2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

A well run, easy to use, webcast and archive system would be HUGE for spreading FIRST.

Do you know how horribly difficult it is to get parents, teachers, sponsors, etc... to watch a webcast? Assuming they can even get it open/running, then they have to deal with often subpar quality, and finally then they are often clueless to who we are and where our robot is.

You should be able to go to watchfirst.com, type in a team number, a video stream pops up and says "Team XYZ will play in 4 matches and approximately 19 minutes!"

I can dream....

This would be huge. Parents have no clue where to go to watch an FRC webcast. Heck, sometimes I have a hard time finding all of them. Madstream has made this much easier this year, so kudos to them for making a one-stop shop for FRC webcasts (that we can view simultaneously!)

With video streaming technology to the point that it is, it should be fairly easy to do this. UStream or justin.tv make it so you only need two things - an internet connection and a camera. Get the output video feed that's running to the projector to also feed to a PC, get the audio levels adjusted and you're golden. UStream will even automatically archive it for you, I think. This would take one volunteer with a little training on how to use it, nothing more.