paper: Aluminum Falcons (FRC2168) 2011 Scouting System Ver 1.1

[speedbuggy76]

We used this scouting system at Peachtree last weekend, and were pretty happy with it. We had 6 people scouting teams, and one person (me) doing data entry. Some comments and questions:

1. The system mostly focuses on offense. Obviously offense is the focus of the game this year, but often the robots available for a second selection won't be used for offense. The addition of some defensive statistics would be nice. Maybe a ranking for how well they keep another robot from scoring or something like that. We had our scouts make comments of defensive ability, but that data isn't entered into the database, so we had to go back to look at the individual sheets.

2. It would be nice if there were a comments section in the database. It would be a lot easier to reference comments related to a team this way. It would be especially nice if, when you select a team to look at, all the comments are displayed alongside the scoring data.

3. Data entry needs to be easier. As someone who entered ~500 scouting sheets, this was the most frustrating thing for me. Fields which aren't numerical values, such as 'Autonomous Starting Position' and 'Defensive/Offensive', are very annoying to input quickly. Having used a drop down list in a browser, I was expecting to be able to type the first letter of the entry and have it automatically fill in the rest of the characters. This wasn't the case (at least in excel 2007). Additionally, I couldn't use the arrows on my keyboard to switch through selections. I was limited to taking my hands off the keyboard to use the trackpad (ugh) to select an option, or just type the whole entry ("Mostly Offensive", "Equal Mix", etc.) in myself. Not sure if there is a way to have excel fill this in for you or not though. Either way, the entry values should be shortened and made more distinct to allow for easier entry. For example, "Mostly Offensive" should be switched to "Offensive" (or even just "O" if auto-fill can't be implemented). In addition to being shorter to type in, if auto-fill can be implemented then you would have to type "Mostly O" before excel would be able to differentiate between "Mostly Offensive" and "Mostly Defensive".

-Minibot graphs. It would be nice if you could somehow relabel the y-axis to show 1st place as the highest value. As-is, the graph is a little hard to read since an empty data point (didn't make it/didn't attempt) is on the bottom, a first place finish is above that, and a 4th place finish is at the top. This could be fixed by transforming the inputted value (making a 1st place finish a 5, a 2nd place finish a 4, etc, and an attempt a 1 to differentiate between attempts and non-attempts).

-denote red cards if possible. Our scouts noted a team that consistently received red cards, and that drastically affected our interest in them. It would be nice if the database accounted for this.


Thanks for the hard work in creating this! We really loved having it at Peachtree, and it was very helpful! If you could please provide the password to modify the file, I would greatly appreciate it. A community effort to make improvements to this great tool would be awesome.

[jwfoss]

I'm glad to see that those who are using the system like it. We understand that the system is no perfect.

speedbuggy76, our own scouts suggested making the data input easier and there will likely be an update posted to support this before our next regional (CT).

However it is not likely that many other changes we be made as we are quite busy with robot. I will talk to the other developer again about releasing the password, for those of you who already used our system, perhaps we can work something out, shoot me a PM. I honestly never expected this must interest in our system.

Thanks again for your comments, and I hope it continues to serve you well.

[speedbuggy76]

Thanks for the information. Let me know if I can help.

[avanboekel]

Team 2338 used this system last weekend at Midwest. We were pretty happy with it but there are some parts that could see improvement.

1. Comments: they are very important when analyzing the data, yet we can't input them into our scouting database.

2. Data input: at the moment, it is very slow and difficult to use when we have to input almost 500 in one weekend.

3. User mistakes: there is no way to fix errors in data entry. It would be great if there was some way to delete entries with known errors.

4. Minibot data: When a minibot fails to climb the pole, it is in the database as a 0. This is bad when trying to find the best minibots using averages.

Thanks for letting us use your scouting system! We enjoyed using it at our regional. We look forward to using it at nationals.

[jwfoss]

Alright Everyone, Hot off The Keyboard... Just in Time for Week 5 Regionals

Update Ver 1.6
- Fixed Scoring Error
- Added Comments Section Into Data
- Fixed Minibot Plot
- Made Data Input Easier

Thanks for all the input we've got on over the last four weeks. A special thanks to Matt Ellis for taking the time to begin implementing some new ideas.

While I was at SBPLI I was thrilled to find out that the #1 seed, 1626 was using our system, and went on to win the event. Any other success stories out there? Thanks again, and as always please let us know what you think.

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

Alright Everyone, Hot of The Keyboard... Just in Time for Week 5 Regionals

Update Ver 1.6
- Fixed Scoring Error

I like the new data entry. I noticed a bug with the new version scoring. It doesn't award logo bonuses for rows including Ubertubes. Also, the U and UB are formatted red instead of yellow an blue. Again I dont think anyone would miss the logo bonuses if you took them out

[jwfoss]

With all updates things get mixed up. Thanks for the quick check, we are correcting this right now, will post up a 1.6.2 when we get it working properly.

1.6.2 Up and Running, sorry about that!

[rocpe]

Guys,

Falcon Robotics FIRST Team 1626 did use the software at SBPLI. We ended up the top seed and the software showed our top pick as the 21 seed Team 229. We went with it and couldn't be happier. You guys rock along with 229 and 375!

See ya in St. Louis!

[avanboekel]

Great data input updates! There are still a few things that I think should be changed for later versions...

1) In the data analysis tab, it would be great if we could sort by minibot rank. As is, sorting by minibot average doesn't give us a good idea of how good the minibot actually is. Weighting a 'did not make it' or 'no attempt' as a 5 should make it easier to sort the good minibots from the bad.

2) For data input, it would be faster to type 1, 2, 3, or 4 instead of 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th for the minibot place. It would also be nice to see some sort of change in the input for 'did not make it' and 'no attempt'. Maybe changing them to 'dnf' (did not finish), and 'na'.

Again, thanks for all of the effort put forth towards this scouting program!

[jwfoss]

Hello all, even though The Aluminum Falcons are not going to Championships we have worked out a special edition of our scouting system.

Championship Edition
- Now Contains selectable team lists from Championships
- Only able to enter real teams in your division
- OPR from Ed Law's System from previous regionals included
- Added some metrics: Manuverability and Minibot Time
- Made some edits to make the overall system better
- Posted a Fully Unprotected Sheet, we suggest not changing anything!

I will personally be in St. Louis and would love to stop by and talk about the system, it would be great if there was at least one team in every division using the system. Please let me know if you are planning to use it, your team number, and the field you are on and I will stop by to talk!

Thanks and good Luck at Championships!

[avanboekel]

2338 will be using this system at nationals. We are in Newton. Hope to see you there!

[MysterE]

3337 is going to be using it in Archimedes. Already have the 1000 copies of the sheets for our scouts to use :-p

-D

[ahollenbach]

Great stuff!
Is there any way that VBcode could be unlocked as well?

[CurseofDragon33]

Team 48 will be on Galileo and at the very least usethe scouting sheets and if we can get organized and situated in the arena in time for matches to start on Thursday we may use the database too. This will be a great help not only to me but to our students as well. Thanks!

[speedbuggy76]

We'll be using it in Newton. We went to all digital entry at North Carolina. We have a laptop for each scouter, and then we combine all the data sets into one master file at lunch/end of the day.