Digital Scouting System

[Nuwanda]

Our team is looking into a digital scouting system, and we were wondering if teams that were more experienced with that process could give us any advice.
We've always done our scouting on paper, and were wondering what digital systems work well, and how you connected them without WiFi.

[jajabinx124]

Team 2052 KnightKrawler has been using Digital/Electronic Scouting for the past 3 years during competitions, so we have some advice we can give you.

If you guys are looking at a specific digital scouting system, test it out at an offseason event. Testing the system itself is very important and can reduce the likelihood of errors with the actual system during competitions when the data matters, and it's very important to let the scouts themselves become familiar with the system itself.

Be prepared to run into lots of errors, especially if the system is complex- The more complex the system, the more things that can possibly go wrong. That's another reason to test, test, and test out the system.

Also once you guys have picked a digital/electronic system you guys want to explore or look into, compare it with your paper scouting system. It isn't important how you collect data, whether it's on paper or on electronic devices, but it's important about how useful the data will be and how it will shape your performance at a competition. Assess the pros and cons of both systems and involve the scouts themselves in the process.

There are many popular digital scouting systems and scouting applications for FRC that don't use WiFi. Some systems/apps use bluetooth to transfer data. Here is the system we use currently: Our system has 6 devices that record data, then the data from each individual device is transferred to a master tablet via bluetooth. This system has worked well for us over the past 3 years. More info about our system is here.

Check out 1678's Scouting system as well.

The google playstore is filled with many scoutings apps, so check them out!

[The other Gabe]

I'd suggest talking to a member of 1983-Skunkworks. Their scouting system is accessible to any team that wants to jump on board, as far as I know. at theh very least they could give you some good ideas

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Originally Posted by The other Gabe

I'd suggest talking to a member of 1983-Skunkworks. Their scouting system is accessible to any team that wants to jump on board, as far as I know. at theh very least they could give you some good ideas

Their system is awesome. However, it does require an Internet connection from time to time (I believe data can be cached locally, but then has to be uploaded to the central server).

We use Android tablets running a custom app that we build each year. Methods of communication from tablet to laptop vary, but this year we just plugged them via USB into one of the two master laptops every match or two to consolidate the data. We'd then generate reports for our drive coach with data on each team in our next match, then send those down on a flash drive to the pits where the data would get uploaded into her tablet.

Let me know if you have any questions -- happy to chat.