pic: Cross Platform Scouting App

[comwiz7]

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[NickE]

Is it [fairly] easily modified for other games?

[Akash Rastogi]

The type of data you guys are gathering is spot on. So clearly you guys do know what to scout for. Once you know that, it is easy to adapt and format of scouting to a new game. btw i like the GUI

[comwiz7]

Is it [fairly] easily modified for other games?

Yeah, I could probably change it to the new game pretty quick once I know what we need to scout for. When I finish all the basic functionality (hopefully within the next week) I'll upload it to my team's web site with the source code. It's a fairly simple app.

Later on, I want to make it show pictures of the robots and maybe analyze the data and rank them to the different categories.

I imagine this would be a really good use for a netbook.

[Billfred]

I like this concept of being able to store the data locally to offload later. With wifi likely to be unavailable (and wired networking tricky in the stands), the idea of being able to run six distinct laptops and merge later (at the end of the day or right before alliance selections) seems like the best approach. I'd be interested to see how this works in practice.

[alectronic]

i would love to see a copy of that code when its ready. it looks like a really cool idea. for a while the Titans (492) have set-up a wireless ntwrk in the stands and had 6-8 scouts all connected around the same area to dump data in, then one computer captures it all for reports. it seems to work fine, but the usability and visual sides have never turned out too good.

[R.C.]

BTW, will be uploaded and the source code will be available to download @ www.team1323.com: Resources/programming/C/C++. I like the GUI too.

[daltore]

Perty. Really nice, looks like it'll make scouting soooo much easier (this coming from a team that didn't really set aside any people/time to scout at all last year and ended up with an alliance we didn't really fit in). Thanks for the hard work!

A couple of questions:

-Is the merging standardized already (standard file locations based on particular OS's which can be automatically cross loaded through a serial connection)? Don't worry too much about that kind of support, flash drives are awesome and shell/batch scripts are easy, I'm just curious.

-Are the two viewer windows children of the main window (with the logo)? i.e. if you minimize or X out of the main window, do the other two go away also?

-The "export" button, what does it export to? Excel, PDF, text document? What are the individual team records stored as?

-If activated from the command line, is it possible to route some kind of output through an external command?

[comwiz7]

-Is the merging standardized already (standard file locations based on particular OS's which can be automatically cross loaded through a serial connection)? Don't worry too much about that kind of support, flash drives are awesome and shell/batch scripts are easy, I'm just curious.

I was planning on having a directory (set in Preferences) with one small file per team and when you load a team it just searches for the file in that directory with that team number as the title. Therefore if you just combine all the directories (transferring with a flash drive) it will be able to read them all.

-Are the two viewer windows children of the main window (with the logo)? i.e. if you minimize or X out of the main window, do the other two go away also?

Yes when you close the main window it destroys all objects including the other windows and exits the program.

-The "export" button, what does it export to? Excel, PDF, text document? What are the individual team records stored as?

Currently, the export button does nothing. Exporting as a text document would probably be easy to implement but if I can figure out how to do it as an excel spreadsheet I would do that instead.

-If activated from the command line, is it possible to route some kind of output through an external command?

I could add that kind of functionality if you have any specific ideas.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by comwiz7

I was planning on having a directory (set in Preferences) with one small file per team and when you load a team it just searches for the file in that directory with that team number as the title. Therefore if you just combine all the directories (transferring with a flash drive) it will be able to read them all.

So if multiple people on different machines have collected data on a single team can it be merged into one file?

[comwiz7]

So if multiple people on different machines have collected data on a single team can it be merged into one file?

I hadn't thought about that. What would it do when merging? Find the average of the data?

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by comwiz7

I hadn't thought about that. What would it do when merging? Find the average of the data?

What does it do now when one person collects multiple sets of data on the same team? Or is it only made to scout each team once?

[daltore]

Originally Posted by comwiz7

I hadn't thought about that. What would it do when merging? Find the average of the data?

For every match in which you collect data for a specific team, does the program create another instance of data in the team's file? If so, then merging two files of the same team could just add all of the different instances into the one merged file (any instances of the same match would just take one of them, possibly the one with the longer comment, or combine comments, etc.) To make this easier, it would probably help to add in a "Match #" field. For data submission, you type in the match number, and for data recollection, you could have a drop-down menu with all of the available matches for that team as well as one of all of the averages and/or totals. Sorry if I'm making this harder, but that would probably provide the largest amount of useful data over the course of the game, because you could see their cumulative results, average results, and improvement.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by comwiz7

I hadn't thought about that. What would it do when merging? Find the average of the data?

I wouldn't do that when merging. There are good reasons that you'd want the data separate (say, finding a team that had a "Nirvana moment" late on Friday). You could, however, [theory] have an Excel sheet with a separate tab for each team or group of teams and have the merge put the data on separate lines.[/theory] Then you do whatever you like with the data.

[Edit] See daltore's response for a clearer description. It will be harder. It will be worth it.

[comwiz7]

What does it do now when one person collects multiple sets of data on the same team? Or is it only made to scout each team once?

For every match in which you collect data for a specific team, does the program create another instance of data in the team's file?

Currently it overwrites the previous data.

To make this easier, it would probably help to add in a "Match #" field. For data submission, you type in the match number, and for data recollection, you could have a drop-down menu with all of the available matches for that team as well as one of all of the averages and/or totals.

Good idea, I'll do that. It'll be a fun challenge.

Sorry if I'm making this harder, but that would probably provide the largest amount of useful data over the course of the game, because you could see their cumulative results, average results, and improvement.

Don't be sorry I like the challenge. Like I said I want this to be as useful as I can make it. Detailed analysis is actually my long term goal. For now, I'm going to finish the functionality pictured and release that on my team web site in a day or two. Then I'll start adding the more complicated features. Hopefully those will be done in a few weeks.

Right now when you select "Save" the program creates a file titled with the team number (without an extension) and when you click load it looks for the file with that team number for a name. For multiple matches I could add the match number field next to the team number field and when it saves it could name it "teamnumber_matchnumber".