Introducing: CowScout
 

Team 1538 is very excited to be opening up our scouting software to the rest of the FIRST community!

Inspired by Kiet Chau’s iScout, we initially developed CowScout during the 2010 season for our own private use. Upon seeing the program's success, many people have requested that we make the software available to other teams. Starting later this summer we will be opening CowScout to any team who wishes to use it.

Here are some of CowScout’s features:

Online Scouting Database
CowScout runs off a remote web server so your scouting data is available from any device with internet access. In addition CowScout will save scouting data from past events.

Public and Private Scouting Data
Each team can manage their own data and decide what data they’d like to share with the world and which data they would like to keep private.

Data Analysis
CowScout provides up to date team reports, leader boards, charts, graphs and performance histories.

Event Archive
CowScout features an archive of match results, rankings, awards and OPR for events dating back to 2003. During a live event, CowScout automatically scrapes data from FIRST.

Become a Beta Tester!
Go here to sign up! We will be inviting a select few to help us beta test the new features we have added and have setup a landing page for your team to sign up. Leave us your email address and we'll contact you when space is available.

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

It seems interesting! I like the graphs it shows. Also, does it rely on member input, or input from an external source, such as a moderator? Besides that, it's looking good! I can't wait until it comes out!

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

It doesn't solely rely on member input. CowScout has a built in scraper that pulls match data from FIRST. At the moment it calculates OPR data and I am sure other features will be added in the future.

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

A mentor can create a team and scouts can create accounts and request to join the team. Once they're in a team they can start entering stats. The data sits in a "temporary" section of the database where a lead scout for the team can approve or delete it as well as make on-the-fly corrections.

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

Really cool, guys! :)

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

Holy Cows,

This idea sounds really interesting. I love the courage that teams, namely you and the poofs, are displaying to make scouting a full-fledged part of how we collaborate in FRC. I'm really excited to see the early details in the beta.

This program reminds me of an idea that I considered implementing on my team in order to save resources, make scouting more accessible to those that like to or need encouragement to begin dialogue with students from other teams as well as more accessible to the collaborative goals of FIRST, and to begin to fight poor scouting.

Let me know if this has similar qualities:

The team would eliminate the common waste of paper through scouting by only using six laminated sheets and recording both specific objective notes and notes regarding its role with those teams with which it plays both offensively and defensively. After each match, perhaps there would be an extra set of sheets to allow time, this collected information, objective, subjective and relative, would be recorded onto a cloud template on only a single laptop that the team could choose to share with other teams easily following the shared dialogue of the two teams regarding scouting etc. That other team could then input their own information into this document. Ideally, this one document could contain information from almost all teams at the event, allow them to understand their role in the game from the perspective of others and, of course, develop meaningful social relationships between teams more widely than the teams' drive teams or that which is limited to a team social.

When I read about CowScout, this is what first came to my mind-a structural opportunity to share scouting information, a means to limit paper and expensive technology per team and a great way to improve networking, social opportunities for students and as a result the overall quality of scouting.

Best,
Sam

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

YAY! Beta testing!

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

CowScout is set to be released on January 2nd, 2012. Hope to see you all using it soon!

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

And it's now live at www.cowscout.com!

EDIT: And it seems to not be working anymore...

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

Still not working? Or is this already outdated. I was able to register and add my team fine, as well as see team lists pulled from events.

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

It would be nice to be able to play around with the actual scouting part of cowscout. It says this regional isnt available to scout.

Can we make it available?

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

As was I, but now it just goes back to the 'Coming Jan. 2' page :yikes:

EDIT: It's working for me now here: http://team1538.com/cowscout_beta/index.php

EDIT 2: It's now working here: cowscout.com, the site above no longer works!

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

Weird. What browser/OS are you running? That could be linked. I'm on XP and Chrome.

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

Great site! I saw it said "Match schedule" in the regional area, and got excited thinking your website could tell the future. :( Oh well. Great site anyways! Can't wait to use it!

Your move, CheesyScout! :p

Re: Introducing: CowScout
 

Hallry, I used the link you posted registered, etc and it's working fine for me.

Thus far, it seems that CowScout is what we'll be using this year, I set our team up in about 5 minutes while doing a bunch of other stuff - it's so intuitive.