[TBA] The Blue Alliance 2016 Season Updates

[Eugene Fang]

The latest version of the Android app (3.4.5) is in the Play store just in time for Champs! Nothing huge in this version, just some bugfixes.

In addition, we're introducing a couple new things on the website.

The first is the myTBA Dashboard!
This will give you an at-a-glance overview of your favorite teams that are currently competing. Simply click "myTBA" in the top navigation bar.




The other is match and ranking predictions, which will update throughout the event.
Note that these are JUST FOR FUN and perhaps to be utilized as a tool to pinpoint pivotal matches, not to discourage teams from performing to their best. To view predictions, click on the "Advanced Insights" button at the top of an event page as shown below.






Here are direct links to all 8 divisions:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016arc/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016cars/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016carv/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016cur/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016gal/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016hop/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016new/insights
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016tes/insights

Currently, the Championship division predictions have the team numbers redacted because the match schedule is preliminary and we want to respect FIRST's request to not rehost the schedule until they are final. Once the official schedule is out, the numbers will appear.
You can see an example of a past event here: http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016necmp/insights

Good luck to all teams competing! For those of you at home, you can follow the action on GameDay right here: http://www.thebluealliance.com/gameday#champs

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by Eugene Fang

The latest version of the Android app (3.4.5) is in the Play store just in time for Champs! Nothing huge in this version, just some bugfixes.

In addition, we're introducing a couple new things on the website.

Very, very cool!!

[jurassicjupiter]

I always love using TheBlueAlliance when I need to get my fill in on robotics information. However during the competition season I use a team built website by 537 called At The Control. The site has been around for two years, not 100% sure... I've been using it for two years. Regardless that fact its the best site you can use to follow a single team.

This most recent update to TBA tho kind of drew the line for me. I'd much rather support a FRC team made application. This site has been doing match predictions for the entire time I've been using the site and now to see TBA which isn't a FRC team made application including match predictions in my mind is a little ridiculous. Its almost like the developers of TBA are taking candy away from kids... but in this case the chance for an FRC team to build something that will never be viewed or used by people because TBA has such a large viewership. Very un-gracious in my mind.

[forbes]

I haven't looked at them all, but based on a few spot checks on Newton- are red and blue alliances reversed? or am I just reading these incorrectly?

http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016new/insights

Edit: Nevermind! Found my (major) problem. They look predictions look good.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by jurassicjupiter

I always love using TheBlueAlliance when I need to get my fill in on robotics information. However during the competition season I use a team built website by 537 called At The Control. The site has been around for two years, not 100% sure... I've been using it for two years. Regardless that fact its the best site you can use to follow a single team.

This most recent update to TBA tho kind of drew the line for me. I'd much rather support a FRC team made application. This site has been doing match predictions for the entire time I've been using the site and now to see TBA which isn't a FRC team made application including match predictions in my mind is a little ridiculous. Its almost like the developers of TBA are taking candy away from kids... but in this case the chance for an FRC team to build something that will never be viewed or used by people because TBA has such a large viewership. Very un-gracious in my mind.

...


Can everyone please just ignore this post clearly from someone from At The Control. Cool thanks.


...

TBA is awesome, I wish FIRST would just let you guys run their sites and apps.

[ATannahill]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

...


Can everyone please just ignore this post clearly from someone from At The Control. Cool thanks.


...

TBA is awesome, I wish FIRST would just let you guys run their sites and apps.

And API.

[Eugene Fang]

Originally Posted by jurassicjupiter

I always love using TheBlueAlliance when I need to get my fill in on robotics information. However during the competition season I use a team built website by 537 called At The Control. The site has been around for two years, not 100% sure... I've been using it for two years. Regardless that fact its the best site you can use to follow a single team.

This most recent update to TBA tho kind of drew the line for me. I'd much rather support a FRC team made application. This site has been doing match predictions for the entire time I've been using the site and now to see TBA which isn't a FRC team made application including match predictions in my mind is a little ridiculous. Its almost like the developers of TBA are taking candy away from kids... but in this case the chance for an FRC team to build something that will never be viewed or used by people because TBA has such a large viewership. Very un-gracious in my mind.

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way. It was never our intention to replace ATC, and I still don't think we do. I believe ATC makes it easier to follow one specific team at an event, which TBA doesn't do well. TBA has also been linking to ATC on every team page for the last few years. It's the only other community built site (aside from CD) we link to, so calling us un-gracious is uncalled for.

And to address your "team made" concern, TBA is also team made. Shout out to Greg and Tom who started it when they were still high school students. It sure has grown since then, since they made it their mission to open source and involve others in the development and give us an opportunity to work on something on such a large scale.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by forbes

Edit: Nevermind! Found my (major) problem. They look predictions look good.

Phew, you had me worried for a second

---

For those who are interested in how the predictions are calculated, take a look at the discussion in this pull request, Eugene explains it pretty nicely.

[blockhead]

...


Can everyone please just ignore this post clearly from someone from At The Control. Cool thanks.


