[Brian C]

1468 also uses dead trees and sticks, er.... I mean paper and pencils to scout with. Our old team 311 also used this as we found it to be more reliable.

The biggest thing we run into is to make sure everyone scouting is using the same terminology when referring to a mechanism/robot/playing style/whatever. After the robot ships we record video from some of the scrimmages or first week regionals and have the scouting team practice scouting while watching the video. While not perfect it allows the scouters to learn what to look for and also allows us to refine the form layout.

We usually end up with about 5 or 6 revisions until we come up with something that can be used and understood easily.

We have found from experiance that to much information or detail can be just as bad as not enough information.