Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Hello all,

As some of you may have seen, a service called "Sundial" was tested out at a few regionals and the Championship this year. This service consisted of a wireless network that teams could connect to in order to view a much more user-friendly version of the match list, as well as a countdown to a team's next match that stays synchronized to the field. Functionality to display the current team standings was added in for the 5th week regional, and qualification match results, including such previously unavailable data as number of centre and corner goals scored, number of robots on ramp, and penalties, were made available for the Championship.

I'm pleased to report that about 30 teams used Sundial at each regional it was set up at (BAE, UTC, Boston & Toronto). In addition, 50 teams from Archimedes, 37 teams from Curie, 36 teams from Galileo, and 41 teams from Newton logged on to Sundial at the Championships. Out of those 164, 76 stayed online for at least 2 hours. I'd like to apologize to those teams who had trouble connecting to Sundial at the Championships, especially on Friday morning. There was a problem with one of the NASA-provided access points at the south end of the pits, and although I was aware of the problem at 8 AM, it wasn't until 1 PM that it could be isolated and fixed.


Anyway, this thread is for anyone who has comments (positive and negative) about the Sundial service, or suggestions on how it could be improved. Was the interface intuitive to use or insufficiently so? Were the standings and match results useful? Any features that you would like to see next year? I'd also be happy to entertain questions about how Sundial works and how it interfaces with the FIRST scoring system.

With a bit of luck we'll be seeing Sundial at every regional next year, so any comments you might have would be greatly appreciated.


On a side note, while I'm a fairly proficient programmer, I don't have an ounce of artistic talent, so if anyone with a good amount of Flash experience is interested in helping make Sundial look better, please drop me a line.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Other than the not being able to connect in the newton pits for most of the time eventuly we got on fri afternoon but sat was impossible...it was a great design and worked great the info about wether they were running on shcedule or not was helpful...but i think you guys need more access points

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

I noticed some teams on sundial at the UTC regional this year after its debut at last year's, and I wanted to connect, but did not know the web address (sundial.first) to go to once I was on the network. Perhaps if you set up your server's zones to redirect any DNS request to the page it would help some people out.

What I did end up seeing of it in other team's pits looked very nice to me and it seemed to work fine. I'd love to see it at every regional next year.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Unfortunately team 204 was unable to connect because we did not have a computer that had wireless connection! But we were able to use a form of it to help us decide whether things were running late because the team across the isle in the pits had their laptop pointing out wards and were were able to see delays.

Even with my limited use of the system i found it a very powerful tool for teams. Especially in Atlanta where there was no queuing announcements.

thanks for puting it together

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

i just thought of this but giving it to certain other teams to host at regionals that you are not going to would be helpful

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

My team used sundial from the dome while we were watching the matches. We could get connected about half of the time, but when it worked, it was a tremendous help, especially with scouting. My only suggestions would be having a way to search for specific teams in the ranking and match lists, and being able to look at the matches and rankings in other divisions.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

i didnt personally get to use it (due to not being able to connect anywhere i was). i did get to see 555 use it next to us. it seemed usefull.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We loved having the service available since our match lists had the tendency to wander away from the pits in someone's pocket. My only complaint would be the inability to account for whether the field was running ahead of or behind schedule, which is much harder to gauge and account for anyway. Thank you very much for providing it!

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Sundial, I love it! It was the most handy thing to have in the pit this year. I hope it returns for the 07 season.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

I loved Sundial (when I could connect that is). Most of the time I was unable to connect from the Newton pits, but the one time I was able to get on (Friday afternoon I believe) it was amazing.

My only suggestion would be to link up with STAMP or anyone else that is running wifi nets and provide a common wireless network with multiple access points that are linked with hardwires so that teams can connect from anywhere in the pits and can access all the services offered (stamp AND sundial together = awesome). Plus it would cut down on the cost.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Thinking about it again, was Sundial available in the stands at Nationals? I'm pretty sure it was still in range at UTC, but I know at Nationals our very limited scouting team would have loved having a laptop that was indicating matches upcoming and what teams were in them, or even just when our next match (and their break) was.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Were yall entering the data manually, or was it coming from the FIRST computers?

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

I was able to connect to the Sundial on Saturday over by the Curie stands.. but strangely enough I had a hard time trying to get it to work in the pits earlier on that day.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We used Sundial at UTC and it was great! It gave our pit crew a real time to work in, rather than a guess as to when our next match would be.

