The Great Move to Electronic Scouting [Poll]

[Skyehawk]

Yes, this is early... but you must be truly desperate to come here... (jk)

<DISCLAIMER: I am not selling anything, just want to help out>

I have been anything but silent about scouting systems over the past several years. It is a topic that seems to fluctuate widely in interest over the course of the season, following the ebb and flow of weeks 0 through the last match on Einstien. This is usually the introduction for many individuals into 'Big Data'.

I just wanted to bring a few thing up and gauge some interest at the same time. FIRST Team 876 has been using electronic scouting successfully for the past 2 years. Paper is a great option, it's reliable and easy to use, but being able to instantly tabulate data is better, way better. We found, as did so many other teams, that pre-match reports are one of the most effective tools in coordinating last minute strategy in the queue line.

Over the last two seasons, we have been using WildRank, developed by FIRST Team 111 for the community. This has proved to be a great option due to data redundancy, but I am always looking for a more streamlined process.

Last year we introduced computer generated team reports, they worked wonderfully. There is something about reading information off of a printed report, the data seems definitive. The integration of a small thermal receipt printer allowed us to have a streamlined portable system, this upcoming season we hope to make the complete package. Would you, the FRC community be interested in a full blown tutorial from software to hardware (and all the firmware in between ) on setting up a full fledged, feature rich system like this of your own?

Our system was assembled for ~$300 USD, it will never be as cheap a well thought out paper system. But considering some tablets certain teams use for scouting cost in excess of $300 a pop this is one of the cheaper electronic options out there.

-Skye Leake

[Skyehawk]

UPDATE:

There seems to be some interest out there for at very least an overview. I will try to put this over the second half of December, if that is well received I will make a proper tutorial (hopefully available by build week 3, I don't want to promise too much). If you would like more info between now and the new year please shoot me a PM.

-Skye Leake

[Big Ideas]

Team Paradox wrote a system last year. Based on WEB implementation, smart phones, and freeware tools to develop. I don't believe it cost anything.

Best feature is that collected data is available real time. This means that the drive team can use current data to plan upcoming matches.

We just presented to some local teams and got a good response. A well designed electronic scouting system that allows using the work of scouts for more then just a playoff pick list can be a powerful addition.

[legoguy1000]

Please check out https://www.frcscout.resnick-tech.com. I have been developing this site since the middle of the summer and I would love feedback. There isn't much data because it has not been used during actual events really but you can see the idea. To see what the reports look like, select the "test" event and no teams.

[Captain_Kirch]

Most electronic scouting program releases are just software. If you have the whole shabang, I think a lot of teams could benefit from that.

[Skyehawk]

Just thought I would make a link to these two threads: a presentation of scouting, data collection, etc from 876's dear friends at 2512.

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...d.php?t=152547

[19lmyers]

One thing I see a lot in electronic scouting software released by teams is that not much thought is put into the interface of the scouting application. I generally don't see much of a focus on making the scouting and analyzing process intuitive, elegant, or easy to use.

I've been working on these areas for a couple months and am somewhat pleased with my results, but the area I'm lacking in is data organization and analytics- things that teams seem to be spending much more time on than I have as of yet.

What I'd like to see is a good explanation of how to weigh, analyze, and present data in a way that would be more useful than just sorting based on individual match criteria alone. From what I can tell, the best teams in scouting all use more complicated algorithms than that...

[BenjiSG]

Biggest concerns with electronic scouting I have had in the past have mainly been fixed around the issues of battery life and connectivity. Given the constraints that being at competition puts on things (aka rarely access to outlets and typically very bad data/WiFi), what are your basic solutions to making sure devices don't die and can actually connect to your system?

I also have concerns around losing expensive tablets, but I guess the realistic solution to that problem is to just bug people to remember to bring them back...

[Skyehawk]

I am actually working on an overview video that addresses this among other similar questions, I should finish it soon. The quickest answers to your questions though:

Originally Posted by BenjiSG

Biggest concerns with electronic scouting I have had in the past have mainly been fixed around the issues of battery life and connectivity. Given the constraints that being at competition puts on things (aka rarely access to outlets and typically very bad data/WiFi), what are your basic solutions to making sure devices don't die and can actually connect to your system?

Answer: Portable power banks (or a old robot battery w/a power inverter in the stands) seems to work well. Connectivity is solved with a USB flash-drive to sync data. We use WildRank as our scouting app, this allows for high data redundancy (7-8 copies of data between syncs) therefore it's not a huge deal if a tablet goes dead for a match.

Originally Posted by BenjiSG

I also have concerns around losing expensive tablets, but I guess the realistic solution to that problem is to just bug people to remember to bring them back...

Answer: We rock the cheapest tablets we can, as long as they can utilize USB OTG. Then it isn't a big if one gets lost or broken. Having a spare in case a battery dies or one gets lost is a good Idea, however we do keep pretty tight reigns on them.

[beurwonderwall]

At MSC this year, my team and I worked with 3357 to share and take data together to cover both fields at MSC as accurately as possible, as well as taking some of the burden off of each team's scouting teams.

My team used a totally electronic scouting system from 2013-2015. We moved back to paper on 2016 because we found, no matter how well programed, the app allowed for too much human error (ie accidentally button presses), as well as took WAY more training to implement.

3357 used electronic scouting, so when deciding how to take data together we had to consider both teams' preferences. We decided that we would continue to take data on paper while having a person dedicated to entering it into 3357's database.

Having the one person enter into the database worked awesome for us. It allowed us to get very accurate data, while not sacrificing the need for live data to feed to the drive team.

As a drive coach, electronic data for match summaries was MUCH preferred. The electronic data gave me graphs and better rundowns than the human copied paper match sheets.

A combination of the two is what gave us the most success.

[Skyehawk]

Hello All,
I have released the overview video for the electronic scouting system we ran at worlds 2016. I plan on logging my progress on the development of the 2017 implementation as a tutorial of sorts (as well as a code release) hopefully available by week 3 or 4 of the build season. This should serve as a decent step-by-step for someone wanting to mimic the system team 876 is using, or pull ideas from our work. There will of course be updates to this code as the season progresses and I hope to share some of these with you in blog or tutorial form. I will be plenty active on CD as well as other places talking about scouting, scouting systems, and team statistics.

The Overview Video is located HERE.

Regards,
Skye Leake