Electronic scouting using 7 laptops and a little mysql

[EricH]

On top of the response you just got, I point you to the following threads from within the last year.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=129261
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=127877 (briefly)
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=126509 (I thought the same, though was less set in opinion)
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=124721 (and this one is calling you, Yash, because not only does it cover tablets, but you made post #7. )

[AdamStockton]

Originally Posted by yash101

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth.
Bluetooth runs at the same spectrum as WiFi, the communications used by the FMS. You can guess that there will be some sort of interference that will occur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro...nce_at_2.4_GHz

Bluetooth may run off the same frequency as WiFi, however it uses the IEEE 802.15 specification (instead of WiFi's IEEE 802.11 specification). This difference makes bluetooth legal under the current rule, since only 802.11 is explicitly mentioned in the rule.

Of course there are technicalities and ethical reasons against using bluetooth, but none are explicitly stated in the rule itself.

*Note* 2014 and prior rules have no bearing on the 2015 rules and are subject to change by FIRST

[daniel12997]

If you are worried about power consumption then take a look at a raspberry pi

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by yash101

Bluetooth runs at the same spectrum as WiFi, the communications used by the FMS. You can guess that there will be some sort of interference that will occur.

You can guess, but unless you have special knowledge you aren't likely to guess correctly. The critical FMS wireless communication takes place on the 5 GHz WiFi band, and won't even notice 2.4 GHz signals unless they are unreasonably powerful. Bluetooth is a low-power, short-range system that typically doesn't disrupt WiFi on 2.4 GHz anyway.

[jdcardwell]

FRC Team 1741 (Greenwoood, IN) does Scouting using a Raspberry Pi running as a LAMP server;
Linux (Raspbian), Apache, MySQL, and PHP(/Javascript/html).

It has worked out pretty well for us in the 2014 season.

Due to the FIRST rules-restriction of not being able to setup a Wifi hotspot
in the stands, we use an 8-port network switch to connect 7 mini-laptops
to the scouting subnet.

We are in the process of redoing the architecture the underlying MySQL relational database for the
2015 Recycle Rush Challenge.

We have a 'Team Rankings Parameters' MySQL table, which the scouters can
edit (add/edit) a set of 'named' weighting coefficients for computing Team Rankings based on the selected
coefficients 'vector' - and rankings can be computed at any time during scouting. For 2015, the database
has changed to allow any scouter to compute rankings independent of other scouters.

I would be glad to ZIP up and send (or put onto an internet/ftp server) last year's complete code on request.

Jon Cardwell
Red Alert Robotics 1741 Mentor