New Android Scouting App

[the_zanman]

Hey just wanted to let you guys know about the new scouting app for Android that FIRST Team 2168 just released - they may also be releasing a computer version shortly. Something unique about it is that it allows the user to define whatever stats they want to track teams by

https://market.android.com/details?id=us.zan.FRC_Scout

let me know what you guys think of it!

[Phyrxes]

I was testing out your app and I get an error when trying to sign up on the webpage as well as a force close on the app when I try and and enter fictional data about my own team to try out the app.

Running on an HTC thunderbolt with Gingerbread.

[the_zanman]

Unfortunately I was unable to test it on a lot of platforms, so if you haven't already report the error and I will get it fixed. Also what error were you getting when signing up on the website?

[Phyrxes]

When attempting to add my team I get a white screen that just says "Invalid Input!"

As far as the app goes I will try and get you an error message.

[Squeakypig]

I have been getting the same thing during my testing on a Droid 2.

[the_zanman]

Yea if it crashes on your phone, just click the report button on the crash dialog and I will receive a stack trace that will point me to whatever different platform bugs are happening

The add team error is fixed, thank you for your patience, this testing is a learning experience for me haha

Also I assume that because of said error, those of you who have downloaded and tested it were not able to join a team; I expect that this would cause the app to throw errors, because in order to add data you have to be part of a team. I will be pushing an update that will not let you add anything until you have done so soon.

[Phyrxes]

Seems to work fine now that I am on a team, I'll play with it and have my head scout play with it and get you some feedback.

[the_zanman]

Ok! Thank you for the patience haha. Make sure to check out:

Data graphs
Average versus individual, be able to track team trends throughout a competition.

Import teams from competition
At the request of one of the judges who gave the beta app a tech innovation award at our last post-season event, this will add numerous teams from any competitions you go to so that you do not have to manually input them all.

Predict a match
Pretty straightforwards, based off of average scores this will attempt to tell you the outcome of a match!

Custom options
One of the best qualities of this system, or at least in my eyes, is that a team can make their own options (score, height, speed, style, anything) to scout by instead of being locked into what the developers put in like other systems. There are even two different types of options:
numeric - like speed, wheel count, etc which when you go to add a data point about it will give you a box for a number
predefined - like style or other text based options, when you go to add a new data point about these options you will be given a list that you define of choices to put for it (so for style maybe you would want to have 'Defense', 'Offense' or anything of the sorts!)

Thank you again for trying out my app, it is my first one and I really appreciate it!

[the_zanman]

So I just pushed out a new update that hopefully should solve ArrayIndexOutOfBounds errors in the competition teams importer popup, sorry for the late response but it takes google market a while to update with error logs. Thank you for the reports though! What do you guys think of it so far?

[JosephC]

Haven't downloaded it myself yet but I'll check it out with our lead scout tomorrow over lunch.

[the_zanman]

Something keeps going wrong with the competition team importer but I am working on getting it fixed

[Phyrxes]

We had the app running on 4 different handsets in the shop today playing settings and seeing how well things synced up. Hope to have some detailed feedback for you tomorrow.

Handsets were:
Thunderbolt, galaxy nexus, incredible 2, and an sg2.

[Peyton Yeung]

What website do we go to to join a team?

[the_zanman]

Awesome! Hope it went well

Also Tubatroopa, go to http://team2168.org/signup.html to sign your team up

[TheSouthernGent]

So I have been playing around with the app and have a few thoughts and ideas.

First, is there a way to go back and edit or remove options that I have added? I messed up some of my options when I was testing the app, and I don't know how to remove them

Second, I am getting a force close whenever I try to access the team graph.

An Idea that would make this app even more helpful would be: having the grid in which the teams info is placed have a column for each match they are in. I know this isn't possible until schedules are released, but it would help everything be organised.

Also, when the Competitions go into the Direct Elimination phase will the app create a tourney bracket for the matches?

It may also be helpful if there would be way to share data with alliance members, but only data about your opponents. This would allow for everyone to have the same info available (Very helpful come DE's).

All in all, the app is great and will be extremely helpful during competition. It is tons better than the traditional 4 notebooks and half a dozen clipboards. I really like that anyone on the team who has the app can access and edit the data from anywhere. Thanks for the work you put into the app, and it has the potential to be great