Your Scouting System

[Dantvman27]

What's everyone’s scouting system?


Last year it pretty good, we knew more about some teams then they did with our scouting team but this year will be even better




We will have a 10 person scouting team set up, each person with a different job placed around the arena, taking data and relaying it to the master computer and then Thursday night we are having a strategy/drive team meeting, mapping out each one of our matches tentatively. With things subject to change based on any new data we collect and also we will watch video of every match

6 people watching the field, each taking a robot per match, with specially designed spread sheet, 2 people in the pits doing interviews to see what the team its self has to say on its robot, one person keeping master score, and a camera person in the second level of the arena videoing every match

Anyone get this complicated or more? I’d love for input or questions

[Rick-906]

We have 2-3 laptops in the stands, one is hooked into two HD cams, one getting the entire field, one zoomed in on the action. we're gonna try to photo-catalog robots in our database, we tried that last year but had the wrong usb cables for the camera we were using.

well, this is our game plan anyway... i know for sure we'll have one HD cam but the second depends on our schools media dept.

good luck

[Dantvman27]

So are the only ones with the old fashion giant scouting team, it seems to be way more efficient when comparing to other teams that were just filming, we had some great stats and amazing defensive game and could help our alliance partners and improve their game play. Lots of teams were impressed with the in depth ness of stat sheets

[EricH]

Thursday: pit interviews. Take pictures of all robots to make it easier to figure out which they are later.
Friday: 7 people in the stands. 6 watch one robot apiece, noting key data. The seventh inputs the data onto a laptop.
Friday evening: team meets and goes over the data. A computer program sorts the teams by how much use they'd be to us as what. Team discusses options for who we'll pick if we are picking.
Saturday morning: Repeat Friday. Get final list to team rep just before selection.
Saturday afternoon: relax and watch the finals...

[Dantvman27]

Originally Posted by EricH

Thursday: pit interviews. Take pictures of all robots to make it easier to figure out which they are later.
Friday: 7 people in the stands. 6 watch one robot apiece, noting key data. The seventh inputs the data onto a laptop.
Friday evening: team meets and goes over the data. A computer program sorts the teams by how much use they'd be to us as what. Team discusses options for who we'll pick if we are picking.
Saturday morning: Repeat Friday. Get final list to team rep just before selection.
Saturday afternoon: relax and watch the finals...

basicly what we got, minus the pictures, but good idea but any robot that stands out we will remember, and also will have game footage

[Ethulin]

STAMP Scouting all the way baby .

http://www.stampscouting.org/ For those of you who don't know, STAMP stands for Statistical Team Analysis of Match Performance. It is a multi-team collaborative software based in PHP+mySQL.

And yes, we are working on the 2007 version as we speak... or is it type...

Originally Posted by Rick-906

We have 2-3 laptops in the stands, one is hooked into two HD cams, one getting the entire field, one zoomed in on the action. we're gonna try to photo-catalog robots in our database, we tried that last year but had the wrong usb cables for the camera we were using.

well, this is our game plan anyway... i know for sure we'll have one HD cam but the second depends on our schools media dept.

good luck

Rick,
We would be interested in setting up such a video system. Do the HD cameras record directly to the laptop's Harddrive? If so, could you give a little more info on how exactly this is done?

[JamesByrne]

Rick,

Do you actualy have people in the rooms or whatever that review the tapes, and if so do you organize them by matches, so you can get to them more easily when trying to watch a match.

[BandChick]

We've always in the past had scouting sheets that we send out with our kids. Much like Eric said, we do pit scouting Thursday (sometimes we have to finish up early Friday), then we have 6 kids sit in the stands for round scouting. From that, we compile a binder by team number of all the information we have.

Then, we take the top 24 rankings and compare/rearrange them based on 1) if they are good partners for us 2) if they hav had problems in their various matches 3) do we work well with them (as in Andy & JVN's favorite phrase "the jerk factor")

[Rick-906]

Yeah, we record onto the hard drive, with the tape in the cameras as backup. im not even sure what program it is, ive used it twice recording rugby matches...
one of our sponsors dropped it off last spring... anyway ill try to get back to you, i have a feeling the 2nd cam might not happen, depending on media classes.

we have people [me] to review footage, most of it wont get used, but for screw ups, damage, point proving, or proof of a bad call by the ref, its there.
usualy i just name the clips by match. with a match list we can watch prospective alliance members fairly easily later.

[752PRMami]

does anyone have any suggestions as to what to add on a scouting sheet?

[Scott Perry]

We used to use a system where about 6-10 scouters were asigned a few teams to scout. On Thursday, they'd interview their assigned teams and scout one of the later practice rounds.

On Saturday and Friday, they'd be responcible to scout 2 matches for their teams. That gave us 5 scoutings for every team and an interview. It gave us a lot of data that was useful both before matches and during alliance selections.


This year, we're switching to what's been coined the 'sticker system.' I first tried it out in Atlanta last year to phenoninal success. We used to think that having scouters specializing in specific teams was a very strong advantage. After co-leading the scouting division of 514 for three years, I've had a change of heart.

Basically, we scrapped the unessessary depth of specializing. The biggest change was dropping the interviews all together. We've looked at them less and less every year, and in the end it was only a list of what a team said it could do.

Now we take a few sheets of blank computer address envelope labels and write every Team number at the event 5 times. Then, we take colored pencils and fill them in with a color for each day (1 for Thurs, 2 for Fri and Sat). As the regional goes on, our intrepid scouts simply scout a team if its being put on the field and there's a sticker left for it that day. It works so well that we end up increasing efficiency and decreasing the number of needed scouts! Of course we'll always need a separate person to type in the voluminous data onto my laptop.

[vivek16]

well i have been prescouting already on what they can "do" and i guess i will rate each team on a scale of 1-5 on how well they can do these things.

although as a rookie team that cant score we really dont have as big a need to scout as other teams.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by vivek16

although as a rookie team that cant score we really dont have as big a need to scout as other teams.

If you can play defense, you may be picked. Scout away; it can be really embarassing to find out that you're up high (through picking or ranking) and nobody on your alliance has a clue as to who to pick during the next round of selection. (It's happened before.)

[jagman2882]

Originally Posted by EricH

Thursday: pit interviews. Take pictures of all robots to make it easier to figure out which they are later.
Friday: 7 people in the stands. 6 watch one robot apiece, noting key data. The seventh inputs the data onto a laptop.
Friday evening: team meets and goes over the data. A computer program sorts the teams by how much use they'd be to us as what. Team discusses options for who we'll pick if we are picking.
Saturday morning: Repeat Friday. Get final list to team rep just before selection.
Saturday afternoon: relax and watch the finals...

this is basically a carbon copy of what 1126 does....it is an essential tool

[vadyr]

we're pretty low-tech. i know a lot of teams record each match, set up excel spreadsheets, and what not....but we just use pink pieces of paper that have who we are with, who we are against...and thats pretty much it. we don't go around and take pictures or scout at the pits....we just watch each match and record some simple notes...but i do have to give a lot of the credit to our lead scouter, BT....he is just a mastermind at scouting...we've had several occasions where we won against an awesome alliance, mostly due to his strategies...so good job BT! but i hope to soon be able to buy him a palm pilot or a cheap laptop or some kind so that we can be a little more hi-tech. but as low tech as we are, we seem to be pretty efficient and effective with scouting. good luck teams!