My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Hey guys just finished with my team's scouting sheet and I was wondering if I could get any suggestions or comments on it. Thanks guys it is much appreciated. Also if you would like to use this scouting sheet as a template for your own or just use it, be my guest. :)

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

so far i think it is very well put together but i think you would waste a lot of paper just scouting one team at a time on just one piece of paper. My thoughts are to put more than one team on the sheet. (just a suggestion). ;)

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Now have one of the programmers make a program that stores all that info in a MySQL database with a gui frontend. Then you have an affective system.


Actually I think I might copy you and make a program after shipping. Seems like fun to program. Also, sorry Mac users.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

This is actually pretty good. Nice, compact, and the field is a nice touch. A suggestion would be to add the "Where Did They Score?" to the "Endgame" section and maybe (if possible) swap the "Endgame" and "Human Player" parts with the Teleoperated section.Also, you could place the Match# and Final Score in the "Endgame" box.

Looks great though!
I think I might suggest this to the team and then maybe change a few things up to suit us. :)

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Wow thanks a ton for the suggestions guys, especially for swapping out the end-game and human player sections for the teleoperated section, didnt catch that. Also I'm now going to add a pit scouting section on the back so if anyone has any suggestions for questions to be asked it would again be much appreciated.

Edit: Red One, the plan is to mark where they scored with the minibot on the field diagram, but thanks for pointing that out.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I just finished my team's scouting program tonight. I didn't even think about "where the ubertube was scored" or things like that. Thanks for this. :D

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

One thing I might add if you can is in a different color show where the other teams on the alliance score. Because you might see tubes scored quite randomly, where actually they are putting them in the correct place to complete a logo.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Just an addition I think should be made that would make your life much easier: Have the person scouting write their name. This way you can ask your scouters about the bots and what they did that time and explain why they wrote what they did.

I also disagree with having one sheet per match per team. You will end up with over 400 scouting sheets and keeping everything organized will be impossible.

I think you should cut out the field drawing and leave a lot more space for comments. In my opinion the comment section is the most important thing for picking a sleeper during alliance selection and to figure out teams' weaknesses.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

You've got a more effective system if you skip the gui and just make an html form that drops it into the database through the magics of PHP. Now all anyone needs to do is connect to your host computer and fill out a questionnaire, with no need for any software beyond a browser. Even people equipped only with smartphones can do it.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

its 6 sheets per match, so its a waste of paper. its also hard to tell whose human player is whose during the match. what my team does is we have a sheet per team, and we have an organizer that finds all the teams in the match at the time. our sheet a table with the matches as the rows, and then the columns include match number, alliance partners, opponents, ubertube row, tubes scored on:top, middle, bottom (one column for each), minibot place, and final score, and then a space on the bottom for comments. you dont need so many circles for where they score, all we do is put a dash whenever they score on a certain row (like what people do when counting days in prison cells lol) and you really only need to know if they can score on the top, middle, or bottom, not the specific rack, because there are only 2 rack heights (the middle pole and outer pole) and its not like the team can only score on the middle left pole on the right rack or something.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I was thinking about that, but due to the lack of internet in the competition, it is kind of not smart.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Just a note, we are only planning to do one sheet for every team, not every match, which at our competitions will only be about 40 papers. I am going to have this organized before the competition in which my scouting team has all been assigned one team per match until all of the teams have been filled out. This is the way that my team prefers it and that aspect is not going to change. Also, we are trying to get as much information as possible, even if it may not seem necessary. Thanks a ton for the critiques guys...keep them coming:D

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

So bring along a wireless router and have a host computer connected to it. Seems like a better option than union'ing all the local copies of the database you'll end up with.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Oh and with getting all of the information on the interblag (yes I am a lover of xkcd) that may be a plan for the future for our programming team but as of now that is undecided.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

You could have a laptop serve the PHP pages & DB over an ad-hoc network.

Nowadays, enough people have iPod touches that you shouldn't need a whole lot of extra equipment... interesting idea.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Great scouting sheet, and thanks for letting us use it.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Pass everything through to an IRC bot :3

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I see you have them writing down the approximate time it takes a robot to get a tube and score. Does this mean each scouter will have a stop watch with them? You may want to consider an alternative method of quantifying the effectiveness of the robot as multiple stopwatches can end up being fairly expensive, and they always seem to have a tendency to mysteriously disappear. ;)

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

You guys should review section 4.4.1 of the administrative manual.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

What if a team plays a little offense and a little defense?

What if a team does the 'fetcher' strategy and bring tubes for their partner to score?

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Now from a scout leader's point of view, on a sheet where you can scout multiple teams like instead of one match per sheet , lets say you have 4 matches per sheet, do you have your scouts only scout a specific team for that sheet or do you roll along with the schedule and only scout teams in a certain position on the field all day?

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I never considered using stopwatches, I was just going to tell my team to estimate a time but that isn't a bad idea and I'm not too worried about the stopwatches because our physics teacher found a whole box of them this year so I think we would be good on that front.

