ScoutNet: HIVE Beta Phase

[A_Welsh]

Greetings, Internet.

Whether you knew it or not (the majority of you reading this will fall into the latter category), FRC Team 4269, the CardinalBots, has been in production of a next-generation scouting system for the FIRST Robotics Competition.

We call it ScoutNet: HIVE.

Designed to be the end-all be-all scouting system for FRC Teams, our trio of developers have been working around the clock to bring this project to fruition for next year's game. As a group, our goal is to have the system completely ready for initialization at the CORI off-season regional, and from the looks of things, that goal has been met.

We will begin running Beta-Phases of the program throughout off-season events to be able to put forth the best possible product come next competition season. But in order to do that, we need YOU! If you're team is going to any off-season events, especially, but not limited to CORI (Central Ohio Robotics Initiative) and the Mahoning Valley Robotics Competition, and would like to give the program a spin, let us know! We'd be happy to set you up with a copy of the client!

More information and registration forms for ScoutNet: HIVE can be found at our official website; frcscoutnet.weebly.com

Thank you for your time,
A_Welsh and the ScoutNet: HIVE Development Team

[Bkeeneykid]

This seems like an interesting idea. With the deep field that is currently the scouting application field, I'd love to see your elevator talk on what makes your scouting system better than any traditional system.
Also, in review of your website, you mention you create a local WiFi network using a computer to transfer data from scouting devices to the database computer. This is illegal under Tournament rule T4, specifically the blue box:

Teams may not set up their own 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz or 5GHz) wireless communication (e.g. access points or ad-hoc networks) in the venue.

A wireless hot spot created by a cellular device is considered an access point.

How do you plan to get around this?

[A_Welsh]

Thanks for looking into it!

We set out to create a Scouting System that would eliminate the use of a printer (as the one we currently had took approximately 6 minutes per page, give or take), and would process the information automatically so as not to require constant updating. Last year's model (for lack of a better term) was able to be run by about two people, and the version we're testing requires.... ehhh, let's say half a scouter, in addition to, you know, the people inputting data. But back to the point; we developed it to "harvest" data from a comglomerate of teams in order to produce the most accurate reports possible for each team. The client end is completely customizable both in terms of how our codes work, as well as being open-source, thus letting other teams build upon what we created to better suit your team.

About the wireless access, what we did was tether our cellphones to laptops via charging cable, and set the connection to USB only, so as not to produce the illegal public wi-fi network.

Hopefully this cleared everything up, if not, I'm open to all questions, comments, concerns, scrutiny and the like.

-A_Welsh

[Bkeeneykid]

Originally Posted by A_Welsh

Thanks for looking into it!

We set out to create a Scouting System that would eliminate the use of a printer (as the one we currently had took approximately 6 minutes per page, give or take), and would process the information automatically so as not to require constant updating. Last year's model (for lack of a better term) was able to be run by about two people, and the version we're testing requires.... ehhh, let's say half a scouter, in addition to, you know, the people inputting data. But back to the point; we developed it to "harvest" data from a comglomerate of teams in order to produce the most accurate reports possible for each team. The client end is completely customizable both in terms of how our codes work, as well as being open-source, thus letting other teams build upon what we created to better suit your team.

About the wireless access, what we did was tether our cellphones to laptops via charging cable, and set the connection to USB only, so as not to produce the illegal public wi-fi network.

Hopefully this cleared everything up, if not, I'm open to all questions, comments, concerns, scrutiny and the like.

-A_Welsh

Seems like you've created something explicitly tailored to your team, which is exactly what you should do when doing something like this. I'd like to hear what advantages your scouting system had over ours:

We used a custom created app that ran on windows and mac, built by our head mentor. We decided to put the limitation in that one laptop was scouting one team on the field. We'd download the schedule from TBA the morning of, and then store it offline. We hand out the schedule in a database through flash drives to the four teams we were scouting teams (school district alliance). We'd have shifts of 5-10 matches of six scouters, and then we'd export the data to a flash drive for the main scouting computer. This had the advantage of not having clumsy USB cables running to each device, and since we all already had plethora of not-quite-powerful-enough computers for programming due to a district grant, this worked great. The app, in the end, didn't work as well for us due to some bugs, but the general concept worked great.

You've said that you intend to implement multi-conglomerate team scouting. How do you plan on keeping the data flowing smoothly throughout these teams, especially if the stands don't allow them to sit nearby each other?

Also, some more videos, pictures, or more proof of concepts would be great. This all sounds great on paper, but I'd love a video of a demo. Also, I don't plan on using this long term. I appreciate what you guys are doing here, trying to extend the ability to scout for everyone, but we've already developed our own. If that changes your answers, then be it. I hope our experiences of our two teams can change our two scouting systems for the better.

[A_Welsh]

Well, yes and no. Our first three models were specifically tailored to our team, with no quick way to change it. In the development of the HIVE network, we implemented an "Autosort Values" box on the dashboard, thus letting anyone change the point values across the field, which changes the rankings, which changes the results and so on and so forth. In other words, we made every aspect of the game customizable so if you view crossing the Cheval more vital than crossing the Sally Port, the system can be reprogrammed to reflect that.

The collection service is run through Google Drive. When the form is submitted, all the information is dropped into a "Data Dump" essentially, and then the clients read the data from here and generate the team reports.

I'll get to making a video about how it runs and put it up on the website when it's done.

-A_Welsh