Scouting: looking for an excel sheet

[mjustice66]

Hello all,
I currently have scouting sheets together for my teams upcoming competition. We have everything prepared with the exception of an excel sheet or something similar to input all of our scouting data. If anyone can point me in the direction of a system to put our data in it would be greatly appreciated.

[alicen]

Do you absolutely need/want an excel sheet, or would you be interested in putting your information into a global database that gives you access to averages, as well as keeping your raw information intact?

If it's the latter, I would absolutely love it if you put your scouting data into my application here: http://frcstats.org:8000/home/

You can also find more information here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...58#post1546558
or send me a PM!

[mjustice66]

Unfortunately, that wont work. I want something that I can run at competition (without wifi). Do you have any other suggestions?

[Cothron Theiss]

Unless I am misunderstanding what you mean, my suggestion is to make your own. Work with the people that collect your data, your strategists and drivers that will be utilizing the data, and make a Scouting sheet that everyone is ok with using. Then practice with it, and discover everything that is wrong with your Scouting sheet.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by mjustice66

Unfortunately, that wont work. I want something that I can run at competition (without wifi). Do you have any other suggestions?

Well lets get constraints you have out of the way shall we?

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by mjustice66

Unfortunately, that wont work. I want something that I can run at competition (without wifi). Do you have any other suggestions?

GearScout can be used without a mobile data connection. 6 people with android phones, and the zip file I posted on CD-media recently, and you're on your way.

[TimTheGreat]

If you have 6 web-browser enabled devices and a computer you can create an ad-hoc server and run roboscout_2016. It's a great platform that creates a detailed analysis of teams (specifically, which defenses they have successfully crossed the least). It's definitely worth your time to check it out.

At our competition they have wifi in the school, so we run the web server on a rpi and connect iPads to it. But if you have a computer you can create an ad-hoc network and do the same thing easily.

[Boltman]

Personally would not go with "stats" they can be very misleading..eyes on bots is way to go. Believe me I scout and it seems to work (started scouting heavily last year..and our scouting department). I know bots better than even their drive team does...what it can do and cant do and what it had for dinner. I have a scout staff that always finds the right bots for us. After all scouting has three main jobs.

1. Help win quals with detailed intel on bots upcoming (partners and competitors) to hopefully rank top 8 or higher.
2. Look for alliance partners that fit your style and can maximize the score of your elimination alliance with bots left.
3. Find weaknesses/tendencies of all other alliances you will face in eliminations.

Then you can relax and enjoy the eliminations. Scouting as confirmed by drive team and results makes a huge difference. I find it equal to engineering and driving. All three are very important.

I simply use stats to confirm what my eyes saw and to add any I might have "missed'. I have an awesome scout staff that does the same. Teams love the detailed notes we take. Makes for customized alliance selection too.

For instance stats said we had goal points when we did not fire in a single goal yesterday. Go figure.

[GKrotkov]

Here's 1712's 1st iteration of an excel sheet for 2016, along with an explanation. I have no idea whether this will work for your sheets in particular, but feel free to PM me if you have any questions about modifying it.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3225


Edit: Oh, hey, I notice you already downloaded it. Never mind.

[Jon Stratis]

We use a scouting spreadsheet that utilizes macros pretty heavily.

The first tab is identical to our paper scouting sheets - that makes input a lot easier. It has some custom defined lists so that, for example, you pick the current match from a drop down and it automatically populates the team numbers that are playing in that match. Then there's a nice big "submit" button that calls a macro - that macro simply copies all the information over to a data tab, which keeps the data for a single team in a single match in a single row. For example, there's 6 rows for match one, one for each team. And by the end of the competition each team has 8-10 rows, depending on how many matches they have.

On that second data tab, there's another submit button that kicks off another macro. That macro goes through the data tab and does a bit of math. It identifies every row for a particular team, then combines them into a single row on another tab representing the team's overall contribution. For example, there might be a "total high goal shots made" column, a "total high goal shots missed" column, and then a "% shots made" column. That way, if you're looking at alliance selection and want a high goal shooter, you can sort by those columns to see who shoots the most, makes the most, missed the least, etc. Likewise, there can be columns for each individual defense so you know what teams are capable off (important for selecting defenses in each match!).

Anyways, with the reliance on macros and more advanced excel functions like custom lists, it can be difficult to adapt something like that to a different set of data. If you're comfortable trying, let me know and I can send over one I have for you to work on!

[Captain_Kirch]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

We use a scouting spreadsheet that utilizes macros pretty heavily.

...

Anyways, with the reliance on macros and more advanced excel functions like custom lists, it can be difficult to adapt something like that to a different set of data. If you're comfortable trying, let me know and I can send over one I have for you to work on!

