Sundial - Feedback Requested, Please

[StephLee]

We were connected for most of Saturday, and I absolutely LOVED it. Having the rankings and match list was VERY useful when you're trying to see how the rankings could potentially fall out over the next few matches (which I do waaaay too much, but this made it easier). Plus, a few times we were saved from being very early to a match when the field was running behind. I'd love to see this at every regional next year, it was great.

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

Were yall entering the data manually, or was it coming from the FIRST computers?

The Sundial server computer was set up on the scoring table behind Einstein field. We had two network cables plugged into the NASA switch there: one connected to the VLAN on which the four divisional scoring computers were located, and one connected to the WiFi VLAN. All the data was being transferred electronically from the FIRST scoring computers, and no human interaction was required.

The wireless networking was all provided by NASA. There was a single access point in the dome (intended mainly for diagnostic purposes) and I believe three in the pits, but as Jeff said the numerous ad-hoc networks were causing a lot of interference. Also, one of the access points lost its connection to the rest of the network on Friday morning, and wasn't repaired until much later that day. I apologize for this, and I will be doing my best over the next year to make the necessary arrangements so that this doesn't happen again.

[Mahalis]

Our team found it useful on the few occasions we could connect to it. The signal was fluctuating like crazy in the Curie pits and when I tried to connect I alternately got "The 'first' wireless network is using an Access Control List to restrict connections" and "There was an error joining the wireless network 'first';" hitting "Try Again" twenty or thirty times usually got me in, but on Saturday I couldn't connect at all. Oddly enough, the signal seemed to work better in the Dome than in the pits - I only had to "Try Again" five or six times.
All in all, a really useful service that could benefit from some relay stations or a better antenna.

[Qbranch]

SUNDIAL IS AWESOME!

It was pretty much essential at Nationals. I really hope it is at every single FIRST event next season.

Many thanks to the creators of sundial!

-Q

btw: has a great name too

[ahecht]

Sundial was great at Nationals, when we could connect. I found that I had full signal, but I would have to try 5 to 10 times to get an IP address.

[Tsom467]

We used it in Boston and thought it was fantastic! We had a laptop set up in our pits that displayed the Sundial data, and one in the stands we were using for match data entry. The laptop in the pits also had access to our (custom) team data information site (complete with pictures, team info and match details.)

I'm sure we'll be looking forward to seeing it again next year!

[Jessica!]

Oh my goodness Sundial was so helpful!!!! Our team always pushes it to the limit when it comes to making our matches on time, so it was very helpful in gauging how much time we had etc. I hope this can be at every regional next year!!

[Mike AA]

Sounds like it would have been very handy to have sundial running. I tried connecting to literally everything in the pits and seemed nothing connected anywhere. I could probably get close to 10 access points and 10-20 ad-hoc. I did connect to the sundial per the instructions but lost connection on Friday. Then I lost my wireless card (or was stolen) so that made it imposable to connect.

Thanks for the specs. Is this a program which you would be possibly allowing another team to run at other regionals which your team doesn't go to?

Does anyone perchance have screen shots so that I could at least see what this thing was all about?

-Mike Aalderink
Team 1654

[MrForbes]

Our scouting person was wanting to use it, but her (new) laptop didn't seem too interested in connecting, and my laptop did eventually connect to it once I discovered the magical necessity of typing in www.sundial.first, but then it didn't work because you need some kind of flash thingy plugin that I don't allow on my computers. I only spent part of one morning trying to make it work.

But it is a neat thing anyways, I know Karen on our mentor team 842 made good use of it.

[vadyr]

I just wanted to say that i really liked the sundial service. We used it to stay on time, get our schedule, and check the results of our matches when we werent sure how we scored. Thanks a lot for putting sundial up!

[Phalanx]

We really liked it when we could connect. The only issue was the continual up and down of the connections, but as has been said all the ad-hoc networks created a lot of interference which is most likely the reason for the sporadic connectivity.

I'd love to see this become a regular part of all FIRST events, it was extremely helpful since Curie seemed to be running between 5-10 minutes ahead of schedule it helped us a lot.

Thanks!

[Greg Ross]

I tried once. (It wasn't a high priority.) I think it must have been from our pit (Archimedes.) If memory serves me (which I steadfastly refuse to vouch ) it never acquired an IP address after about a minute.

When I used at the So Cal Regional, I found it of limited usefulness since the match results and standings were not available. It also caused some slight annoyance, since when I would scroll down the match list, it would periodically scroll back to the top whenever the list was refreshed.

[Sagar Vyas]

Sundial was amazing, kept our team in the pit up-to-date, 1503 was using it at GTR on one of our dualview monitors. One of the only problems we ran into was the timing was a bit off, other than that, Great software!

Video on WLAN is also a great idea, 1503 created their own personal video wireless network and broadcasted it for the newton division. It worked out amazingly, isn't there a way Sundian can be integrated with a live video feed?

[Rohan_DHS]

Sundial was in my opinion, the most useful thing in our pit!

If you are interested in adding features to it, adding a tracker to keep track of our current rank, etc would be pretty cool...

Other than that, it's REALLY great.

Keep up the great work, Pat

[Manoel]

We used it in Boston and it was amazing, extremely useful for a small team like us that don't have enough people to run around checking for matches.
We tried using it from our pits in Archimedes and, even though we could connect to the network, the site would never open. Quite a shame, especially considering we had an even smaller group in a much bigger venue.

Anyway, the service is great and I'd like to thank your team for putting it up!