Introducing the team 75 RoboRaiders' new project: RoboNet

[Alex Burman]

After a long time in development, team 75s big project if finally coming
out. The RoboRaiders new project titled RoboNet is a public on-line
database of schools. Currently the database can hold information
about schools through out the US (working on an international
expansion). This database facilitates communication between schools
around the nation, especially between schools with and with out FIRST
robotics teams. Now there is only one problem, we don't have very many
schools in the database. Team 75 needs your help to make it work. We
ask you to add your school information to the database to help
populate it. We also ask that you add any information about schools
around you to help people that may be looking for them. You can find
more information and the link to the database below.

Experience RoboNet Now!

[Michelle Celio]

That's really cool.

I've listed one of our teams schools.

Question:
If our team has multiple schools, should we list them all?

Comment:
I don't know if you know, but when you look at a View School page, and click a link it opens as subpage for the website instead of with out the "http://www.roboraiders.com/schooldb/" prefix.

Suggestion:
Maybe add a "view all schools" link.

[Lil' Lavery]

What if the same school participates in multiple FIRST programs (FLL and JrFLL, or FRC and FVC)?

[Adam Shapiro]

A few suggestions:

1. You should be able to access a listing of all schools, rather than only searching for a specific school.

2. You should be able to select multiple FIRST programs for a single school.

3. You should be able to enter multiple team numbers for the schools with more than one registered team (ex. Montclair has 555 and 1929).

4. The standard search should be based on keywords rather than school name. In this way a user could theoretically search for "555" or "Montclair" with the same result.

Looks pretty nice so far. Good job guys.

[SNewman]

Hello, everyone!

My name is Scott, and I've been developing RoboNET. I would first like to assure everyone that RoboNET is still in it's very basic stage. Over the coming years, there will be MANY new features.

In regards to some of your questions...

The issue with school / team URLs has been partially fixed. It still shows http:// if there is no URL entered for some reason, I'll have to try and figure that out.

Q. What if the same school participates in multiple FIRST programs (FLL and JrFLL, or FRC and FVC)?

A. Currently, the system can not account for such schools. I will attempt to introduce new features as rapidly as possible, and address this issue as quickly as I can.

Q. You should be able to access a listing of all schools, rather than only searching for a specific school.

A. This feature was supposed to be in the original release. It is top on the list for upcoming features.

Keep your questions and comments coming!

Oh yeah, and in future releases of RoboNet, there will be a MUCH nicer layout, no worries

[av11d]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

What if the same school participates in multiple FIRST programs (FLL and JrFLL, or FRC and FVC)?

Excellent Point. That's #1 on our priority list right now.

[gondorf]

team 1733 has listed their school

[Donut]

For everyone asking for a view of all schools; if you just leave the search box blank and hit search, you will get a listing of all schools in the database. I doubt this was intended but it does work.

And for the main contact, are you requesting the main contact of the school or the main contact of the robotics team?

[Rick TYler]

Here's another feature suggestion for version 1.1. You might want to make allowances for teams that are not associated with a school. There are at least three or four teams in the PNW area which are associated with Scouts instead of schools, and I am in the middle of serious discussions regarding starting an independent team chartered through the same program that supports police, fire, and searchp-and-rescue Explorers. (I think non-school teams represent a huge opportunity for FIRST, but that's a statement for another thread...)