A New Way to Scout

[yash101]

True, but remember, bluetooth runs on the same frequency, 2.4GHz. So, that means, if you want the competition to go by fast and no robot breaking, limit on your usage. Though this may be hard to use, try something like ZigBee? Or if you want to get complicated:
Cell phone with 4G Data connection > Laptop (Bluetooth) > Ethernet ICS > Ethernet Switch > wired connection to node ethernet to usb > Tablet

Of course we don't want to get this complex, so let's stay simple...Just limit your bluetooth usage as it will cause interference. Also, with the above method, you can simplify things:
Rid bluetooth, cell phone and data connection (4G)
Run XAMPP on computer and serve your scouting application, at the spot.

[Connerd]

Originally Posted by yash101

Of course we don't want to get this complex, so let's stay simple...

Please, what you said doesn't make sense
Like I said earlier, I'll have someone who has some knowledge look into it. Thanks for your time.

[yash101]

What I mean is:
So, when you set up tethering on your phone, you create a Bluetooth Personal Area Network (PAN). Now, that is just one PAN. It won't do much of anything to the internet connection. Now, picture a stadium (or the stands at competition) with over a few hundred bluetooth PANs. When you have these many bluetooth PANs, the Wifi (the transmission the Field Management System (FMS) uses) will have more interference.

As a programmer, I would say this because the Ping time, back and forth, gets greatly increased. That means that if you are doing offboard processing like vision tracking, the lag will get so high, the driver would go home (or their hotel room) with a migraine.

I tried to elaborate. Please let us know if you have any problems, and remember, there is the old, handy-dandy google!

[themccannman]

There is a possibility that our team will be able to make a public real-score world ranking data base that all teams could contribute too. It may be a year or two but we're hoping to make it happen eventually.

[yash101]

Kind of the same here, though I am getting no team help. I'm just doing it for fun!

I am pretty sure many of you may be wondering what type of fun I have!

[brennonbrimhall]

Regarding publishing data giving away a well-deserved competitive advantage, I have a unique perspective. 20 collaboratively scouted all three of our events, and IRI. Giving data away doesn't magically make teams better -- the analysis of data does, as well as the understanding of what the numbers mean.

That being said, I recognize the predicament. Perhaps teams should consider publishing data after the event on a unified server, in a common format. Thoughts?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall

Regarding publishing data giving away a well-deserved competitive advantage, I have a unique perspective. 20 collaboratively scouted all three of our events, and IRI. Giving data away doesn't magically make teams better -- the analysis of data does, as well as the understanding of what the numbers mean.

That being said, I recognize the predicament. Perhaps teams should consider publishing data after the event on a unified server, in a common format. Thoughts?

This would be great.

[Nirvash]

Originally Posted by yash101

What I mean is:
So, when you set up tethering on your phone, you create a Bluetooth Personal Area Network (PAN). Now, that is just one PAN. It won't do much of anything to the internet connection. Now, picture a stadium (or the stands at competition) with over a few hundred bluetooth PANs. When you have these many bluetooth PANs, the Wifi (the transmission the Field Management System (FMS) uses) will have more interference.

As a programmer, I would say this because the Ping time, back and forth, gets greatly increased. That means that if you are doing offboard processing like vision tracking, the lag will get so high, the driver would go home (or their hotel room) with a migraine.

I tried to elaborate. Please let us know if you have any problems, and remember, there is the old, handy-dandy google!

It is my understanding that the field uses only the 5GHz band so it should be unaffected by bluetooth communication.

[1306scouting]

Team 1306 did this last year.

(As far as I know, I was the first to use the term CrowdScout to describe this paradigm of collaborative data gathering. I'm amused at the parallels between my announcement last year and the one at the beginning of this thread.)

Last year we worked with several teams using a paper/electronic hybrid system - scouters filled out laminated scouting sheets with wet erase marker, and we scanned them into the computer and then were able to distribute the data to other teams. It was quite successful - it cut the work for each time by a significant margin as well as providing more robust and useful data than having a single team scout. We can use our existing knowledge and infrastructure to help the initiative avoid some of the mistakes we made last year.

1306 is well into developing everything we'll need to do this on a large-scale environment, across all regionals, with teams contributing data and getting access to the raw data. We should be able to integrate data from pretty much any electronic source via the internet (we'll have an API as well as writing some interaction code for specific solutions), and share the data with all participants.

The more people who collaborate, the better this will work.

Please PM me if you are interested. I will start putting up more information in the coming few days.

