sync'd will be viewable from that. The web interface will be along the same principle as the desktop software. If neither of these fit your needs you could always print the access database that the program uses, however the data there will not look very user friendly.

I have it on my comp now and will Sync it in a second.

Great! Let me know what you think.

I am using a Palm M130 and it looks great on the color screen.

Problem: I tried to install the booster program from the zip file and it would not detect my palm however, when I downloaded the installer from appforge the new booster worked fine.

Would the app speed up if I removed the regionals my team is not attending? If so, how do I access the db?

no not really. it is still going to load pretty much the same cause you just eliminate the regionals, and not all the other teams. access the db? that is a good question I don't know a lot of pdb editors out there...;) who knows we might just add that functionality in. Thanks this is one of the reasons we want ppl to look at the program.

Although we do not have that capability yet, that is a great idea. Because of the way the code is written now, you would actually have to have the source code and take out the regionals through that and recompile. And even then, I doubt everything would work properly. However we will take this into very strong consideration for our next release. We have been looking for ways to make it run faster, and I cant believe we didnt even think of that!;) Thanks alot.

Oh, and as for the app forge booster, sometimes it does not detect the palm and it will come up with an error like "invalid user name" or something of the sort. Usually it works if you try it a second time though. Im not sure if this is the problem you were having or not.

The real time consuming parts to the app are when it has to change locations. So if you are gonna be using the app alot at one time, just leave it open and turn the pda off, that way when you turn it back on it will be in the same spot, and it wont have to go through the sorting again. Just an idea that might help a little for now.

protocols
 

What you are doing is great.
What about trying to cooperate with some of the other scouting databases in developing an open protocol to sync info between them. Just my 2 cents

-If you want me to do some more testing, just let me know.

-If I have a Palm and another team member has a Pocket PC, could we sync the db's at competition? Maybe through IR? (Someone could do scouting, another watching matches, and then the data could be merged, what about three people?)

-Maybe have a place on your website where teams could enter their own data?

--On the bottom of the team selector on the teams page, would you be able to tap or type a number say 4 and it would jump to team say 400 or 401 or whatever the first team in that range is, enter the second number and jump to the begining of that list?

These are just concepts and ideas... Use them if you like, tell me if you would like more :)

Palm and PPC ....once we release the desktop software to go along with this you will be able to do this with as many handheld as you like..

We have plans for web synchronization so when you get done at your competition, or you have internet access at the regional you can sync with our server get all our information off our server and merge it with the data you have collected. Then that will be viewable with the handheld or with the web interface.

One word: NICE!
and Great Work. This is very cool!

thanks :) there is more to come.....

I am sure you will address this in the next read-me, to update, do you just run the program installer and then HotSync?

problem
 

Hey, when i try to install heatwave setup I get error "429" can't create activex object.

Any ideas?

Thanks - Kevin

Re: problem
 

I got the same error, on both my WinXP and Win2K systems.

which version is this happening on the march 6th or the march 12th...? and are you installing on pocket pc or palm?

hey
 

I have march 12 Version....
im using winxp if that helps

msft
 

here is microsoft explanatino

OFF2000: Error Message: Run-time Error 429: ActiveX Component Can't Create Object
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Project 2000
Microsoft Excel 2000
Microsoft Access 2000
Microsoft Word 2000
Microsoft Outlook 2000
Microsoft PowerPoint 2000
Microsoft Visio 2000 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications

This article was previously published under Q281848
SYMPTOMS
When running code that calls the Common Dialog Control (Comdlg32.ocx) on a computer other than the one on which the code was developed, you may receive the following error message:

Run-time error 429: ActiveX component can't create object.
CAUSE
This problem can occur if the following conditions are true:
The control is called from Visual Basic for Applications code by using the New CommonDialog command.
The computer on which you are running the code has a run-time license instead of a design-time license for this control.
With a run-time license, you can load the control but you cannot create or insert it. The design-time license for this control that is included with the Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition, Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, and Microsoft Visual Studio. It is not included with other versions of Microsoft Office 2000.
WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, wrap the control inside another control, such as a UserForm. To do this, follow these steps:
In the Visual Basic Editor, add a UserForm to your project.
Insert a common dialog control on the UserForm. For example, use the following code to call the common dialog control on the UserForm:
Sub test()
UserForm1.CommonDialog1.ShowOpen
End Sub

Save the workbook.
Becuase the control is wrapped in the UserForm and resides inside the project, you can now call it in run-time mode.

I'm using the newest version available on your site. Also, I'm installing it on a Palm OS.

Ok well we are looking into the problem now. Just an update, probably sometime next week the final version will be out and this will be taken care of....i apologize for any problems this has caused.

I haven't got a chance to look yet, but have you tried deleting the application completely and reinstalling it....?

It installs great on the palm, it wont even start installation on PC. Please let me know when you get the update out I love your prog and we are leaving for our only regional next week. Alternativly could you tell us the activex controls you used, if we install the activex controls that you used we might be able to use the program.

kevin

I'm Retarded! But, I'll try to fix my errors...
 

I'm so sorry for those of you that have been having trouble. For those of you who don't know, I'm the primary developer of the software. The only ActiveX component that is used in the installation is the "Palm ComStandard 1.0 Type Library". The only reason I can think of that you wouldn't be able to install the conduit components is either beacuse you haven't run the "PalmCOMInstaller.exe" that was included with the installation. This also requires that you do have the Palm desktop software installed already. If you are still having trouble after installation, there are two things you should know. The first is that in my retardation, I assumed that most people would have some version of Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) installed. I used the Data Access Objects (DAO) from a two year old version of MDAC. I assumed most people have hat it put in at some point, anyways I believe almost all versions of windows ship standard with this. But if you are having this problem, you can download MDAC from microsoft's download site, you know microsoft.com/downloads. Just search for 'mdac', any of the results will work, just don't get one of the service packs or add on's instead. Additionally, I have recently found out that there is a data mapping error that occurs silently on some systems! I feel really bad about this and apologize to anyone who has had this happen. The symptoms include appearingly "jarbled" data when synced. Please check for this, if it is happening to your system, don't sync anymore handhelds. I have isolated the problem and will have an update out in just a few days. I also will be releasing the desktop software that goes with this package, and will feature web syncing! If the beta can be ready before the next set of regionals, I will release them together. If not, then I will get the syncing update out ASAP.

Hey
 

Ive installed MDAC and Newest version of palm desktop.

I managed to get the heatwave conduit installed, but when it syncs it runs the hwavpdb copiler (i think) and it gets that 429 activex error.

We're leaving for our regional at 5am on thursday, if you can help please do asap. It will be greatly appreciated.

kevin

For those of you having problems:
 

I believe I've corrected the synching problem with Palm Handhelds, and have a half-baked solution for retrieving the data from PocketPC Handhelds. Would those of you still having trouble after this E-Mail me personally so I can help you individually.

Thank you for your patience,

Bryan Jenks (Team 312 Heatwave)

P.S. The update should be up in the WhitePapers shortly, and on our server by tomorrow...