Scouting Options

[TheSousaLife]

I just wanted to get a general survey on how you would be scouting this year. Personally I prefer to use paper. CD, your opinion?

[IronicDeadBird]

Paper, this year I plan on having the scoots hand me a note card with the information I need.

[anishde]

It all really comes down to where you place the bulk of your scouting. In most years, stand scouting has been the obvious priority for teams over pit scouting. When it comes to the stands, paper is often the better solution if you have up to 6 people scouting at a time, but often gets disorganized to the point of no return. However, pit scouting (usually handled by the same 2-3 people) may work better with an app or other technology, and is definitely easier to work with. As a side note, not using paper in the pits gives off a slightly better impression to other teams than scrawling on some paper scrap.

[SamcFuchs]

Originally Posted by anishde

It all really comes down to where you place the bulk of your scouting. In most years, stand scouting has been the obvious priority for teams over pit scouting. When it comes to the stands, paper is often the better solution if you have up to 6 people scouting at a time, but often gets disorganized to the point of no return. However, pit scouting (usually handled by the same 2-3 people) may work better with an app or other technology, and is definitely easier to work with. As a side note, not using paper in the pits gives off a slightly better impression to other teams than scrawling on some paper scrap.

Clipboards look pretty professional though...

[VexisDarksteele]

We used paper back when I was still a student of 3641, and I hated it because it was such a mess. 6 sheets of paper x 80 matches = yikes! And it complicated things when someone accidentally misplaced a sheet or two. Now, I think the Toasters are using another team's scouting database that they're sharing for both teams' benefit, and it's all digital.

That being said, I'm not yet sure how the team I'm currently mentoring does scouting, if at all. We'll most likely end up going the paper route in the meantime for simplicity, perhaps with the goal of developing a digital solution for the future.

[cmastudios]

Our team uses app-based scouting for both the pit scouting and stands scouting. We have 6 android tablets that connect to a laptop and dump data in Excel that we then analyze Friday night.

[MrForbes]

I voted paper because I heard talk about someone setting up a computerized scouting system earlier in the year, but haven't heard anything since.

[hookstyle]

We have been developing computerized system over the last few years fron the paper collection method, we make changes to the system between events to increase effectiveness. We have transitioned the purpose of the scoutingpast alliance selections ti providing data to our match strategist to develop specific offensive and defensive strategy per match, per each alliance match-up maximizing out skills and exploiting the other alliances weaknesses. Using any system gives your team an edge, but over the last two seasons, scouting with the most current match data has transformed our team in competition. This may go beyond this thread am am very new to posting on CD.

[Kevin Ray]

We've been using 6 tablets with a laptop to gather data for the past several years. We attribute a great deal of success to this method. It enables us to make very quick decisions based on the aggregate data up to the last qualifying match. With the very small window of time allocated for the selection process, we've found it necessary to have something other than paper. Even if we're not selecting, we can provide assistance to an alliance partner who may have selected us.

[P.J.]

Every year I have one or two students ask me if we are going to switch to computer/tablet/app based scouting and my head strategist and I always answer no, with the same reason every time:

Paper doesn't run out of power.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by P.J.

Every year I have one or two students ask me if we are going to switch to computer/tablet/app based scouting and my head strategist and I always answer no, with the same reason every time:

Paper doesn't run out of power.

We no longer have problems with our tablet system running out of power. I'll post about some other meta advantages.

[Citrus Dad]

While paper scouting can work for a new team that is just learning the game, moving to electronic scouting (we use tablets) can make your team better in more ways than you might think. Our bottom line though is that the scouting system is only partly about being more competitive. It's as much about improving the skills of our team members, which is ultimately the real goal of FRC.

We originally set up our system as a way to reduce the clutter of paper AND to use our surplus of programmers (which I think is a frequent issue on many teams.) Their product definitely made us better on the field, our scouts lives easier in the stands and took our programmers to another level.

We are now able to easily send live data updates to our drive coach and strategist in the pits. We are able to develop draft lists easily and quickly. We are able to digest our data on the fly. And we are easily able to trace scouts' errors.

Our head scout can focus on managing the scouts, not the paper. We can scout with a skeleton crew when we travel. The interaction with the tablet better constrains the choices that scouts can enter. And we're able to track qualitative scouting better.

As for power requirements, it teaches our head app programmer and head scout to manage the schedule for recharging equipment. This is a big teaching opportunity for high school students who may not always have such management skills.

But most importantly, our programmers have learned to work in Android, iOS and server environments. They've learned statistical methods that are rarely taught in high school. Of course, the success of the system is a good reward, but even last year when we didn't use the full capabilities of the system, the learning process was tremendous.

[Jay O'Donnell]

229 is planning on having paper sheets to collect data and then an excel spreadsheet to sort and analyze said data.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

While paper scouting can work for a new team that is just learning the game, moving to electronic scouting (we use tablets) can make your team better in more ways than you might think. Our bottom line though is that the scouting system is only partly about being more competitive. It's as much about improving the skills of our team members, which is ultimately the real goal of FRC.

We originally set up our system as a way to reduce the clutter of paper AND to use our surplus of programmers (which I think is a frequent issue on many teams.) Their product definitely made us better on the field, our scouts lives easier in the stands and took our programmers to another level.

We are now able to easily send live data updates to our drive coach and strategist in the pits. We are able to develop draft lists easily and quickly. We are able to digest our data on the fly. And we are easily able to trace scouts' errors.

Our head scout can focus on managing the scouts, not the paper. We can scout with a skeleton crew when we travel. The interaction with the tablet better constrains the choices that scouts can enter. And we're able to track qualitative scouting better.

As for power requirements, it teaches our head app programmer and head scout to manage the schedule for recharging equipment. This is a big teaching opportunity for high school students who may not always have such management skills.

But most importantly, our programmers have learned to work in Android, iOS and server environments. They've learned statistical methods that are rarely taught in high school. Of course, the success of the system is a good reward, but even last year when we didn't use the full capabilities of the system, the learning process was tremendous.

I came here to say literally all of this. Electronic scouting has monumental advantages over paper scouting, as it does everything paper scouting does, but faster and more efficiently. It enables scouting leadership to actually analyze the matches instead of sitting there typing in data for 12 hours straight. It forces scouters to enter the data you want, without "well, 3.5 times because xyz" scrawled on the corner of the page. Even during quals, we utilize the speed and efficiency of electronic scouting to boost our performance on the field. If you want an example, watch what happens with the blue side co-op totes. We called it the "co-op assist," and it was a great way to utilize a team that struggled to stack, but could do co-op, while offsetting our inability to do co-op.

[007agentHP]

As the scouting captain of a second year team, i prefer to use the system i plan on running this year, a hybrid system.
1. In the stands, the field scouts do their job on paper and hand their sheets to a digitizer once they are done.
2. said digitizer takes the information on the sheets and enters them into a excel spreadsheet for easy access to information where i may be.

its the same thing for the pit scouts. this provides 2 layers of protection. the ease of use in obtaining information anywhere, but we still have the information on paper in case electronics fail us.