FRC Spyder 2014?

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by pyroslev

Request for next year:

Improve the prediction system. (it was more entertaining than accurate)
Built in screenshot taker? (Bonus mostly)
Takes updates from NI Parkway. Help highlight a team's issues and may help the prediction system.

Get Rid of the Banner Ads.

What phone do you have? If you are running Anything above 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), Android natively supports screenshots. Press the volume down and power buttons at the same time, and you should get a screenshot in your gallery.

[vhcook]

Once again expressing my love for this app.

Slight glitch this morning. Team 4522 was a late add to the OKC regional (yesterday, I think), and although they show up in the match schedule, they're not in the team list.

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by vhcook

Once again expressing my love for this app.

Slight glitch this morning. Team 4522 was a late add to the OKC regional (yesterday, I think), and although they show up in the match schedule, they're not in the team list.

Thanks for the positive comments vhcook & jlmcmchl; it's refreshing to see appreciative posts instead of complaints & demands to update an app that we're giving away for free.

Team 4522 is now in the team list. It sometimes takes a little bit of time for team list updates to get into our database. Let us know if you have any other problems.

[vhcook]

Originally Posted by Mike Soukup

Thanks for the positive comments vhcook & jlmcmchl; it's refreshing to see appreciative posts instead of complaints & demands to update an app that we're giving away for free.

Team 4522 is now in the team list. It sometimes takes a little bit of time for team list updates to get into our database. Let us know if you have any other problems.

Thanks!

Y'all have obviously put a lot of work and love into this app. All of the mentors (and many of the students) on my team use it intensely during the season, and we're all delighted.

I haven't experienced a defect above "Minor" severity over the course of several years of using this app, and even those get fixed faster than most Critical defects in software I've paid for. This is unusual, particularly since you've added new features every year, almost all incredibly spiffy. I really wasn't expecting any new functionality above what we had last year, particularly given the complete redesign, and what you've done here is splendid. Thank you for all your work.

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I'd like to remind other users that this is a very nice gift horse, and we should not be asking for dental x-rays. We aren't paying for the right to set development priorities - enhancements are a pleasant surprise, not a right.

[pyroslev]

Originally Posted by Tanis

What phone do you have? If you are running Anything above 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), Android natively supports screenshots. Press the volume down and power buttons at the same time, and you should get a screenshot in your gallery.

Casion G'Zone Commando C711. Very tough phone. Water and Acid proof. On my 3rd Battery with it.

NI Parkway was introduced to keep track of teams with control system issues, coding/CRIO/etc issues. A team puts in a request for help and anyone can respond to it. Last year I diagnosed an issue at a regional in Oregon and I'm in Virginia. There is a notification system where you can get an email or text when an issue appears in your regional. It was developed as a mobile website.

I can check with a NI rep and see if they can suggest a way to integrate it. I would like mostly cause it would improve prediction. In a match, it predicted Red Alliance to win. All three Red Alliance robots had issue in Parkway, including one team that's robot wasn't even built yet. So it's more of a bonus thing to help with the more advanced features.

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by pyroslev

I can check with a NI rep and see if they can suggest a way to integrate it. I would like mostly cause it would improve prediction.

And then people would want to turn that on/off...

And then people would want different ways to weight it differently...

And then... and then...

Putting aside the fact that you're adding qualitative/subjective data into a purely mathematical OPR "prediction", it is a good example of feature creep.

[Patrick Flynn]

Originally Posted by pyroslev

Used it at our event.

The prediction system needs, shall we say, A LOT of work. If you can figure out a way to tap into NI Parkway and watch that for team requests that would help. In one match, the winning alliance predicted all had serious issues that were in the Parkway system.

Originally Posted by pyroslev

Request for next year:

Improve the prediction system. (it was more entertaining than accurate)
Built in screenshot taker? (Bonus mostly)
Takes updates from NI Parkway. Help highlight a team's issues and may help the prediction system.

Get Rid of the Banner Ads.

Originally Posted by pyroslev

I can check with a NI rep and see if they can suggest a way to integrate it. I would like mostly cause it would improve prediction. In a match, it predicted Red Alliance to win. All three Red Alliance robots had issue in Parkway, including one team that's robot wasn't even built yet. So it's more of a bonus thing to help with the more advanced features.

Not sure if you have read a single post in this thread. Actually i'm sure you haven't. As explained in this thread which you should read before you post again, the predictions are just using OPR.