I know that I've always had to create a new system every year. You're right, you cant just re-use, but that's part of the challenge. We cant re-use robots, we cant re-use code, we can only carry our knowledge on. Take what you already know from previous years and make something even better.

I risk being rude here so apologies in advance. It seems like you're asking a bit much for a member of the community to do this for you. You wouldn't ask Chief Delphi to program your robot would you?

If you want something easier I suggest using pivot tables. Tableau is pretty simple it would replace that second sheet you mentioned.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Captain_Kirch

If you want something easier I suggest using pivot tables. Tableau is pretty simple it would replace that second sheet you mentioned.

No, not really looking for something easier. Pivot tables are, frankly, a little too easy for what I'm looking for. Doing the macro's gives us a great excuse to get students involved with a second programming language (even if it is just VBA) and get them to think a little differently about programming, as the application of it and the language itself is way different from what we do for our robot! I wouldn't give up on the chance to give them that experience just to save us an hour or two of effort.

[TimTheGreat]

Originally Posted by Boltman

Personally would not go with "stats" they can be very misleading..

This is match statistics.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by Boltman

Personally would not go with "stats" they can be very misleading..eyes on bots is way to go.

Qualitative observation comes with inherent bias, and it's extremely noticeable from qualitative scouter to qualitative scouter. I've got one who's been doing it for 3 years now and I'm pretty sure half his notes say "don't pick" somewhere inside them, while I have other scouters that sympathize with a robot that hasn't moved for most of an event. (Though after Waterford, I guess the notion that a dead robot is a bad robot no longer applies) No type of data can be utilized as effectively as possible without the other types. Pit data, match stats, and qualitative observations are all important factors in making strong picks and making strong strategies.

I know bots better than even their drive team does...

You don't. You might think you do, but you don't. If 4 years and over 120 matches at the helm (like the medieval reference?) of the 2338 scouting team has told me anything, it's that scouters will never know everything an astute drive team will know. Even if they aren't willing to admit it, that drive team knows each and every thing that could possibly go wrong with their machine, each angle that, when pushed, will easily throw their robot out of position, exactly how tall and how close a blocker needs to be to shut them down. Everything. Details that could never conceivably be seen by a scouter, because they are details that couldn't be seen unless a one-in-a-million situation occurrs in which that weakness is exposed.

For instance stats said we had goal points when we did not fire in a single goal yesterday. Go figure.

Sounds like either those scouts are poorly trained, or they don't have an effective, ergonomic scouting system. After having problems with data accuracy in 2014, we switched to our current system and have found great success with it. If your data is clearly wrong, consider redesigning your entry method.

Originally Posted by jojoguy10

Right, thanks, I get that, but I wanted to make sure I understood what you guys are looking for as in "Regional Code". Can you give me an example (that your code is looking for)?

Go on TBA, and find the 4 or 5 character code next to the name of the event. For example, the Midwest Regional is "ILCH" and FiM Waterford was "MIWAT." I'll be honest, we don't do any data validation on the code you put in there, besides the character count. However, keep in mind that once we release the publicly-available support for database queries, you'll need to enter whatever code you used in order to get your data, so I'd strongly suggest making sure all of your scouters use the same code.

[logank013]

This year, our data is very simple. Simple data is the best data. We have 6 scouters and one per team. Our teleop data is as simple as this. How many high goals? How many low goals? What 4 defenses are on the field and how many times was each defense crossed from the neutral zone to the courtyard? Capture? Scale?

We have a macro that is super useful and was written in about an hour all while teaching me how to do it in the future. This macro works like this. We are able to type in what defenses are on the field and how many times each was crossed. The macro lets the 4 defenses that aren't on the field to be left blank. This causes the sheet to sort the data so that the averages are not messed up. We also have a macro that sets up 60 sheets in a matter of second. We have 2 sheets per team. We type in the team list and it sets up both sheets and organized them for each team.

We ran into some problems at this event between Chrome OS and Windows which caused us to do paper scouting. After entering all the data, everything worked as planned. We have lots of great tools like defense predictors. It uses our data and tells us which defense is the best to put out each match. We built this database in about 5 meetings (spread out). Our scouting programmer and I have already talked about how to fix our issues. By our next competition, our goal is to have live data that automatically pulls into the database with the push of a button. Our laptop issue should have a quick fix that will allow us to go paperless (the best type). All I'll have to do to set up the database is enter in the team list and schedule.

Databases don't need to be lots of work and don't need to be expensive. Most of our tools that were used the most at this last competition were developed on our 11 hour bus ride to the competition. They are simple to make but are still powerful when looking for teams as a captain. If you are interested in how we use excel to create our database and have questions about how we use it, feel free to PM me. Thanks.