Scouting at World Championship

[engunneer]

Originally Posted by Swamplover

Does anyone have any tips on how to send scouting data to the drive team in the pits?

We used slack. Drive coach (me) and backup drive coach (for when I'm inspecting) are both on it, as well, as student strategy lead, and student scouting lead.

IMHO, most of the scouting data is for generating pick lists for eliminations. All I need as a drive coach (for my team, anyway) is data about what defenses to select for the opponent, and what defenses my partners can't do, to aid in discussion about who gets what.

If there is a particular note that is important, it will be passed along as well, like a particular robot liking to play defense, or being vulnerable to a corner tap when they line up to shoot.

We used slack because it is device agnostic, and our programming team uses it anyway. Also notifications for it show up on my Pebble Time, so i don't always need to take out my phone. one of my drivers also has a time hooked up to slack. We both have to remove our watches when in the driver station, though.

[JesseK]

Here is something we're investigating for Champs since a version of it worked well at DCMPs:

6 Scouts with paper -> 1 person to enter into Google Spreadsheet via single 3G/4G-connected device. Requires power in the stands or 2-3 battery packs that are charged in the pits when not in use. Tricky to use if the 'device' is a phone, but easy if it's a tablet or USB-tethered laptop.

The drivers and I create a phone-friendly 'view' in the Google spreadsheet ahead of the competition, then populate it from our phones for an upcoming match. We use fake data ahead of time in order to conditionally color-code cells on the view.

The data-entry guys can make their entry stuff user-friendly based upon what they think is user friendly. The drivers and I can make a view that suits our needs. No one has to make sure a web server stays running on Amazon (etc), and there are no other tools to purchase or download to each client/platform. The data is live and accurate whether we have a 3-match or 30-match turnaround at champs (i.e. even if we can't walk back to the pits).

[choltz]

Originally Posted by Fanny Z

Our team has the scouters fill in circles on scan-tron sheets which then go through a scanner onto an excel spreadsheet. The only time our lead scout needs to manually do something is whenever there are comments made on the sheets by the scouters.

How do you read the scantrons? I've never even heard of that before but it would be awesome for the setup we've been trying to reach!

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by Swamplover

Does anyone have any tips on how to send scouting data to the drive team in the pits?

some ideas (mostly serious):

Facebook messenger or an equivalent (on data, of course)
During breaks, have the drive coach come to the stands (especially during lunch or before matches start - just give them the information multiple matches ahead on a piece of paper)
carrier pigeon
If you have a guy on your team who really enjoys walking, you could send him down repeatedly
texting, if you can find a place where you get service
just yell really loud

[The_BEVR]

I wasn't on the team when we went to champs two years ago, but for almost every tournament I've been to we've used a 3 ring binder that had a sheet for every team. I think paper and pencil is the best way to go. Now if you're handwriting is bad, that's a different story....

[BenHildy]

Our programming department created an app this year that was quite different from our one last year. I'll explain both, because both have their positives and negatives.

Last year we had a system where we used six cheap tablets that stored the information taken on them locally. They then simply programmed the app to contain a button that, when pressed and connected to wifi outside the arena, sends all of its info to the cloud. This worked quite well, but the major negative was that, if a tablet goes through an error or runs out of battery before its local information is sent to the cloud, we would lose that data. Not good when that happens.

This year we tried something new by having each tablet be connected by a long cable directly to the "control laptop," where our scouting lead monitored the data and was sent to storage as it was recorded after each match, later to be displayed in Tableau. This is certainly easier than the wifi complications, but if a cord becomes disconnected for a match, we lose that data too.

Overall, there are many ways to scout using technology, but sometimes the most reliable can still be a good old notebook and pen (which is what I still use for Qualitative Scouting)!

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by akmess01

Our scouting app uses bluetooth to send the data.

We use Bluetooth to transfer data to a single tablet and then cell data to push it to a server. The server then sends it to smartphone apps to be viewed by the drive team and strategists. We've posted our whitepaper on this approach in several threads here.