Getting rid of the banner ads? What harm do they do to you? I'm sure they would be glad to remove the ads after you fund the development of this app and pay for all the other expenses. Or are you suggesting that someone pays for this out of pocket so that you don't have to see an ad that is not even in the way?

Bashing something that someone donated their time to make and gives to you for free is totally not needed. If you think you can do better certainly do.

I love the features this app provides thanks to everyone that works on it!

[pyroslev]

Originally Posted by Patrick Flynn

Bashing something that someone donated their time to make and gives to you for free is totally not needed. If you think you can do better certainly do.

I love the features this app provides thanks to everyone that works on it!

I in no way bash this app nor the developer. After trying my hand at Android App development, I'll leave it to better minds. The methodology of the Feauture Creep is a shining example of what a good app evolving does. Honestly reminds me of how Mozilla Firefox creeped along the first few years.

Banners ads were blocked by another app. (But I would pay for it if needed)
Prediction system does work but just needs tweaking is all. Right a lot of time.
Integrating information from Parkway is a longshot but it would help to consolidate the power of the app, the same way OPR did this year. You could look at one app and see the stats and if a team's flagged for an issue that you could render help on. Just add more power the app's potential.

I do apologize if I offended anyone. Mike, it's a great bit of work. Always handy and must have. My rating was a 5 Star from Day one, which I cannot say the same for the Official FRC Game Manual App. If you want a Beta Tester for Older Android devices, let me know. I'm running Android 2.3.x.

[Mike Soukup]

Thanks pyroslev. The prediction screen, as was stated earlier by a few others, is mostly for entertainment. I'd rather stick to quantitative & mathematical models instead of adding in some subjective and unreliable data (e.g. I peeked at Parkway yesterday and saw that team 126 needed help finding the field; I doubt that was true).

I agree that the official FRC game manual app is pretty bad. It uses a cross-platform framework that doesn't follow the Android design guidelines; it's extremely tough to navigate. At least they got rid of the 5+ second splash screen on start-up that was there a few years ago. I downloaded the unofficial app because it's a lot better.

Take a look at the official VEX Toss Up app to see what a quality manual app looks like. Dave, Dave and I created that for VEX. It's hyperlinked, it filters as you type in the search bar, and it has clickable images.

Thanks for the offer for beta testing, but I have my own 2.3, 2.3, and 4.4 devices plus the emulator that I can test releases on. Besides, at the frequency I was putting out releases earlier in the year, the beta cycle would have been a few hours.

[Dave Flowerday]

The updated version of FRC Spyder for iOS has been approved by Apple and is available now in the App Store. This version adds OPR, DPR, and CCWM to the rankings page and also adds the OPR-based Match Prediction feature.

[nuclearnerd]

Mike / Dave

Can I add a (minor) feature request? Would it be possible to add stats to the teams from an event screen *before* the event starts? That is, can you incorporate the seeds, OPRs and whatnot from previous regionals? That would be useful for "pre-scouting" an event.

The other pony would be to include each team's robot images that are indexed on thebluealliance.com (what few there are). I'm a visual thinker, so I cannot keep team numbers straight in my head for the life of me

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

Can I add a (minor) feature request? Would it be possible to add stats to the teams from an event screen *before* the event starts? That is, can you incorporate the seeds, OPRs and whatnot from previous regionals? That would be useful for "pre-scouting" an event.

If possible, I think this would be really useful as well, especially for the championship coming up. It would be really nice to go to the division team list, click on a team and see what event(s) they previously played with records and seeds.

Before this app, I had to send a freshman down to write down the top 8 seeds and had to deal with paper copies of schedules to see when each team was playing. This app has made scouting at the event significantly easier. I'm also amazed how many parents on our team have and use the app. Thank you so much!

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

The other pony would be to include each team's robot images that are indexed on thebluealliance.com (what few there are). I'm a visual thinker, so I cannot keep team numbers straight in my head for the life of me

If you have an iPhone, FRC Tracker has a photo database. There are almost 1000 photos in it. You can also take a photo with the app and associate it with a team.

Back to Spyder, I like going up to people on the end of Friday as people huddle around the pit display either taking pictures or writing stuff down and telling them that there's an app for that.

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

If you have an iPhone, FRC Tracker has a photo database. There are almost 1000 photos in it. You can also take a photo with the app and associate it with a team.

That's cool! Unfortunately I have an Android phone. I wonder if the FRC Tracker people would share their photo database with FRC Spyder and/or thebluealliance?

[TimN]

Any chance of making this app available on the Amazon App Store for the Kindle Fire HD?