Unfortunately at Championships, we couldn't connect to Sundial. I managed to Connect to it first thing on Saturday morning, but was disconnected after 20 minutes or so. I suspect it was because of interference from all the ad-hoc networks and other things teams were running.
Edit: I ran Netstumbler for a few minutes and was able to pickup packets from almost 20 different sources, most of which were running on channel 1, 6, or 11.
To the teams: If you have wireless built into a computer you are using, please disable it while in the pit and not connecting to anything.

In the few minutes I was connected on Saturday morning, I found the rankings and match results to be very helpful. I could quickly see how teams had done in all their previous matches and who they were with. I also found Sundial to be very easy to use.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We couldn't connect.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We were connected for most of Saturday, and I absolutely LOVED it. Having the rankings and match list was VERY useful when you're trying to see how the rankings could potentially fall out over the next few matches (which I do waaaay too much, but this made it easier). Plus, a few times we were saved from being very early to a match when the field was running behind. I'd love to see this at every regional next year, it was great.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

The Sundial server computer was set up on the scoring table behind Einstein field. We had two network cables plugged into the NASA switch there: one connected to the VLAN on which the four divisional scoring computers were located, and one connected to the WiFi VLAN. All the data was being transferred electronically from the FIRST scoring computers, and no human interaction was required.

The wireless networking was all provided by NASA. There was a single access point in the dome (intended mainly for diagnostic purposes) and I believe three in the pits, but as Jeff said the numerous ad-hoc networks were causing a lot of interference. Also, one of the access points lost its connection to the rest of the network on Friday morning, and wasn't repaired until much later that day. I apologize for this, and I will be doing my best over the next year to make the necessary arrangements so that this doesn't happen again.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Our team found it useful on the few occasions we could connect to it. The signal was fluctuating like crazy in the Curie pits and when I tried to connect I alternately got "The 'first' wireless network is using an Access Control List to restrict connections" and "There was an error joining the wireless network 'first';" hitting "Try Again" twenty or thirty times usually got me in, but on Saturday I couldn't connect at all. Oddly enough, the signal seemed to work better in the Dome than in the pits - I only had to "Try Again" five or six times.
All in all, a really useful service that could benefit from some relay stations or a better antenna. :)

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

SUNDIAL IS AWESOME!

It was pretty much essential at Nationals. I really hope it is at every single FIRST event next season.

Many thanks to the creators of sundial! :D

-Q

btw: has a great name too :rolleyes:

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Sundial was great at Nationals, when we could connect. I found that I had full signal, but I would have to try 5 to 10 times to get an IP address.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We used it in Boston and thought it was fantastic! We had a laptop set up in our pits that displayed the Sundial data, and one in the stands we were using for match data entry. The laptop in the pits also had access to our (custom) team data information site (complete with pictures, team info and match details.)

I'm sure we'll be looking forward to seeing it again next year!

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Oh my goodness Sundial was so helpful!!!! Our team always pushes it to the limit when it comes to making our matches on time, so it was very helpful in gauging how much time we had etc. I hope this can be at every regional next year!!

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Sounds like it would have been very handy to have sundial running. I tried connecting to literally everything in the pits and seemed nothing connected anywhere. I could probably get close to 10 access points and 10-20 ad-hoc. I did connect to the sundial per the instructions but lost connection on Friday. Then I lost my wireless card (or was stolen) so that made it imposable to connect.

Thanks for the specs. Is this a program which you would be possibly allowing another team to run at other regionals which your team doesn't go to?

Does anyone perchance have screen shots so that I could at least see what this thing was all about?

-Mike Aalderink
Team 1654

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Our scouting person was wanting to use it, but her (new) laptop didn't seem too interested in connecting, and my laptop did eventually connect to it once I discovered the magical necessity of typing in www.sundial.first, but then it didn't work because you need some kind of flash thingy plugin that I don't allow on my computers. I only spent part of one morning trying to make it work.

But it is a neat thing anyways, I know Karen on our mentor team 842 made good use of it.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

I just wanted to say that i really liked the sundial service. We used it to stay on time, get our schedule, and check the results of our matches when we werent sure how we scored. Thanks a lot for putting sundial up!

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We really liked it when we could connect. The only issue was the continual up and down of the connections, but as has been said all the ad-hoc networks created a lot of interference which is most likely the reason for the sporadic connectivity.

I'd love to see this become a regular part of all FIRST events, it was extremely helpful since Curie seemed to be running between 5-10 minutes ahead of schedule it helped us a lot.

Thanks!

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

I tried once. (It wasn't a high priority.) I think it must have been from our pit (Archimedes.) If memory serves me (which I steadfastly refuse to vouch ;) ) it never acquired an IP address after about a minute.

