A New Way to Scout

[brandon.cottrell]

Originally Posted by Roger

There is another method, which, for lack of a better term, I would refer as the "Mycroft Holmes" method (Wikipedia's description is incomplete). It is someone that somehow can keep statistics of all the teams in his/her head, and be able to balance off which team would be good, and which to watch out. We've had a couple like that, and they are much better than any other system. I told the team's teachers to look out for a sports fanatic student for this role.

While our team does have it's own form of scouting, I kinda think that this method is what suits me the most. I like to look at regionals I didn't attend and try to work out what teams had the most synergy, and what the best possible alliances would be.

[khanh111]

That's always something to consider (synergy). And I definitely do think that those people are valuable. It's just that we are all human, and we make mistakes and/forget things. Scouting data is the best way to confirm observations made throughout the day.

Additionally, explaining the rationale behind decisions always leads to better ideas, and allows for proof when you make a statement.

[mechanical_robot]

What advantage does it have over wether your teams lose or win though? Big teams already have their own scouting system and so does most medium sized teams. Also you could be helping rookie or new or small teams. I don't see the point of it being secret, it's not like it is a special robot strategy or robot function. It is merely harmless data.

[Kimmeh]

Originally Posted by antimatter_john

What advantage does it have over wether your teams lose or win though? Big teams already have their own scouting system and so does most medium sized teams. Also you could be helping rookie or new or small teams. I don't see the point of it being secret, it's not like it is a special robot strategy or robot function. It is merely harmless data.

Exactly. What makes scouting actually mean something is what you do with the data. You're sharing the raw data, not how it's manipulated to be effective for your team.

[Connerd]

One of the ways we've debated doing scouting this season, as opposed to the hundreds of sheets of paper, is having a webpage which all of the scouters can connect to on their laptops, phones, tablets, etc. through a dedicated mobile hotspot. This data is collected, and organized on the scouting lead's Ipad, which allows for medium speed data review, depending on the internet speed.
We haven't thought about it fully, we've just been talking about it. The scanner method might work better though, as it seems simpler and more cost-efficient.

[Jim Wilks]

Originally Posted by Connerd

One of the ways we've debated doing scouting this season, as opposed to the hundreds of sheets of paper, is having a webpage which all of the scouters can connect to on their laptops, phones, tablets, etc. through a dedicated mobile hotspot. This data is collected, and organized on the scouting lead's Ipad, which allows for medium speed data review, depending on the internet speed.

Check rule T04:

"Teams are not allowed to set up their own 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz or 5GHz) wireless communication (e.g. access points or ad-hoc networks) in the venue.

A wireless hot spot created by a cellular device would be considered an access point."

[brennonbrimhall]

I foresee issues where teams don't agree on specific criteria to track. For example, as the only team that consistently used ground pickup at the Connecticut Regional, it made no sense for us to actively track teams who were picking up Frisbees off of the field. Constraining teams to a predetermined set of actions to track would be a major turn off to a lot of teams.

It would be far more feasible to have an effort where one or more teams at an event decide to publish their data in a common interchange format, to a common server. Teams could hash out collaborative details at events.

I see crowdscouting/teams publishing their scouting information as a potential solution to the downfalls of OPR for events that I can't attend, not a substitute for scouting well at your event. There isn't a replacement for solid data and being able to understand the picture those data are telling you.

I've been working on a scouting system that is based on node.js, which is awesomely cross-platform and renders as a webpage. With a few modifications, it could be a platform whereby teams can post their data to it -- like Blue Alliance, but with a much higher granularity.

[Invictus3593]

This is great! How would you compile the list of each team competing and the regionals they are attending? Also, how would you get ranks, scores and match points for each event?

Our team programmers are developing an Android App to do scouting on tablets and also a PC program to sync up the data entered on the tablets with the PC via bluetooth, then compile all event data into a spreadsheet for review.

I foresee issues where teams don't agree on specific criteria to track.

To start, we got together and decided on which data to get and which data to omit, also there's a "notes" section where we can add things like "swerve drive", "defensive only", and things like that. There is also a spot for what we call "Blowouts", where a team may have gone into a match with a working robot and then gotten flipped or had electrical problems. This can give us an idea of how reliable their bot is or would be.

