[TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates

[Eugene Fang]

Greetings from your friends over at The Blue Alliance!

As we head into the 2016 competition season of FRC, we'd like to announce some improvements and new features we've been working on for a while now.

Website

• Refinements and bug fixes for the whole web stack to make sure everything's running smoothly
• You can now submit Imgur images for use as team/robot pictures
• Keep an eye out for more myTBA integration throughout the site in the coming weeks

Android
Version 3.0 was launched last fall, as many of you probably saw. The big feature: a rewritten data layer that should make the entire experience better, faster, and more reliable
Version 3.1 is now rolling out. It includes…

• Fixes for a host of bugs that cropped up during Week 0
• Support for displaying Imgur images
• An event-specific GameDay live ticker for each event so you can see what’s happening in real time
• We’re planning to add native team image uploads. From within the app, you’ll be able to take a photo and have it automatically uploaded to Imgur and submitted to the admins for review

If you have an Android device, be sure to download the app or update it if you already have it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....androidclient

iOS/Windows
We’ve had an iOS app in the works for a while now, and there’s been some interesting in starting development on a Windows 10 app. If you’re a developer for either platform and want to help get these apps out into the FRC community, we’d welcome your contributions.

As always, The Blue Alliance is fully open-source, and we welcome contributions from the FIRST community. If you have any experience with web development, design, Android, iOS, Windows, or you just want to learn any of the above, we'd love to have you on the team! Check out our GitHub repositories to get started: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance

We hope you enjoy the enhancements we've made across all of The Blue Alliance! If you have a feature suggestion or bug report, let us know in the comments, or file an issue on our GitHub page: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance.

Good luck to everyone in the 2016 season!

[Sperkowsky]

1 question. Right now our TBA page is displaying our robot name from last year. Is there any way to change that?

[Eugene Fang]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

1 question. Right now our TBA page is displaying our robot name from last year. Is there any way to change that?

If you update your robot name in TIMS, it will update on TBA as well.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Eugene Fang

If you update your robot name in TIMS, it will update on TBA as well.

Thanks, Ill ask my mentor to update it.

[dag0620]

Just want to say a HUGE thanks to the entire TBA crew for their hard work work on what is a great resource for the FIRST community!

[synth3tk]

I'm really looking forward to working with anyone who wishes to contribute to the Windows app, especially on the design front. I'm horrible at it. If you know C#/.NET/XAML (or even if you don't) please feel free to contribute!

You can check out the WIP here: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance...ndows/tree/mvp

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Eugene Fang

If you update your robot name in TIMS, it will update on TBA as well.

How long does that take to update?

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Taylor

How long does that take to update?

In theory 24-48 hours, but if it's been longer than that let us know and we'll take a closer look at your team

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

In theory 24-48 hours, but if it's been longer than that let us know and we'll take a closer look at your team

Okay. I just updated the robot name last night, but the team sponsors have been different for months.

[FarmerJohn]

I really like the blue alliance, and have been using it to get my students to watch events so that they can learn what the best teams are doing in week 0. Thank you for your service. I have a request though. When I go to the webcast part of the site, there are all these pop ups and live tickers and chats that overwhelm whoever goes on there. My students are easily frightened and logging on to the webcast part of the site scares them. Would you consider setting those all off by default so that you could just have a single screen when you log in and do not have to close so many things and change so many settings to watch a single event?

Thank you and god bless.

[bdaroz]

Similar to FarmerJohn...

We were watching Week 0 in Gameday up on the projector at the school. Unfortunately the resolution isn't all that great, and when we moved the browser window over it resized it to fit... The problem is the bar at the top of the page (to toggle webcasts chat etc) disappeared due to the width of the screen.

[Eugene Fang]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

Similar to FarmerJohn...

We were watching Week 0 in Gameday up on the projector at the school. Unfortunately the resolution isn't all that great, and when we moved the browser window over it resized it to fit... The problem is the bar at the top of the page (to toggle webcasts chat etc) disappeared due to the width of the screen.

We'll investigate. Thanks!

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Okay. I just updated the robot name last night, but the team sponsors have been different for months.

You're right, I've confirmed your full name doesn't match what the API is returning, so we'll investigate the cause. Thanks for bringing it up!

[plnyyanks]

I'd also like to mention once again - The Blue Alliance is totally community built and maintained (I do it for fun), so if anybody out there is a developer and wants to help build TBA, reach out and get involved! It's a great way to make an impact in the community and to build some really cool things.

If anybody is apprehensive about "jumping in the deep end", let me know and I'd be happy to mentor you through your first contributions.

So either shoot me a PM, or reach out on GitHub: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance

[synth3tk]

By the way, all of the app/site repos have green "Help Wanted" labels to mark issues that should be fairly easy for anyone new to contribute to. If you don't know where to begin, those would be a good place to start.