[jlmcmchl]

Originally Posted by yash101

True, but remember, bluetooth runs on the same frequency, 2.4GHz. So, that means, if you want the competition to go by fast and no robot breaking, limit on your usage. Though this may be hard to use, try something like ZigBee? Or if you want to get complicated:
Cell phone with 4G Data connection > Laptop (Bluetooth) > Ethernet ICS > Ethernet Switch > wired connection to node ethernet to usb > Tablet

Of course we don't want to get this complex, so let's stay simple...Just limit your bluetooth usage as it will cause interference. Also, with the above method, you can simplify things:
Rid bluetooth, cell phone and data connection (4G)
Run XAMPP on computer and serve your scouting application, at the spot.

It's a completely different standard, and it's used by many teams for a tablet-based scouting solution, RUSH being one of them. FIRST has never had any problems with it, nor have I ever heard of Bluetooth and wifi interfering with each other. So it's always an available solution.

[yash101]

Originally Posted by Nirvash

It is my understanding that the field uses only the 5GHz band so it should be unaffected by bluetooth communication.

Actually, after reading more into the control system, I found out that you, Nirvash, are right.
http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...n-Rev-0-4c.pdf -- Page 4

[yash101]

So, that makes me think...why is wifi 2.4GHz disallowed, especially at low transmission power? My DD-WRT router allows me to change the Tx power, and I can possibly change it to just 1mW, not enough to penetrate anything, or travel more than a few feet!

[1306scouting]

As I mentioned (apologies for the double post, but this post covers different topics), 1306 has experience doing this, so I thought I should share to offer that viewpoint for anyone it can help:

1. It's really cool to watch teams work together on scouting.
   
2. We've designed most of the server-side application and are beginning to implement. Once I meet with the lead programmer, I'll see about open-sourcing it. We have dedicated server hardware for this, as well as some possible leads into getting redundancy and so forth.
   
   For the techies here, we're planning on using relational databases to store all the data so that we can efficiently pull the data we need while retaining large amounts of metadata (like the team that submitted and timestamps).
   
3. Mycroft Holmes method is fantastic, but it's not infallible - even if your person is amazing, they can be susceptible to biases and so forth. I like having a Mycroft Holmes-type person with data that we can tap into if we need. You are very lucky to have people that can do that.
   
4. In regards to privacy: 1306's general preference is to give all the raw data to everyone that participates and some "processed" data away for free (balanced by algorithms to create lists). 1306 has always given these lists away to rookies, but we think they're valuable to everyone without giving up any competitive advantage to participants.
   
   This is very open for discussion as we move into implementation and so forth. I personally think information should be free for everyone, but I can see why others would not agree.
   
5. We've designed the platform so that we have a CrowdScout API this year that allows us to take data from pretty much any electronic source. We use paper for our scouters (it's reliable and inexpensive, as well as not needing power and allowing the people scanning it in to see the data before it's uploaded to catch human errors immediately), but we should be able to support apps that implement the API as well as pretty much whatever else the community can dream up.
   
   The API is still young - I agree with brennonbrimhall about having different teams track different metrics, and agreeing on them on a per-tournament basis, but there are advantages to standardized metrics.
   
6. Bluetooth PANs work fairly well for localized internet sharing, and shouldn't have any interference issues with the field nor break any rules. That said, I highly recommend setting up ethernet networks if you can - bluetooth can have issues with many hosts; an old router and ethernet will almost always outperform bluetooth.
   
7. Qualitative data is incredibly important, and because every team functions differently, it's hard to share. CrowdScout could be the platform for doing so, if needed, but I've always thought a team-by-team basis was better for that.

[BBray_T1296]

While we're at it with the bluetooth stuff, why not make your scouting system managed by a NXT? They can interface with up to 4 devices at once (or many if you chain them) Sure using Lego would be less-than Ideal, but it sure would be funny to see someone using a NXT as a practical device

[EricH]

Originally Posted by yash101

So, that makes me think...why is wifi 2.4GHz disallowed, especially at low transmission power? My DD-WRT router allows me to change the Tx power, and I can possibly change it to just 1mW, not enough to penetrate anything, or travel more than a few feet!

I don't know how current this is (and, BTW, use of a 2009 Getting Started guide might not be the greatest idea, given that we're dealing with 2013/14 here--the system has changed), but at least at one time, the field COULD run on 2.4 GHz. That was the theory, at any rate. IIRC, it was actually tried once, partly due to restrictions on the 5 GHz band at one particular event. Suffice it to say that the odds of all 6 robots on the field actually working were pretty close to nil for the first day or so of that event, and not all that much better later (though there was improvement thanks to the field staff working very hard).



Tl;dr: While the field nominally runs on 5 GHz, it (and the robots) can run on 2.4 GHz if needed, and they don't need any more potential interference there than is already there.