Brainstorm - The Blue Alliance v4

[MarkoRamius1086]

In addition to the points that seem very appealing in post above (team search, awards, and videos), I would like to include a point that Dale mentioned. Having a place for a robot description would be great! If there was a system where we as teams could submit our robot information and picture, and then a BlueAlliance webmaster could simply click "verify" or something, the data could appear underneath the information cells at the top. That way not just the stats of the team are given, but also a capabilities description, and a picture. Pictures are priceless as everyone knows.

[Chris is me]

Some place on the site (event page?) showing accurate alliance selection order would be nice.

[Greg Marra]

These are all really great suggestions! Some of them are things we were already thinking about (HTML5, better search, better 404s, user submitted match videos, mobile apps) and some were things that didn't occur to us but sound awesome (CD-Media integration, focus on quick basic info retrieval).

Please keep the ideas coming! We're still very much in the planning phases!

[Tom Line]

Since you automatically get the information up on the page anyway, it would be neat if you could implement OPR for each year. That OPR could update as the new scores came in.

Likewise, it would be cool if people were able to post webcast links on TBA for given events.

[ProgramLuke]

Any idea when this new TBA will be operational?

[GGCO]

Maybe allow anyone to add content to a team's profile.

I would also really like the site to be much more data oriented. Right now I search for a team number and I get their info, but I also have this really ugly sidebar on the right of the site that contains links to your site.

I don't mean to be rude, but.....

I don't care about The Blue Alliance. In fact, I don't even know what team/who runs it. I only use it to acquire data, so how about replacing the right sidebar full of links with that team's twitter feed, or other useful information.

I'd also LOVE to see a public api so I could write my own scripts to automate some of my team's scouting.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by GGCO

I'd also LOVE to see a public api so I could write my own scripts to automate some of my team's scouting.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=75368

[MarkoRamius1086]

When will the off season matches (such as IRI and BOB...) be posted on TheBlueAlliance?

[Nevets Amstier]

Greg-

As to how TBA is used to introduce people to first:

At the start of each new fall semester, Clarkson tries to recruit new college students via the activities fair, followed by a more formal introductory meeting. At this meeting we always start with a more in-depth explanation which is best done by showing match videos from various years, pictures of truly excellent robots, and the game introduction videos.


Suggestions:

1) I think it'd be useful to have a simple page associated with each year that archives the game intro video, with a simple description of the game (scoring methods, penalties, etc..) as well as the teams/people who won NATIONAL recognition (nat'l chairmans, nat'l woodie flowers, Overall Winners, Overall Runner-ups, nat'l autodesk, nat'l safety vid, etc...)

2) I know that this suggestion is way out there seeing as all of you have your own careers/schooling to think about. But I would LOVE to see the return of TBA to the kickoff event. For alot of teams, the way TBA members demonstrated how the game elements behaved, how big they were, descriptions of texture, etc... were unbelievabley helpful.

Thanks!

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by GGCO

Maybe allow anyone to add content to a team's profile.

I would also really like the site to be much more data oriented. Right now I search for a team number and I get their info, but I also have this really ugly sidebar on the right of the site that contains links to your site.

I don't mean to be rude, but.....

I don't care about The Blue Alliance. In fact, I don't even know what team/who runs it. I only use it to acquire data, so how about replacing the right sidebar full of links with that team's twitter feed, or other useful information.

I'd also LOVE to see a public api so I could write my own scripts to automate some of my team's scouting.

Greg, I think you guys need a ticker up at the top. Hours of video served (maybe displayed in days). Hours of video hosted. Calls made to FIRST website. And most importantly, hours of development (Maybe include a rough estimate of the cost if you were to charge for your services. I guess I would call that "useful" information.

Sorry for derailing the thread...

[Greg Marra]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Greg, I think you guys need a ticker up at the top. Hours of video served (maybe displayed in days). Hours of video hosted. Calls made to FIRST website. And most importantly, hours of development (Maybe include a rough estimate of the cost if you were to charge for your services. I guess I would call that "useful" information.

I think this is valuable feedback. We don't do a good job logging right now in a way that gives us deep insight to people's interaction patterns. We should do a better job and make a public dashboard.

Originally Posted by Nevets Amstier

1) I think it'd be useful to have a simple page associated with each year that archives the game intro video, with a simple description of the game (scoring methods, penalties, etc..) as well as the teams/people who won NATIONAL recognition (nat'l chairmans, nat'l woodie flowers, Overall Winners, Overall Runner-ups, nat'l autodesk, nat'l safety vid, etc...)

I like this idea for each year's page. I think a "Welcome to Breakaway" page would be valuable throughout the whole season. Want to know about the 2011 FIRST game? Go to The Blue Alliance.

Originally Posted by GGCO

I don't care about The Blue Alliance. In fact, I don't even know what team/who runs it. I only use it to acquire data, so how about replacing the right sidebar full of links with that team's twitter feed, or other useful information.

I'd also LOVE to see a public api so I could write my own scripts to automate some of my team's scouting.

You are right that the right hand sidebar isn't very useful. It does link to the Developer API.

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Since you automatically get the information up on the page anyway, it would be neat if you could implement OPR for each year. That OPR could update as the new scores came in.

Likewise, it would be cool if people were able to post webcast links on TBA for given events.

If someone can write a Python library to calculate OPR scores, it would be much easier for us to implement. How long does running OPR math take? If it's very long, we'll have to think about it harder, but if we can get it to run in under 30 seconds, we can drop it straight in.

Webcast links is an awesome idea that we'll be sure to do.

Originally Posted by ProgramLuke

Any idea when this new TBA will be operational?

I think we'll have something people can play with by the end of October. In an ideal world, we'd have the basic site good to go by 2011 and mobile apps good to go by ship day. Unfortunately, we're dramatically understaffed.

Thanks for all your thoughts and ideas!
-Greg

[NickE]

Originally Posted by Greg Marra

...mobile apps good to go by ship day.

You might already know about this, but PhoneGap provides a nice way to write the code for mobile apps once and have it work on Android/iPhone/Blackberry/webOs/etc rather than re-writing code for each platform (That and you write the code in HTML/CSS/JS).

[GGCO]

You are right that the right hand sidebar isn't very useful. It does link to the Developer API.

Lol, didn't even see it there. That just proves my point though. The sidebar just takes up space rather than providing useful features.

[Brandon_L]

Haven't read any of the suggestions yet, but seeing the topic reminded me of an old idea I had. What about a contact team button? or something along the lines. Things like emails or phone numbers.

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

Haven't read any of the suggestions yet, but seeing the topic reminded me of an old idea I had. What about a contact team button? or something along the lines. Things like emails or phone numbers.

That's a really good idea.