The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play

[Gray Adams]

I was just about to ask about previous years data.

Anyway, really cool site, and I'm sure it's going to get a whole lot better.

By the way, links to team websites are pretty broken. It tries to go to http://thefirstalliance.org/www.greybots.com when you click the link, instead of www.greybots.com (to use 973 as an arbitrary example)

[Cory]

How is this different than the blue alliance? So far it looks like it shows exactly the same information.

[Thad House]

Something I just noticed is that in the elimination section the pick numbers are reversed. So the #3 is actually #1 and #1 is actually #3. Also sometimes #1 is switched with #2.

[qzrrbz]

Originally Posted by Cory

How is this different than the blue alliance? So far it looks like it shows exactly the same information.

I'd imagine they're touting the extensibility/access they are building into it?

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by Gray Adams

I was just about to ask about previous years data.

Anyway, really cool site, and I'm sure it's going to get a whole lot better.

By the way, links to team websites are pretty broken. It tries to go to http://thefirstalliance.org/www.greybots.com when you click the link, instead of www.greybots.com (to use 973 as an arbitrary example)

What browser are you using?

*EDIT: Nevermind, confirmed bug in multiple browsers. Will fix soon.

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by qzrrbz

I'd imagine they're touting the extensibility/access they are building into it?

I can't really comment too much about this, but all I can say is that what you see is very much the tip of the iceberg. We're interested in building something much bigger than an statistics portal.

Roadmap will come soon.

[Lil' Lavery]

So, um, elimination brackets, elimination alliances (that aren't even close to 100% correct), and rankings are what separates this from TBA? I don't mean to be rude, but I really don't see why I'd use this website instead of the currently existing resources.

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

So, um, elimination brackets, elimination alliances (that aren't even close to 100% correct), and rankings are what separates this from TBA? I don't mean to be rude, but I really don't see why I'd use this website instead of the currently existing resources.

We're aware of the bugs you mentioned and are working to fix them. To address your other thoughts...

What you see right now is literally just the tip of the iceberg. An official roadmap is on the way, so I can't go in to too much detail. What I can say, however, our site is designed to be the most usable, reliable, and accurate (working on that one guys!), source for official FRC information out there.

We see the site's users being anyone who wants a quality and professional way to access important information they'll use for scouting or what not. We also envision creative types using our API for their projects, eliminating the painful process of writing their own solution to acquire FRC data.

We realize it's still pretty alpha right now, but we wanted to get it out to the community ASAP to build excitement, get feedback, and make The FIRST Alliance the best possible product it can be. Thanks for your feedback.

[StevenB]

I like the "API first" objective. Having a standard API for all this data is a plus, and the website looks really clean. At the risk of making a judgment before you've laid out your vision and roadmap, I'm unsure what this brings to the table. TBA already has an API, and the results web pages on the FIRST site, while ugly, are stable and easy to scrape data from.

What we need is not more APIs or more apps, but more data.

If someone can come up with a stable API for the twitter data that works from year to year, or a means for teams to collaboratively upload their scouting data, then we'd have something exciting, perhaps even game-changing. But right now, it's just the same data over and over again.

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by StevenB

I like the "API first" objective. Having a standard API for all this data is a plus, and the website looks really clean. At the risk of making a judgment before you've laid out your vision and roadmap, I'm unsure what this brings to the table. TBA already has an API, and the results web pages on the FIRST site, while ugly, are stable and easy to scrape data from.

What we need is not more APIs or more apps, but more data.

If someone can come up with a stable API for the twitter data that works from year to year, or a means for teams to collaboratively upload their scouting data, then we'd have something exciting, perhaps even game-changing. But right now, it's just the same data over and over again.

I think that we offer something unique and fresh by starting over, getting a lot of input from the FIRST community early on (ie right now), and working from that angle.

Our API is totally public and transparent. Anyone can access it. The fact that you said "the results web pages on the FIRST site, while ugly, are stable and easy to scrape data from" says there's a major problem FRC teams are facing - there aren't any good APIs out there! Our site is built on top of our API. So as we grow the site, our API grows along with it. Our data is literally your data.

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by sst.thad

Something I just noticed is that in the elimination section the pick numbers are reversed. So the #3 is actually #1 and #1 is actually #3. Also sometimes #1 is switched with #2.

I imagined the elimination alliances are scraped from the FIRST event information so there would be no indication of which pick order were for each team.

I love the visual bracket of how elimination went. I don't know if you are already planning it but it would be neat to scrape data from twitter for individual matches of hybrid, tele-op, and bridge points for each alliance. I know there is missing data for entire events or just individual matches.

The ability to sort matches by scores seems to be able to compliment such a feature.

Very nice work with the programming.

[Joseph Bisch]

Originally Posted by StevenB

I like the "API first" objective. Having a standard API for all this data is a plus, and the website looks really clean. At the risk of making a judgment before you've laid out your vision and roadmap, I'm unsure what this brings to the table. TBA already has an API, and the results web pages on the FIRST site, while ugly, are stable and easy to scrape data from.

That API you link to for TBA is old. When I last tried using it, it did not provide current data.

There is a new API for the new version of TBA. This API does not require an API key and returns data using json.

An example request URL is:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/api/v...show?year=2012

Going back to the topic of this thread, are there any plans to open source The FIRST Alliance?

[GGCO]

Thanks! That was Ben's last minute addition that caused us to launch at 12:20ish not 12:00! As you can see it's still pretty alpha, but yeah we're excited about the possibilities that feature has.

We're aware of the match data that's missing and we're trying to fix it as fast as we can. If you do notice anything wrong, please send us an email at:
contact@thefirstalliance.org

Thanks!

Originally Posted by MagiChau

I imagined the elimination alliances are scraped from the FIRST event information so there would be no indication of which pick order were for each team.

I love the visual bracket of how elimination went. I don't know if you are already planning it but it would be neat to scrape data from twitter for individual matches of hybrid, tele-op, and bridge points for each alliance. I know there is missing data for entire events or just individual matches.

The ability to sort matches by scores seems to be able to compliment such a feature.

Very nice work with the programming.

[Littleboy]

A couple of things:
1. In the rankings section for the events, it has the order being …BP|TP|WLT|HP… I would suggest putting HP before WLT.
2. The alliance numbers aren't correct in the elimination teams section. It has 0-7 instead of 1-8. Who has heard of the 0th seeded alliance?
3. Possibly add links to TBA/TRA, webcasts, opr, other useful sites
4. Possibly include actual data per individual team. (Have people send in scouting data after the event?)
5. Looks pretty good.

[stens987]

Great website! It is already bookmarked and I'm sure it will be a useful resource for me. I really like e bracket diagram under the event page.

So far I only typed in our team number, but it wasn't showing data for the Las Vegas Regional on our team page. It was under the event page though. I'm using my iPad, so maybe the mobile version has an error- or of course it could be user error . Anyway, you said to let you know any bugs or errors, so I thought I should mention it.