PDA (Palm Pilot...) Scouting Applications

[Matt Starkey]

Has anyone out there considered building their own PDA application to score the matches as they go, or to input data into a scouting database?

IF yes:
What software are you using to develop the apllicaiton?
What kind functions does it have?
Does it interface with MS Access?
Are you willing to share?

Team 236 has started to generate a quick scoring calculator for the PALM OS. The calculator should be able to keep track of the balls in each of three goals, keep track of which aliance those balls should be scored for, how many robots are in each robot zone, how many goals are in each goal zone, and finally post the scores of each of the aliances. We are thinking that the coaches in the player station could use the quick taps of the pen thing to keep track of the score and make strategy decisions in the middle of the match based on calculated scores. We beleive that the more well informed the teams are about the score during the match, the higher the scores will be for both teams during the qualification rounds. Remember that it does not benefit anyone to crush the other team 100 to zero, 100 x 0 = 0

Is there anyone interested in a copy if we can build a stand-alone application?

[Mike Soukup]

I'm in a hurry to get out the door so I'll make this quick and hopefully write more if I remember tonight.

Team 111 is working on scouting software for PalmOS, search through my recent posts to find more details. We're writing our own Palm software from scratch, you can find the scouting list in the Scouting forum, yes it uploads all the data to MS Access, yes we will share.

All this is from memory so I may make some mistakes:

If you want to build your own scouting application I'll help you with that as well. Last year we used HanDBase which was decent. It worked but I didn't like the UI. I believe GMCIA had success with ThinkDB last year. The UI is better than HanDBase and I believe it sync's with Access with less work. The ultimate solution is PenDragon Forms, but it costs a lot. It takes care of sync'ing multiple palms and I believe it even handles confling records.

I also wrote a scoring calculator for the Palm from scratch. I posted it in the general forum a few weeks back. Search through my recent posts and you'll find it. I made some fixes & changes but haven't uploaded a new version because there wasn't much feedback or interest.

I think Nate Smith wrote a scoring app using ThinkDB last year. It worked well, so if you want to create your own I'd recommend using it.

I'm late, gotta run.

Mike

[Tom Schindler]

Pendragon Forms most definitely is a very good solution. The company i work for donated a copy of this software to our team, and it has proved very useful.

It interfaces with MS access, so when you hotsync the palm, the data automatically goes into the access table.

Their website is www.pendragonsoftware.com

[AdamT]

I'd like to get a copy if it becomes available!

[JasonS]

HeatWave, team 312, has been developing a palm application for the past few months and is now finalizing the appropriate fields and features. We created it using Satlitte Forms Enterprise Edition and yes it will sync with MS Access. The program includes filters which allow the user to filter the list of teams by regional. From the list of teams you can tap on any team number and find out/enter information pertaning to their robot attributes. You can also tap a button that will take you to a list of all of the disired team's "match sheets"(organized by match #). You can then edit/create/and delete as many as you need. The Match Sheets are used to record what a particular team did in any given match, they include fields like "Final Position", "First Move", "Goals Attended", "Balls Handled" ......etc. They are all either drop down lists or quick numeric fields for fast input. Another feature the program includes is "Search" this feature allows you to search for any robots that have any combination of a number of attributes based on the information you (or your other team members) entered in. I could go on and on with what this program has... and tust me the interface is clean, with sharp graphics, and extreamly user friendly. With this program you will have an ongoing record of what each and every team at your competition claims to do, can do, and did, right in your hand! This is the ultimate robotics palm app! And yes this app will be shared with any and everybody that would like to use it. We are getting close to the finish and I am happy to answer any questions that anyone has about the program.

P.S. the Program works on both monochrome and color palms(the color looks really cool!!)

[Tom Fairchild]

Originally posted by Tom Schindler
Pendragon Forms most definitely is a very good solution. The company i work for donated a copy of this software to our team, and it has proved very useful.

It interfaces with MS access, so when you hotsync the palm, the data automatically goes into the access table.

Their website is www.pendragonsoftware.com

Pendragon Forms is wonderful! If you can scrape together the dough for the user licenses, I would definitly go for it instead of developing your own. Its incredibly easy to use and maintain.

~Tom Fairchild~

[Mike Soukup]

Originally posted by Tom Fairchild
Pendragon Forms is wonderful! If you can scrape together the dough for the user licenses, I would definitly go for it instead of developing your own. Its incredibly easy to use and maintain.

So is developing your own package once you have the design & framework done. Plus it's more fun and more of a challenge for us idle software guys who don't do much work on the robot. It keeps us out of trouble & gives us something to do besides asking when the robot will be ready to program It's also a great learning experience for students who want to go into computer science.

Mike

[Tom Schindler]

Originally posted by Mike Soukup

So is developing your own package once you have the design & framework done. Plus it's more fun and more of a challenge for us idle software guys who don't do much work on the robot. It keeps us out of trouble & gives us something to do besides asking when the robot will be ready to program It's also a great learning experience for students who want to go into computer science.

Mike

Or you could have the computer geeks like myself attempt mechanical things.... things havent turned out too badly either

Tom

[Tyler Olds]

is there anybody who is/wants to set up and type of espionage or description for each team? or have a collectinve of teams be able to post stuff via palm? I think it would be a great idea so we could all be able to look up info on our alliance partners.
Thanks