Scouting Tools

[Tom Bottiglieri]

How many people would find it useful (who are going to either the New jersey regional or the UTC New England Regional) if there was an easily accesible scouting database at our teams pit? This would be a Microsoft Access database that is updated after every match. All you would need to do is walk up to the "kiosk" in the front our pit, type in the team number you are looking for, and print out the team description (abilities and other info) You would be able to put a few teams on each page, and you would also be able to look for teams accorinding to different skills. I thought this might come in handy when trying to pick alliance partners.

Along with our complimentary magnetic strategy boards, all of your scouting and strategizing needs would be taken care of by team 195!

[Aignam]

Originally Posted by ToMMan b182

How many people would find it useful (who are going to either the New jersey regional or the UTC New England Regional) if there was an easily accesible scouting database at our teams pit? This would be a Microsoft Access database that is updated after every match. All you would need to do is walk up to the "kiosk" in the front our pit, type in the team number you are looking for, and print out the team description (abilities and other info) You would be able to put a few teams on each page, and you would also be able to look for teams accorinding to different skills. I thought this might come in handy when trying to pick alliance partners.

Along with our complimentary magnetic strategy boards, all of your scouting and strategizing needs would be taken care of by team 195!

I think alot of teams prefer to do their own scouting. I know here on 25, we make our own scouting sheets which collect all of the information we find pertinent, but also ask for a unbiased comparison of the team's robot to our robot, done by the scouter. If you were to include information like that, you would end up distributing biased information and offending many teams. We like to keep our information relatively private, because a good majority of the important informationit is opinion-based.

[Elgin Clock]

I'm sure Team 237 would be not only interested in having this available for our use, but also maybe interested in adding to this and helping with this database.

Maybe..... It is still a competition ya know...

[Jessica Boucher]

Well....

First of all, not in the pit. The pit isn't the place for scouting (unless youre actually looking at the robots), the stands are. You're going to have too many people running around to have room for a kiosk.

Secondly, I'll be honest, in strategy I always prefer my own opinion of teams over other team's opinions. That's not to say that your opinion isn't good, its saying that your opinion of things and my opinion of things may differ. What you think is fast I may think is slower than molasses. Why? Because we're both working for two completely different teams, and when your team is looking at robots you'll be looking at them in how they relate to your team, not anyone elses. And that's not a bad thing either! It's just not something that I would personally use....and I think your resources could be better used elsewhere.

I also think the open strategy database thing has been done to death. If you're doing it for the judges, the judges have already seen it before. Though I do like the idea of having printing facilities available....maybe you could work that into something that FIRST hasn't seen before. Think outside the box a little, and if you need to bounce ideas off of me, just let me know, I love to hear them

Good luck!

[KevinB]

Yea we've done the collaborative scouting thing in the past, and I've found that I just don't trust anything that I don't see with my own eyes.

[gl75]

I'm developing a Team Scouting/Information database application for Team 75 based on Apple WebObjects and SQL Server 2000.

We have 6 Dell Latitudes with Wifi, and will keep the central server in our pit area. We'll be at the NJ and Philly regional, so be sure to stop by to check it out if you're interested!

Btw - I'm surprised WebObjects isn't bundled with the software FIRST sends out. It's just an unbelievable J2EE RAD environment and application server that uses Enterprise Objects rather than SQL. (And it was only $99 edu )


----------
Greg Liebowitz
Team 75 - RoboRaiders
Webmaster/Programmer
www.roboraiders.com

[Ashley Weed]

From my experiences, I think it would be very worthwhile if you implimented the idea. I know that it was very chaotic as a driver and keeping on top of all of my scouting/strategy tasks even with all of my support. Yes, it is true that you may be biased of your own opinion, however, there are many late Friday nights when I would sit down and start to debate selections for alliance partners for Finals, that I would of been thrilled to have opinions from another team. I think you have an exclellent idea, and I hope people will utilize it!

[jparkteach]

Originally Posted by ToMMan b182

How many people would find it useful (who are going to either the New jersey regional or the UTC New England Regional) if there was an easily accesible scouting database at our teams pit? This would be a Microsoft Access database that is updated after every match. All you would need to do is walk up to the "kiosk" in the front our pit, type in the team number you are looking for, and print out the team description (abilities and other info) You would be able to put a few teams on each page, and you would also be able to look for teams accorinding to different skills. I thought this might come in handy when trying to pick alliance partners.

Along with our complimentary magnetic strategy boards, all of your scouting and strategizing needs would be taken care of by team 195!

We were thinking about doing something like that at the NYC regional but we couldn't find anybody to create the database. Any chance we could use yours? We would give you proper recognition, of course, but can we also add a few things? Please PM, IM, or e-mail me!! If this works, we can have 4 802.11b laptops for our scouters and a large touch-screen monitor connected to the server at the pit.

[bigqueue]

Originally Posted by ToMMan b182

How many people would find it useful (who are going to either the New jersey regional or the UTC New England Regional) if there was an easily accesible scouting database at our teams pit? This would be a Microsoft Access database that is updated after every match. All you would need to do is walk up to the "kiosk" in the front our pit, type in the team number you are looking for, and print out the team description (abilities and other info) You would be able to put a few teams on each page, and you would also be able to look for teams accorinding to different skills. I thought this might come in handy when trying to pick alliance partners.

Along with our complimentary magnetic strategy boards, all of your scouting and strategizing needs would be taken care of by team 195!

Team 811 has tried several different approaches to scouting in the past two years, and it clearly is something that takes talent and dedication. (but it is well worth it)

We will be at the Manchester NH regional so we will not be seeing your database...but we would actually look forward to perhaps sitting down with other teams in Manchester to at least share ideas about how we all do our scouting. (and perhaps even share particular data we have too)

Is anyone going to the Manchester NH regional interested in such a meeting?

-Quentin

[Tom Bottiglieri]

after talking with my team and other CD members, we have decided that a scouting database might not be the thing we wanted to do. Every year there is lots of congestion in the pits area. A good amount of this congestion is scouts from teams who go out to get information. We were thinking we could eliminate this by only sending out about 10-15 very qualified, veteran team member scouts from any team who wanted to lend a hand. Each person would be assigned different teams randomly to g and find information about. But, after hearing the feedback in this forum, i think it would be a better idea to still do the scouting data base, but have it accesible from our spot in the stands.

What we are trying to do this year is set up a "help facility". One of the main purposes of FIRST is to teach kids about being good sportsman. I mean heck, they even give an award to motivate people to help each other out. Every year at regionals though, we see strugling teams who are working very hard to get their bot working, but just don't have the expertise to figure it out. Then we also see kids in the pits with their legs up relaxing, because their bot is fine and they have nothing to do. What we would like to do (and were planning to do) was set up sort of a list or databse of teams who need help and what teams are willing to give help. This would be catorgerized into different areas (such as: pneumatics, drive train, programming). Now if any team needs help, they can come over to the 195 and sign in a request. If there was anyone like stated before who was just sitting around, they could also come to our table, check out who they can help, and then effectively and efficiently go help them. We think this would help teams out alot, because there have been many occasions where we needed a certain part, or some help in an area that we didnt have. Then, we would have to waste like a half hour going from team to team trying to find someone to help us out. If you are interested in being a part of this help network, please respond in this thread Help Facility

I think this idea will be loved by some, hated by others. Please tell me what you think of it, and possibly ideas on how to improve it!