Robot information program

[Dwight_2]

Lately I have been thinking about how scouting in the pits can be a nightmare, you have teams that aren't in there pits you have teams that are in there pits but the only person you need to talk to is away or something. Or even worse the team provides you with the incorrect information about their robot. Right? We all have been in those situations.I've been thinking about asking my team (5842) to help me create a scanner system where scouters and visitors to a team's pit can scan a barcode or QR code to receive stats about the team.

Scouting Purposes
Once a team has scanned the code they will receive not only information about the robot and the team for scouting purposes, but to receive information from The Blue Alliance which could also be linked to each scanner code to see how teams have done in previous events as well.

Team Recognition Purposes
At events Teams could put their previous Awards and accomplishments as a part of the code when someone scans the code.


Judging/Inspection Purposes
At events judges who come around and inspect Robots or talk to team members or even that one inspector that stops you from going onto the field before they check you "approved sticker" could use this. As teams are inspected and approved they could have their barcode scanned By the inspection table and have information stored in the system so if a judge/inspector is unsure about at team all he or she need to do is scan the code.

Visitor Purposes
Almost all FRC events are public events where visitors can come in and see the amazing work being done by students with the oversight of mentors, and when these visitors come in they are often awestruck with what is going on. If this system could be put in place to where visitors are instructed to download an app or just scan the code and be taken to a webpage where information about the team is held it would greatly improve visitor understanding. Also if a visitor scans a code provided by an event the visitor could receive information about the event from history to statistics about the events as a whole. And last how about a code that takes the visitor to the FRC website or Release video So they understand the crazy complex engineering insanity we call competitions.


Logistics...
Now unfortunately unless this is supported by multiple teams and the FRC community this is destined to fail... there can also be multiple blockades to cross in creating this one being the knowledge of the system for teams. Another being the time it would take to create a system as complex as this. I would never underestimate the power of FRC teams and the community itself but to create this system and implement it would take more time than I will be a student in FRC, because unfortunately I am a senior in high school.

I would love to maybe help start a system like this to benefit the FIRST community, because this community has already changed my life in the one year I have participated in it. And if I could give the community a way to better inform others about the absolutely amazing stuff and people that come out of this worldwide community I would.

Is this at all feasible?

Please feel free to comment on this I am looking for input.

[GeeTwo]

Unless you could get FIRST to officially commend (or command) participation in the system, you are unlikely to get sufficient participation to make this viable. While I have not done any real data mining on the CD user database which checks most recent activity, I am confident that the proportion of FRC teams with a regular CD presence is a clear minority of all FRC teams. (My seat-of-the-pants estimate is about 150 of 3000 teams, or 5%). Without some sort of mandate, the number likely to participate in the program is probably half of that, which is too small to be of real utility.

[JR0405]

Originally Posted by Dwight_2

Lately I have been thinking about how scouting in the pits can be a nightmare, you have teams that aren't in there pits you have teams that are in there pits but the only person you need to talk to is away or something. Or even worse the team provides you with the incorrect information about their robot. Right? We all have been in those situations.I've been thinking about asking my team (5842) to help me create a scanner system where scouters and visitors to a team's pit can scan a barcode or QR code to receive stats about the team.

Scouting Purposes
Once a team has scanned the code they will receive not only information about the robot and the team for scouting purposes, but to receive information from The Blue Alliance which could also be linked to each scanner code to see how teams have done in previous events as well.

Team Recognition Purposes
At events Teams could put their previous Awards and accomplishments as a part of the code when someone scans the code.

I feel like these two are the only ones that can be easily accomplished mostly because not every team needs to do it and I wouldn't be surprised if there's at least a couple teams that have qr codes out for people to scan.

[Max Boord]

I would really like the idea however I think there are simpler options to fixing the issues you listed. In past years a public google doc has been created for each worlds division so teams could enter pit scouting information before the event which eliminates the manpower requirement each team has to invest into walking around and scouting 75+ teams in addition to having the data before the first match is played. Also, from what I have seen the data entered is fairly accurate as people filling out the google doc are not in a rush to do other things like work on there robot.

With 179 and likely 1592 as well as 1065 switching to a webapp and google docs based scouting system next season, there is a pretty good chance we will try to do the google doc prescout for SFL and then use a google forum to input the data not entered before the tournament.