In need for scouting help

[BestScoutNA]

Hi, My i'm the lead scout for my team 1369 Minotaur and i wanted to change many aspects to our way of collecting data this year. Previous years we usually had scouting sheets that had the data then each night update them into a spreadsheet we had for the competition to use for alliance selection etc. This year i want to get rid of the paper and go for live data because paper is a pain tbh. I was looking into Bluetooth but from many threads that I've read its either legal or illegal so i would like some clarification as well as some assistance on how to incorporate Live Data during competition so we can use for this years competition which scouting is the most important part this year. Thanks

[evanperryg]

Hey, good to see people converting to the digital scouting! If you don't want to deal with the complexties of tournament rules and databases, then have an application that spits out the data in the from of a CSV (comma-separated-variable) text file. Excel has a tool that allows you to easily import text files into a spreadsheet for processing.

Now for the gratuitous self-advertisement: If you find yourself behind the 8 ball and would rather just use a premade system, our system supports any android device (iPhone support coming soon!) and we provide a comprehensive set of tools for viewing and managing your data.

[BestScoutNA]

Thanks for the reaponse! So when im having the data become a csv would i have someone go in the data and update every match or?? Our strategy is to have our data freshly new for defensive purposes

[Zach101]

We have been scouting digitally for the past 3 years now. We have been using Microsoft Surfaces each year. 6 surfaces, 6 scouters in the stands, 6 robots on the field. We haven't had to worry about using bluetooth and those kind of rules at all over these few years. The nice thing about the tablets we use is that they have usb ports on them so we just use a flash drive to get the data off of them. Then we transfer it to a computer where we can combine all the stats to find stuff like average score, or average amount of totes per stack for last year. Once the app is done we should, like in previous years, post in on Chiefdelphi for all you guys to look at sometime in the next few weeks I don't know if this will help you in anyway but might get you started on some ideas for going from paper to digital scouting.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by BestScoutNA

Thanks for the reaponse! So when im having the data become a csv would i have someone go in the data and update every match or?? Our strategy is to have our data freshly new for defensive purposes

What we did in 2014 and 2015 was cut and paste the files from each device, append them with a batch file, rinse and repeat. Depending on the size of the arena, updating data takes 5-10 minutes this way (this includes the run from pi to stands, copying of the files, and the run back to the pits), closer to 15-20 at champs. Not the fastest, but the 2-4 matches you miss will likely not affect the data relating to the teams you're facing in that next match anyway, because of how matchmaking works.