A New Way to Scout

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

My team has access to over 20 NXTs that is a great Idea.

Only 20? Try 50+!

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Nemo

On the topic of keeping data private versus sharing it with the world:

It's a huge waste of time for every team to dedicate 7+ people to compiling the same exact set of statistics. If a community effort produced the same thing with far less total effort, the teams with the most effective scouting systems could instead put that effort into creating more advanced statistics and improving their qualitative scouting and their methods of collecting and using that qualitative data. Those teams would still have a competitive advantage to show for their efforts.

I don't know if I would trust data that's gathered by "the community" for more than cursory overviews of robots. Our scouters all know the value of the data they collect, and see that it's of a real benefit to our team in qual matches and in alliance selection. That means that if they collect the data, it's good data. If an amorphous group of kids from different teams was working on the same data, they likely wouldn't have the same motivation to "get it right." You might end up with missing matches, people over counting their own teams, or just general slacking off. Of course, I agree having only one group of 7 per regional scout would be a ton less work, but potentially at the cost of data quality.

[Qbot2640]

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.

We have been considering this issue as well. Our team does not universally have smartphones or tablets...but in a one-to-one school they all have chromebooks. Is there any reason why we could not create a six-user WIRED network with a laptop as the "server" and write some html scouting form to use in an intra-net type setup?

And to the "data-sharing" issue...I definitely believe you should have to contribute to benefit. From my perspective, this benefits the rookie teams or smaller teams much more. Consider, if there was no investment required to obtain this data, the teams with the best scouting programs could hold all their own scouters for their own data, yet still get the larger group data. A smaller or less experienced team might not be able to generate good data themselves. On the other hand, if you need to contribute to the effort to gain access to the data the former team WILL participate because they won't want to risk missing something that everyone else will have access to. Their benefit will still be considerably less than the latter team, since the data they would have without cooperation would already be pretty good.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

I don't know if I would trust data that's gathered by "the community" for more than cursory overviews of robots.

Data sharing will never replace good scouting. I would, however, trust data more than OPR for events I haven't attended in person, or scouted via webcast.

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

We have been considering this issue as well. Our team does not universally have smartphones or tablets...but in a one-to-one school they all have chromebooks. Is there any reason why we could not create a six-user WIRED network with a laptop as the "server" and write some html scouting form to use in an intra-net type setup?

You pretty much described our scouting setup, with the caveat that we use paper sheets that are then entered via an HTML form, using node.js.

Let's just say that we found a new purpose for old robot D-Link bridges.

[saikiranra]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

We have been considering this issue as well. Our team does not universally have smartphones or tablets...but in a one-to-one school they all have chromebooks. Is there any reason why we could not create a six-user WIRED network with a laptop as the "server" and write some html scouting form to use in an intra-net type setup?

Yea, you can do that with Wamp on a Windows Machine. EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE, because Wamp is simple to set up and configure. It is also reliable. We used a local Wamp server at 3 offseason events (IRI, Fall Classic, and Battle at the Border), and it never failed. PM me if you have any questions.

[Connerd]

Originally Posted by saikiranra

Yea, you can do that with Wamp on a Windows Machine. EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE, because Wamp is simple to set up and configure. It is also reliable. We used a local Wamp server at 3 offseason events (IRI, Fall Classic, and Battle at the Border), and it never failed. PM me if you have any questions.

Sorry if anyone feels this is repetitive, but our team is looking for as many options to improve scouting, redundancy and such. Would the method described above have to be wired?

[saikiranra]

Originally Posted by Connerd

Sorry if anyone feels this is repetitive, but our team is looking for as many options to improve scouting, redundancy and such. Would the method described above have to be wired?

Yes, you need to have an ethernet cable running from each computer into a switch. You don't need to configure the switch in any fancy way though. Windows automatically assigns an IP (IPv6 I think?) that you can use to access the server from any computer wired to the switch.

[yash101]

You would be using IPv4, not v6, most likely. . Also, my approach to getting this down would be to have an internet connection and to connect to my central database. Instead of a switch, a router with WiFi disabled would be the better approach because typically, routers are easier to manage because they are aimed at general purpose computing at home (Most standard users aren't geeks).

My database would allow every team to collaborate on their own database

[saikiranra]

Originally Posted by yash101

You would be using IPv4, not v6, most likely. . Also, my approach to getting this down would be to have an internet connection and to connect to my central database. Instead of a switch, a router with WiFi disabled would be the better approach because typically, routers are easier to manage because they are aimed at general purpose computing at home (Most standard users aren't geeks).

I was just talking about a Wamp server. You CAN use a switch with a data connecting to connect to the internet in the same fashion. That is what we do for regionals.

[yash101]

Sorry for the double post.
Here's what I want to accomplish in my scouting server:
Easy and intuitive interface so I don't have to teach everyone how to use it

Most typical data values (Goals, climb, etc)

Special features (Probably check buttons so PHP can sort it)

Global comments

Game comments (new eery game)

Ways to improve (new every game)

Graphs of the team's scores, improvement, highs, lows and where they get their points from (Probably using something like GraphViz)

Fast loading times (For the scouting stuff). At the end of scouting, where teams are deciding which teams to pick, the lag will get high because there will be large methods running, and my bandwidth will be hogged, sending all the images of the graphs

Every team's scoring graphs side by side, sorted by user criteria

Sorting between different teams. At competition, when over a hundred teams are competing, it is hard to decide which team shall get the crown. Why not let the computer do this for you?

