Electronic Scouting System, Team 1678

[chmconkling]

Why did you guys use internet? With our team we just set up a local database and had all info transferred from the tablets via Bluetooth.

[brennonbrimhall]

I like it! Team 20 has been cooking up something similar, but it follows more of a distributed paradigm. I'm excited to see 111's too!

Did your coaches really like the real-time information? Was it really necessary to do that in real-time, or do you think that it you could achieve similar results with updates every 30 minutes or so?

[safiq10]

I love this on so many different levels. Im interested in seeing the code for this and trying this out for myself.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall

I like it! Team 20 has been cooking up something similar, but it follows more of a distributed paradigm. I'm excited to see 111's too!

Did your coaches really like the real-time information? Was it really necessary to do that in real-time, or do you think that it you could achieve similar results with updates every 30 minutes or so?

Our team coach call the real time updates the "b--- s--- detector" during pre match discussions. It was incredibly valuable. Also we were able to focus our strategic scouting with the real time data. We saw a huge difference between the regionals where we had little or no real time updates and Worlds where we had fairly consistent real time updating. (It wasn't faultless as Donald notes in the paper, but they have a solution.)

One other very important point: I'm the adult mentor who "supervised" this task--but the reality is that all I did was help identify the information to be gathered, the calculations using the collected data and the summary outputs. ALL of the technical software and hardware matters were handled entirely, 100% by student team members. I was simply amazed at their technical prowess of designing, building, debugging and rebuilding the system. To me this is the epitome of the FIRST experience.

[CTbiker105]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Our team coach call the real time updates the "b--- s--- detector" during pre match discussions

We heard the same feedback from our drive coach. Apparently he used the data we'd collected to prove teams wrong multiple times in regards to the position they should play. Quite amusing.

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Our team coach call the real time updates the "b--- s--- detector" during pre match discussions.

Originally Posted by CTbiker105

We heard the same feedback from our drive coach. Apparently he used the data we'd collected to prove teams wrong multiple times in regards to the position they should play. Quite amusing.

While I hate to call teams out, there are some instances where you have to, and having the data to back yourself up is life-saving. We used similar updates in paper form that we actually gave to our alliance partners in some situations. The Papers gave statistics about all 6 robots from each alliance.

When it came down to "I want to Score" or "Oh Yeah! We can definetly Truss to our Human Player!" or "Our Auto is 100% Hot goal"....telling someone no is easier when you have the scouting data on hand.

[donald_pinckney]

Originally Posted by chmconkling

Why did you guys use internet? With our team we just set up a local database and had all info transferred from the tablets via Bluetooth.

Our initial iteration of the system only stored data on disk on tablets, and then we uploaded later, which certainly worked.

However, we wanted internet access in the stands so we could upload the scouting data directly after each match, rather than have to do batch uploads, say during lunchtime. This let us deliver accurate scouting data to our coaches / driveteam to strategize for qualification matches also.

Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall

Did your coaches really like the real-time information? Was it really necessary to do that in real-time, or do you think that it you could achieve similar results with updates every 30 minutes or so?

Realtime data did significantly improve strategizing in qualification matches. Updates every 30 minutes or so probably would have been frequent enough for the data to be useful for qualification matches, but, how do you effectively do a batch upload (legally) every 30 minutes?

If you have 6 tablets, and you need to upload via Wifi, then you need to walk out of the stands, activate someone's hotspot, connect all the tablets to the hotspot, and finally upload, then go back to the stands. For a not quite legal solution, you would still have to activate a hotspot and connect tablets. This process could easily cause you to miss scouting a match... rather than deal with that, we chose the more difficult problem of suppling constant internet access.

That was our logic, and it worked well in St. Louis, but I think we can use the realtime data a lot more effectively this coming year.