When I used at the So Cal Regional, I found it of limited usefulness since the match results and standings were not available. It also caused some slight annoyance, since when I would scroll down the match list, it would periodically scroll back to the top whenever the list was refreshed.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Sundial was amazing, kept our team in the pit up-to-date, 1503 was using it at GTR on one of our dualview monitors. One of the only problems we ran into was the timing was a bit off, other than that, Great software!

Video on WLAN is also a great idea, 1503 created their own personal video wireless network and broadcasted it for the newton division. It worked out amazingly, isn't there a way Sundian can be integrated with a live video feed?

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Sundial was in my opinion, the most useful thing in our pit!

If you are interested in adding features to it, adding a tracker to keep track of our current rank, etc would be pretty cool...

Other than that, it's REALLY great.

Keep up the great work, Pat :)

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We used it in Boston and it was amazing, extremely useful for a small team like us that don't have enough people to run around checking for matches.
We tried using it from our pits in Archimedes and, even though we could connect to the network, the site would never open. Quite a shame, especially considering we had an even smaller group in a much bigger venue. :p

Anyway, the service is great and I'd like to thank your team for putting it up!

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

1 word, 2 syllables.

BANDWIDTH

It would take a heck of a lot of server and AP power to be able to serve video on demand to that many laptops. I'm guessing several hundred would be logged on at a time, and....

Ok, for instance, lets say there are 300 laptops online.

With timeslice issues you can usually fit about 20 laptops/radio, so lets be optimistic and say our AP has a diversity antenna (2 radios). So that brings us to 40 laptops/AP. So, being optimistic, you'd need eight access points. Keep in mind, this would be pretty low bitrate video and would have a slow framerate. Plus, I'm being optimistic with the 20 laptops/radio. On the server end, I don't know how much hardware you would need.


BUT I'd really really like it if someone was willing to spend the time+money+effort to make this happen, it'd be awesome! :D

-Q

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

We couldn't connect in the pits becuase of the 15 networks which caused all of them to step on each other becuase of the channels...

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

The video is easy to stream at a very low bitrate, it could be hosted off a very powerful server. Since its for the pits, FIRST could pre-wire the pits with RJ-45 ethernet jacks so you could just easily plug in your laptop and logon to Sundial without the hassle of connecting to the wireless Sundial network, but still keeping the wireless Sundial network active.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

That's an excellent idea to have RJ-45 in every pit. That'd save a lot of hassle and probably money too. Doing the video stream over wireless is really what puts a monkey wrench in the whole thing, doing it wired will get rid of all those hassles.

-Q

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Although this is a great idea, I wonder who would set this up at each regional event?

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Sundial was great when we could connect. At nationals, the PA system was pretty much worthless. I could rarely make out what they were saying. Having up to date info about our next match was really useful. I'd suggest for next year to include a list of parts & tools that teams are requesting, since you can't hear those announcements.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

As many others have said, Sundial was AMAZING in the pits. 246 used it at Boston, and it worked like a charm.

Thanks to it, a couple of times we were called to matches which we had already left for, because we could see the first call, second call, etc information. It really confused the volunteers at first..

Was there ranking information built into sundial? I poked around in it for a while, but don't remember seeing it. If it doesn't exist, it seems like it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to have a ranking page set up, perhaps even with a match history showing the scores of past matches.

One feature I wouldn't mind seeing would be a way to see the whole match list in sundial. Often it's nice to look at the list and pick out which matches look exciting, or especially worth scouting. Sundial already has that information, so to have a page set up to show it would be great.

Even though I had suggestions for improvement, I think every regional should have it next year, even if you didn't change a thing.

Thanks!

- Toby

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Our team doesn't have a WiFi enabled laptop right now however, when I did see Sundial in action in other teams pits it was awesome ^_^ I just had two problems with it:

1: My PDA has 802.11 b/g capability so I was quite mobile in trying to connect and still had some serious problems. I'll assume that the problems I had are the ones addressed in the OP though.

2: It required Flash...I normally don't have Flash installed on my PDA (HTC Wizard) because it takes up quite a bit of space, so I wasn't able to use Sundial even after I connected to the network.

In the end I'd still want to see this at more (if not all) regionals next year. We'll just have to invest in a 802.11 a/g cards for our teams laptops next year ^_^

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

Team 612 used Sundial for every match. It's scary, but the program was vital to our pit crew- had we not had the laptops running it, we would've missed every match.

We did have a slight screw-up Saturday morning when we entered team 614 instead of 612 and had to catch the drive team before they pulled the robot out the door to the wrong match!

I hope to see this system in much more extensive use next year- it's much better than the pit announcements which are so easy to ignore.

Re: Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please
 

lol I guess that means a confirmation screen would make a nice addition (I don't recall it being there before, but I could be wrong :p)