Does your team use Laptops for Scouting?

[jblay]

Our team used to use laptops for everything when it came to scouting. I overhauled the system making sure that it was all paper with as many comments as possible and only the necessary data.

Robots are inconsistent and to develop good match strategies and make good selections during alliance selections you need to understand each robots capabilities and potential and their average score is often irrelevant for how they will play with or against you.

There is only so much a computer can do, strategy takes critical thinking and statistics can only help you so much. With how much time and effort imputing data takes it becomes more of a hurt then a help especially when you are limited in man power for scouting.

[Steven Sigley]

We use a DS scouting system based off team 100's. (which i think was based off another team?)

This data gets uploaded to one laptop which we then use Friday night to analyze who we'll want to pick in the finals. It even displays a picture of the robot you're scouting based off pictures taken Thursday. Very convenient, and handled completely by the students. They've gotten a really good handle of it.

[NullEntity]

Last year was hell. We brought I believe 8 laptops from our tech-ed department. We have a UPS (uninteruptable power supply) which is two car batteries and an inverter to keep them charged. The problem was that the laptop's batteries could barely hold a charge. That and the fact that we could only keep three laptops plugged in at a time to prevent drawing too much power through the inverter. It was a lesson we won't soon forget.

This year, we did a paper-based system, but with a quirk. We had a scanner that could read the forms (they were sort of like Scantrons with bubbles) that would constantly scan forms while people were scouting. It was a lot simpler (and cooler ) than last year!

[qhsscience]

We fall into the "old-fashioned" category of paper and pencil. Generally, the team creates a paper scouting sheet that then gets used by any scout.

[Dancin103]

I know I previously stated that we do not use laptops for scouting and do it the old fashioned way. I looking into creating a database in either Access or oracle which would be pretty cool. Any thoughts on this? Thanks for any advice in advance.

Cass

[NullEntity]

Originally Posted by Dancin103

I know I previously stated that we do not use laptops for scouting and do it the old fashioned way. I looking into creating a database in either Access or oracle which would be pretty cool. Any thoughts on this? Thanks for any advice in advance.

Cass

What would you want to do with it? Do you want an application to access it? If not, an Excel workbook works great. Especially for calculations.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

My team is using a Wii with their laptops for scouting this year.
I heard the kids love it.

Was that by any chance you guys at the CT Regional with the Wii Remotes in the stands? Every time I was walking by on my way to the pits I was always wondering what that was all about.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by dag0620

Was that by any chance you guys at the CT Regional with the Wii Remotes in the stands? Every time I was walking by on my way to the pits I was always wondering what that was all about.

That was us. We found it easier to keep ourselves interested and it allowed us to scout without looking down at a sheet of paper. We probably should have collected more data Friday, but we loved the system.

[dag0620]

You guys looked like you were having fun. If the scouting team doesnt mind, I may just have to work on a system like that, or one with the multiple laptops instead of our paper into 1 laptop method we have now.

If anyone can point me into some directions to get started, please do.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by dag0620

You guys looked like you were having fun. If the scouting team doesnt mind, I may just have to work on a system like that, or one with the multiple laptops instead of our paper into 1 laptop method we have now.

If anyone can point me into some directions to get started, please do.

Our very good friends on 842 developed the system and released it to the public. http://www.nventivity.com/scout2.htm

I would highly recommend purchasing an AM Inverter and using an old robot battery. This kept our laptop running all of Friday without breaks.

[SentientCitrus]

Until this year we've used paper sheets to record information, which was then manually entered into an Excel spreadsheet or (last year) an Access database - talk about cumbersome!

This year, we trialed a custom application and database developed by one of our mentors, aimed at the netbook screen resolution, with the notion being that, because of their lower power consumption, running 6-7 at once (I think the typical load for these was 10-12W each?) on a little sub-100W Enercell inverter and old robot batteries would get us through a day of scouting in the event that power was not available.

[E. Wood]

Team 1629 uses itouches to do our scouting if a wireless network is available. If no wifi is available we use a smart phone as a modem and enter the data on a notebook. We do however need to have an Internet connection as we use a goggle docs spreadsheet. For each event we create a form that scouts enter data on and submit electronically after each match. This form the populates the spreadsheet in real-time. We then use a second sheet to summarize the data. The best part about this system is that its gives the drive team real-time stats and information right after a match was played. It also viewable on any web enabled device which means our drives can get it on their iphones on the field. And its all free (thats the best part... goggle is awesome.)

[pfreivald]

When you've got Ben Pulver doing your scouting, you don't *need* laptops... Ben power is all the power you need!

(What oh what shall we do when he graduates in 2013?!?)

[MagiChau]

you get Ben Pulver to train a pupil thats what

Here we use paper & pen

Though i write notes everywhere on my scouting sheets xD

[Grim Tuesday]

Team 639 uses about 2 laptops, and that is what we did at FLR. We also use paper, then transfer it to the laptops. However, at Philly, we couldn't find any power outlets, and were not allowed to use the ones behind the stands. Our scouting team moved to an outlet in the hallway to charge laptops, and hang out. We had quite alot of laptops on a charge/use/charge pattern for the day. I do recall that our webteam was fiddling with our database for quite alot of the time though