Scouting Made Easy - Announcing the FIRST Scouting Network

[Adam Richards]

Hey everyone,

I'm Adam Richards from team 1341, head coder for FIRST Scouting Network (FSN). For those who don't know, the FIRST Scouting Network is a scouting application developed between several teams to fill a gap in regional scouting. FSN is an open application, that when deployed at a regional, is able to be viewed by any team that has a laptop to either plug or connect wirelessly to a router.

Many previous attempts to create such a database available at more than one regional have been limited simply due to the lack of resources by one single team, but with the combined resources of teams throughout the entire FIRST community, FSN is able to provide aid to all teams that either need a solution for scouting, whether your team is a small one without enough students to do scouting, or if you have a medium or larger sized team and you want an easier way to scout for 2006. All teams are both allowed and encouraged to use our services at the regionals our software is available at this year (we are currently planning to cover NJ, VCU, Florida, Peachtree, Boston, and Vegas at the minimum).

The features this year are as follows:

For everyone:
--Open Access - any team at the regional can view data posted to the server through their web browser
--Statistical Analysis - each match that is recorded updates statistics on the server showing details over teams
--Pit Scouting Reports - every team can submit pit scouting reports based on a number of templates for any team at the regional
--Photo Gallery - photos for any robot can be uploaded to the server for retrieval later
--Video Perspectives - custom match video from multiple perspectives is available at many regional locations that FSN is hosted
--Match Schedule - an easy-to-access match schedule shows which matches your team is in so you don't have to search the entire pit for the list

For the server owner:
--Admin Panel - an easy administration panel allows the server owner to easily change options for the regional
--Censoring - if a person were to submit false or inflamatory information, the admin or an appointed moderator can change or remove the data
--Easy Installation - Just unzip the package, hit run, and you're all set up to start scouting
--Support for any operating system - Whether you use Debian, Windows XP, or OS X, you'll easily be able to run FIRST Scouting Network. We will have packages available for all major operating systems on our website for anyone to be able to download and run at a regional.


Stay tuned for more information in the coming two weeks and a fully-functional demo! If you would like to be a regional host for FIRST Scouting Network, please e-mail me at adam.m.richards@gmail.com. Thanks!