The plan is to scout one team per sheet and re-scout if we have to and scout every team's first match, so optimally we would only be scouting for about a half-hour.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Do you mean if a team has a bad match you will just toss their sheet? A lot of teams, especially in week 1 and 2 regionals rise up day 2 and prove that they deserve to play in the eliminations. You should never just stop scouting a team.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I think you will find that there is a large difference between what a team does during their first match and their last match. The first couple of matches, teams are still working out the bugs. I have been burned in Alliance selection by not taking this into consideration enough. I had one team that on Friday could barely score. I took them off my list of teams to consider for Saturday's elimination round. Obviously they fixed something, because on Saturday they were unbeatable. They ended up being the 3 pick on the 8th seeded team, and they won the regional. I scout EVERY match and look for those kind of trends now.

Steve

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

If you scout only the first match, you are not getting any data at all.

The point of scouting several matches is to average out the effects of anomalies (different strategy, good opponents, etc) on robots.

You should scout every match on Friday at the very least. Saturday can be done qualitatively.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Looks like a good start, here's a few suggestions on what I always try to do for my scouting sheets (I always use a paper system, it's cheap and easy), and some tips on scouting in general -

1) Three hole punch all of your scouting sheets prior to arriving at the competition and keep them all in a binder in numerical order. Have a person or a few people in charge of the binder and have them be in charge of handing the scouting pages to the rest of your team members in-between matches.

2) Give one team / one robot to one person on your team to watch for the upcoming match. You should have six people scouting and only watching that specific team & robot to record their match performance. Rotate your scouters out to give them a break - scouting is a tedious job, but it is also vitally important to your team. Make your entire team aware of how important scouting is prior to the competition and how their observations will relate directly to your team's on the field strategy.

3) Use one sheet of paper per team for the entire qualification rounds (all of Friday and half of Saturday) It's much easier to manage one page per team vs. more than one page per team. This means you will probably have to lose the field diagram on your scouting sheet. I will be honest, I've never used a field diagram - which position the team starts in during autonomous and what it does on the field can be described in other, more compact ways. Use both sides of the paper as well.

4) Have your strategist or runner gather up the appropriate team's scouting sheets far in advance to your own team's match. The strategist should converse with your team's upcoming alliance partners to develop your strategy. Use the scouting data to your advantage; if your opponents have a weakness, make the alliance well aware of it prior to the match. At the end of your strategy session, every team on your alliance should know what their role is in the upcoming match.

5) Bring clipboards. Bring lots of pens. Don't expect anyone else to remember to bring these items, because they will all forget.

6) Depending upon your qualification position at the end of Saturday, use your scouting data to your advantage. Often times the third draft pick is just as important, if not more important, than your second draft pick. An overlooked third draft pick steal can win you a regional.

PM me if you have any questions. Scouting is a lot of work, but if you do it right your drive team will thank you after every match.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I like the sheet. You made it very easy to communicate the most essential information.

We tend to scout the heaviest Friday after-lunch, realizing that many teams improve rapidly in their first few matches. This sheet will work well for that. Friday night we compile the information (usually by hand) into a pick-list and then look at Saturday morning rounds to verify that our list is accurate. Teams do slide up and down a little Saturday morning, but usually not very much.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

We used to do this, but found the job of removing and putting sheets back into the binder is a full time job and a really really un-fun job. We've coined a negative and innaprotiate name for this job....

Instead, we give each scout a stack of notecards with all the questions printed on them. After each match, they pass them to the scout with the laptop, who enters some of the data and then to another scout, who drops them into the proper slot of an accordian folder, which takes 30 seconds. It does require a little more effort when looking at the data, as you have to flip through some notecards instead of just looking at a sheet, but it allows us for each scout to scout the match (and not worry about fileing papers the entire time), and no one is stuck with an awful job.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Oh man, critiquing the team.

But anyways, I would assume you would draw the tubes they dropped where as a good way to tell if they are making the effort to make logos or not. That seems like a good way to measure a teams drive team poise and strategy thought process. and I feel like you combine the ubertube rack and regular rack that you drew on the paper to save room and maybe make enough room for a second scouting section for a second match on the same sheet.

The human player section could be combined to make for a smaller section, for example:

Human play mistakes? Penalties? describe.

I feel like you guys could scout each team once each day and get away with it, or morning and late afternoon of friday, as we know we don't always have enough dedicated quality scouters on the team. Go Enigma

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I really like this startegy thanks guys.

That is going to change this year Matt.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

So I've taken some of the critiques you guys have made and made a few small changes to the sheet. Keep them coming I'm getting some great ideas here. Thank you:D

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

Looks very good, What are you using to make these forms btw?

I would also include another section for maneuverability, such as meccanum wheels or robot speed, how good the drivers are, etc.

Re: My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!
 

I'm using Microsoft Publisher, agh I knew I was forgetting something. Thanks.