[jlmcmchl]

Originally Posted by Jim Wilks

Check rule T04:

"Teams are not allowed to set up their own 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz or 5GHz) wireless communication (e.g. access points or ad-hoc networks) in the venue.

A wireless hot spot created by a cellular device would be considered an access point."

Technically, you can make a bluetooth hotspot and achieve the same thing (802.15, separate IEEE standard). Of course it requires an ability to communicate via the desired bluetooth protocol, but it can be made to happen.

[mechanical_robot]

Originally Posted by Kimmeh

Exactly. What makes scouting actually mean something is what you do with the data. You're sharing the raw data, not how it's manipulated to be effective for your team.

Exactly what? There was no exactly to my question. My question is is why is IT SO IMPORTANT TO KEEP RAW DATA KEPT AWAY FOR ONLY CERTAIN TEAMS. (No yelling inteded just want to get my point across). There is no point. Yuo even said your self

Originally Posted by Kimmeh

What makes scouting actually mean something is what you do with the data

If I am missing something please tell me.

[Pault]

Originally Posted by antimatter_john

Exactly what? There was no exactly to my question. My question is is why is IT SO IMPORTANT TO KEEP RAW DATA KEPT AWAY FOR ONLY CERTAIN TEAMS. (No yelling inteded just want to get my point across). There is no point. Yuo even said your self



If I am missing something please tell me.

Because scouting is a whole other aspect to the competition. There are teams who devote themselves to having great scouting systems in order to gain a competitive advantage. And they absolutely deserve that advantage, in the same way that teams who devote themselves to building their robot deserve a competitive advantage, and the teams who devote themselves to outreach and the chairman's presentation deserve an advantage in the chairman's award. If the data was made public, then all of the sudden every team has access to this awesome resource, and all of the time and effort which some teams have put into developing their own systems is wasted. I'm definitely not on one of those great scouting teams, but I know that if I was then this happening would make me pretty frustrated.

Also, you've made the assumption that all big-medium teams have good scouting systems, but that is not at all true. Many teams, including those with fairly decent robots, still struggle to get any sort of meaningful scouting data. And I don't want it to be this way, but the solution is not just to hand them data that they didn't earn. That's one of the things that I like about crowd scouting the way the op is presenting it; it gives teams the opportunity to have good scouting, but they have to work for it. There is no reason why most* teams can't send 2 students to help the crowdscouting effort. So why make it optional?

*Of course there are some exceptions, but those should be handled on a case by case basis rather than as a general rule.

[AlecMataloni]

Originally Posted by Pault

Because scouting is a whole other aspect to the competition. There are teams who devote themselves to having great scouting systems in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Exactly this. The point of scouting is to evaluate my opponents and determine who my best theoretical alliance is. If I'm in a picking position, other alliance captains' lack of scouting (for various reasons) allows me to potentially pick teams that put up exceptional numbers, yet may have flown under the radar. Often, these "steals of the draft" will all but guarantee my eventual victory. Why on earth would I want to make the data public, if it allows my opponents to recognize who I want to pick, and subsequently pick the teams I'm after?

[Connerd]

Originally Posted by Jim Wilks

Check rule T04:

"Teams are not allowed to set up their own 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz or 5GHz) wireless communication (e.g. access points or ad-hoc networks) in the venue.

A wireless hot spot created by a cellular device would be considered an access point."

Thanks Jim Wilks. I didn't catch that. I'll make sure to tell my team that, so we don't do anything stupid. We might just have to compile it online and offsite.

[jlmcmchl]

Originally Posted by Connerd

Thanks Jim Wilks. I didn't catch that. I'll make sure to tell my team that, so we don't do anything stupid. We might just have to compile it online and offsite.

Do some research into tethering the devices via Bluetooth. It's under a different standard, and should be an effective workaround.

[Connerd]

Originally Posted by jlmcmchl

Do some research into tethering the devices via Bluetooth. It's under a different standard, and should be an effective workaround.

I'll have someone look into that, as I'm not very, shall we say, well-versed in the art of bluetooth/wireless connections. Thanks for the info!
*EDIT*
Would 3G connections (such as a wireless connection on a smartphone/tablet over a cellular network for the individual device) conflict with afore-mentioned rules?