...

TBA is awesome, I wish FIRST would just let you guys run their sites and apps.

This better not be some one from my team. Probably not, 90% of my team calls "At The Control" ATC... Still.

The guys at TBA have been nothing more than gracious the couple of times I've talked with them. And to say that they are "taking candy away" from kids is really not an appropriate way to view the situation. In fact a good portion of our traffic comes from TBA. And we use TBA's API!

ATC which has been around for the past five seasons was developed by one person... (me) and this past season it's been a project that I've worked on with my team. TBA isn't taking the viewership away from our site, our target audience isn't the audience TBA is servicing. We target more of the team followers vs the hardcore FRC watchers. Which is where I give them props about their predictions. Our predictions just predict the win/loss probability, this is where someone other than "grandma" would find TBA a better application than ATC.

I myself use TBA alot vs my site. TBA has way more information than ATC will ever have.

... I apologize about this guys post and making this thread about ATC.

- Nick

[nathanwalters]

I spent today building the newly-announced pit addresses into the Android app. They will be visible on the team or team@event page for any team at champs. Here's what it looks like:



This will be rolling out tomorrow, so keep your eyes out for an update!

We're using the crowdsourced data that was produced this morning, so accuracy is not guaranteed. If you spot an error, let us know and we'll fix it. Thankfully, we have the infrastructure in place to do a remote update of the list if errors are found!

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by jurassicjupiter

Very un-gracious in my mind.

No.

Being un-gracious (whatever that means) would mean not providing an API for teams and individuals to make awesome apps/sites like ATC, FRC Division Notifier, and FRC Spyder.

Being un-gracious would mean not being open-source, allowing students to help fix and improve TBA, while also showing them how a well-run OSS project is organized, a valuable skill, IMHO. There are some very smart people working on TBA (excluding myself ), so one could almost liken it to having programming mentors remotely. How often do you get the opportunity to work with an engineer from Facebook?!

Alumni of the program give back in many ways. It's not to "take candy from kids", it's to provide something back to the program after we've gotten so much from it. If a student or team wants to make something, go right ahead. More power to them! And who knows? Maybe it'll be the next big thing.

[Nathan Streeter]

Many thanks to those who have worked so hard to keep TBA continuously improving! I've loved all the data and features that have been added (robot photos, easier video linking, TBA insights, match scores broken out by type, etc.) in recent years.

I've also appreciated having results posted for various scrimmages and off-season events... but one minor nitpick I have, is that I'd prefer the record (or average scores in 2015) shown for teams' seasons be only the "official event" record. Week 0.5 <-> Championship events. Teams often compete very differently at Week 0 events and off-season events, so I think including these unofficial events in the overall record is a little misleading... or at least not representative of their competition season performance.

What do you - particularly the TBA contributors, but also CD community - think about limiting the season record to official events?

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Many thanks to those who have worked so hard to keep TBA continuously improving! I've loved all the data and features that have been added (robot photos, easier video linking, TBA insights, match scores broken out by type, etc.) in recent years.

I've also appreciated having results posted for various scrimmages and off-season events... but one minor nitpick I have, is that I'd prefer the record (or average scores in 2015) shown for teams' seasons be only the "official event" record. Week 0.5 <-> Championship events. Teams often compete very differently at Week 0 events and off-season events, so I think including these unofficial events in the overall record is a little misleading... or at least not representative of their competition season performance.

What do you - particularly the TBA contributors, but also CD community - think about limiting the season record to official events?

You make a good point.

Both might be the answer. I think it would be fairly simple to have both an "official" and "total" record for each season.

Interested to hear if the TBA peeps have given this thought in the past.

-Mike

[rwodonnell]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

What do you - particularly the TBA contributors, but also CD community - think about limiting the season record to official events?

In sports, a lot of times they will present the official record with an unofficial record in parens, so for instance if a college hockey team played 3 scrimmages against a traveling US hockey team, they might be shown as 12-6-3 (13-8-3). Obviously it's their call, but something that presents all the data in a concise way would be nice.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

What do you - particularly the TBA contributors, but also CD community - think about limiting the season record to official events?

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Interested to hear if the TBA peeps have given this thought in the past.

I actually thought TBA did this already (didn't realize we didn't until I went and checked ). So yeah, this is definitely a good idea.

Originally Posted by rwodonnell

In sports, a lot of times they will present the official record with an unofficial record in parens, so for instance if a college hockey team played 3 scrimmages against a traveling US hockey team, they might be shown as 12-6-3 (13-8-3). Obviously it's their call, but something that presents all the data in a concise way would be nice.

I like this way of displaying it, maybe with an asterisk explaining the difference. This approach probably won't work for 2015 because the scores are already split between quals/elimsplayoffs averages, but we could come up with a creative solution to that.

Here's an issue to track the feature: https://github.com/the-blue-alliance...ce/issues/1549 - this is a pretty small change that would make a great starter task for someone who wants to get involved in TBA development