iPhone App Released - FRC Tracker

[Andrew Bates]

I would love an Android version.

[Tom Saxton]

The 2009 version won't work for the 2010 competition since the scoring format is different. It will continue to work as a reference to see how teams did last year and it won't be confused by any 2010 data appearing on Twitter, etc.

I hope to release a new version of the 2009 app to Apple in the next week or so with some new features I've been working on, including team robot photos from TBA and ranking teams by OPR and DPR.

There will be a 2010 version of FRC Tracker, a different app so you can have one or both on your device. My hope is to get that submitted to Apple in time to be available for the first weekend of regionals.

As for getting the app running on other platforms, I'm buried in iPhone work and don't have an interest in learning Windows Mobile or Android. The code for FRC Tracker is about 99% user interface code specific to the iPhone platform that would be of no use on the other platforms. I even use an iPhone API to parse Twitter's XML. The most interesting code that's not platform-specific is the OPR/DPR calculation, but that's already well documented on the forum.

If anyone developing a similar app on another platform has any specific questions about how to do something, feel free to send me a direct message.

You can follow progress on the new versions via http://twitter.com/frctracker and I'll post here with significant news.

[Steve W]

Thanks Tom, it has been a great help.

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by Tom Saxton

As for getting the app running on other platforms, I'm buried in iPhone work and don't have an interest in learning Windows Mobile or Android. The code for FRC Tracker is about 99% user interface code specific to the iPhone platform that would be of no use on the other platforms. I even use an iPhone API to parse Twitter's XML. The most interesting code that's not platform-specific is the OPR/DPR calculation, but that's already well documented on the forum.

If anyone developing a similar app on another platform has any specific questions about how to do something, feel free to send me a direct message.

Ok, thanks for the info. I didn't know that it would be so exclusive in the coding. This will have to be an off-season project for me, as the Android OS is quickly growing and I think plenty of FRC users would love this app, too. I will probably ask for more information in terms of the logic sometime later this year.

[Tom Saxton]

Apple has approved FRC Tracker 2009 version 1.3. It should be available from the App Store within 24 hours. This version is a static representation of the results from the 2009 competition. It will ignore tweets from this year's competition. Before the 2010 game details were available, I wanted to work on new features so I just added them to the 2009 version.

New Features
---------------

OPR/DPR Ranking: If you go to an event, then tap on the Rankings button, you'll see the teams for that event in rank order. A new control at the top lets you choose between sorting by FIRST's qualifying round rank, Offensive Power Rating or Defensive Power Rating. If you're not familiar with OPR/DPR, they are explained in various places including this post that explains what it is and how it is calculated. The little triangle gizmo will reverse the order. I'm going to make a change to how the reverse order button works, for now just keep in mind that large OPR values and small DPR values are good.

Robot Photos: FRC Tracker can download robot photos from TheBlueAlliance.net. For the ideal appearance in FRC Tracker, the robot photo should be 320 pixels wide and 367 pixels tall, or larger in approximately that same ratio. Really, anything that's approximately square will be fine. Photos that are really tall and narrow don't look nice, and photos that have been letterboxed with black bars don't work well. If your robot is tall and narrow, you can make your photo more square by adding team members or field elements on the sides.

Bug Fixes: A couple of minor bugs were fixed.

FRC Tracker 2010
-------------------

The 2010 version is making good progress, I hope to submit it to Apple soon.

In addition to the features in 2009, the 2010 version will have support for sorting by approximate rank when the official FIRST ranking data isn't available. This is especially handy when the FIRST rank data isn't available and there haven't been enough matches to calculate OPR/DPR.

As soon as I have a usable version, I'll submit to Apple. You never know how long it will take to get approval, and I want to be sure there's a version available for the Week 1 regionals.

After the initial version is done, I've got some other features I'd like to add, most notably the ability to add robot photos via the camera and photo library on the iPhone or iPod Touch.

[Tom Saxton]

I just submitted FRC Tracker 2010 to the iTunes App Store. If all goes well, it may be available as soon as a week from now.

[Tom Saxton]

For those of you on Facebook, there's now an FRC Tracker there. Just search for FRC Tracker.

There's also a Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/frctracker/

I'll post minor updates and real-time info on Twitter and Facebook as new versions are released and as the events unfold, stuff that's a bit more detailed and of-the-moment than makes sense for a CD post.

[Peter Matteson]

Tom,
Thanks for making a new version of this app. Last year's was a big help and we really appreciaite it.

Pete

[nikeairmancurry]

Awesome.. This really helps... Plus being able to show fmaily and friends the game without getting online is a big +..

[Tom Saxton]

FRC Tracker 2010 is now available from the iTunes App Store.

[Jones571]

Originally Posted by Tom Saxton

FRC Tracker 2010 is now available from the iTunes App Store.

Just downloaded my copy! Thanks again Tom!

[Peter Matteson]

Installed.
thanks Tom.

[Eugene Fang]

Thanks so much!

[Pavan Dave]

Is there a Blackberry version coming out soon?

[Tom Saxton]

Thanks for the kind words everyone! That's what makes it all worthwhile.

I got turn around from Apple is less than 5 days for my last two app approvals, so I'm going to wait about a week before uploading a new version. So, try it out and let me know of any bugs.

It would be helpful if a few teams could upload a robot photo to The Blue Alliance to make sure my photo download code works correctly for 2010. If you do upload a photo, let me know so I can try it out.

Pavan Dave: Blackberry and other platform versions were discussed earlier in this thread. I'm just an iPhone guy, but it sounds like others are interested in building similar apps on other mobile platforms.