A crapload of other features

I do not expect to get most of these features down for quite some time. I will start small and "grow" my program

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by yash101

Sorry for the double post.
Here's what I want to accomplish in my scouting server:
Easy and intuitive interface so I don't have to teach everyone how to use it

Most typical data values (Goals, climb, etc)

Special features (Probably check buttons so PHP can sort it)

Global comments

Game comments (new eery game)

Ways to improve (new every game)

Graphs of the team's scores, improvement, highs, lows and where they get their points from (Probably using something like GraphViz)

Fast loading times (For the scouting stuff). At the end of scouting, where teams are deciding which teams to pick, the lag will get high because there will be large methods running, and my bandwidth will be hogged, sending all the images of the graphs

Every team's scoring graphs side by side, sorted by user criteria

Sorting between different teams. At competition, when over a hundred teams are competing, it is hard to decide which team shall get the crown. Why not let the computer do this for you?

A crapload of other features

I do not expect to get most of these features down for quite some time. I will start small and "grow" my program

I feel like you could get all those graphs and data from an Excel spreadsheet on which the server could just draw from for live data on any given team at any point of time. Excel has a lot of power to it, and is probably the most common way of maintaining scouting data in FRC; if you want to make scouting information sharable with other teams, sticking with Excel may be a more universal choice compared with making your own interface.

Also, I don't think I understand the point of the graphs other than justa visual representation. Could you not just sort through data and get a ranking of teams based on different points of interest (maybe teleop, auto, endgame, consistencies) so then you wouldn't have to even worry about sending images? I think the benefit provided would be very little relative to how much effort and time it would take to get something like that working.

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by yash101

So, with this data storage, are you using text-based database? If so:

15/2471/1

match/team#/climb code (0=no,1=10,2=20,3=30)
That would be a lot more readable to PHP and easier to implement. However, it would be important to note that text-based isn't so reliable. If this software is running for multiple teams, every time a match ends, the server will get a huge load. Multiple appends to the same file at the same time, many times, means a corrupt file. Instead, MySQL or some other database server built to store information may be the lifesaver!
The only time I used text databases is when I was learning PHP and using it on a site that maxes out at a view per day!

I was suggesting it as an interchange format. Think of it as an alternative to sending around the output of "mysqdump".

I feel like I'm missing something because I don't understand your suggested format at all:

• Is splitting text apart with a slash is easier than a space? It's been a while since I've written any PHP but why would slash be any different?
• Why have you chosen to omit the column name? Without it you have to add meta-data someplace else to describe what it is.
• How is representing climbs as 0-3 better than 0/10/20/30? They seem the same to me.

I also don't see why any of this would be a lot of work on the server.

[Chadfrom308]

Originally Posted by saikiranra

Team 696 used a similar Google Docs based scouting system for the 2012 and 2013 official seasons. Although simple and easy to use to create a system, it has MAJOR downsides.

1. Google's systems have crashed at every single competition. It seems like Google Spreadsheets can not handle the amount of formulas needed for any meaningful analysis. Because of this, we were not able to access our data for our Friday night scouting meetings.

2. Its SLOW. At the height of it's lag, it took around 30 minutes for data to be submitted. In addition, the sheets sometimes take forever to load.

I warned a team going to Champs not to use a Google Docs system, and they faced similar results (for post-day analysis).


If not for these, Google Docs would be the perfect scouting solution. This summer, we created a scouting system running off our website that would be able to input data, analyze the data, create rankings and team reports, and create a match strategy printout that people would be able to send to a printer in the pits. We successfully collaborated with 3476 and 3255 and used the system at IRI, Battle at the Border, and Fall Classic.

Really? I have never experienced any lag or slowness from google drive, and it has been up 100% of the time...

[saikiranra]

Originally Posted by Chadfrom308

Really? I have never experienced any lag or slowness from google drive, and it has been up 100% of the time...

Always worked in testing for us too. The problem is when it gets a large amount of data....
By the time any useful data can be extracted, there are about 120 lines of data. This is more than fine for Excel, but really causes problems on Drive. (Though, we had a few thousand formulas and a few sheets)

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by saikiranra

Always worked in testing for us too. The problem is when it gets a large amount of data....
By the time any useful data can be extracted, there are about 120 lines of data. This is more than fine for Excel, but really causes problems on Drive. (Though, we had a few thousand formulas and a few sheets)

We run a VERY large gdocs based scouting system, that is doing a lot more than just averaging (such that when data is entered, a lot recalculates).

Even with this, it runs. I suggest you look into what runs fast/slow on gdoc, and thoroughly understand the process it uses when to update cells. Short answer is anytime cell A changes, every cell that references it upates, and that cycle repeats.

Don't use vlookups. At all. Even once. Just don't do it. Use index(match()) instead. Google it for good tutorials, this doesn't load the range per each cell called. Importrange/sortrange can also be used where vlookup would be used by some people with better results. More or less, don't use vlookup and don't use cell by cell calls to pass entire ranges if you can help it.

If you want me to take a look at your system and offer more specific advice I can. I'm not saying this to criticize you guys, but I'm 100% sure the issue here is implementation, not google docs.