TRA - No Longer Just A Rumor

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Information for such a large number of teams/robots is near impossible to collect and organize. if you have an idea of which select teams to have databased feel free to post it up.

I do not believe the interest level for something like FLL or even most FTC tournaments is that high. The only legitimate type of scouting resource I could see coming online/worth the trouble for would be for teams attending the World Championships. And even that, who would record all the data from their match history?

FLL- pages about this would be, IMHO, useless.
FTC- pages regarding matches of teams attending the World Championships would be the only partially useful thing.

In all honesty, the only section that seems useful because its unavailable at the moment would be a photo archive with unlimited space and easy to upload. Very much like photobucket, an album for each team. Then again, I'm sure The Blue Alliance could do this upon request. It would need to be screened very quickly (unlike CD media) for only TECHNICAL photos. No silly little facebook type pictures. Or just search for tags of a specific team on here....

I don't exactly see your basis for saying that teams won't use them...

If this resource is available and teams are told that they are available, then why wouldn't a team want to use them? Currently there is nothing like this for the FLL/FTC program, so you can't exactly say that there is an example where something like this has failed for this program.

In my opinion, I think that if this resource is available to a team, then I see no reason why teams wouldn't use it. The Blue Alliance is more than just match scheduling, but instead it keeps up FRC information, program updates, kick-off agenda, etc.

For now, I know of no central FLL websites, and There are a bunch of FTC websites that one has to check in order to get updated information.

And gathering information for the vast amount of teams won't be EASY. Of course it'll be a challenge, but it's one that, sooner or later, needs to be met.

And as far as the photo idea is concerned, teams BARELY update their websites...and now you're asking them to update a photo page for their robot? It's not to say that all teams don't update their website, but there are a great number of teams that don't update their website.

And it won't mater if teams like 67, 111, 11, 1114, 217 and the other known teams post pictures...their pictures are already available on their own websites, and if we expect people follow what these "known" teams do, then the other teams would have updated websites as well.

I think that this is a gamble worth taking. Carpenma, if your website is indeed good, you'll find that FIRST will promote it on its own, and all of a sudden, you'll have thousands of FLL and FTC teams coming to your website to see what the new, helpful tool is, not to mention that these programs are growing at a great rate and if your website is truly good, then they'll turn to your website for help and guidance.