Advice for a hapless rookie?

[Sila741]

Hel-lo. Right now I am going three kinds of crazy trying to make my schedule work, and i got chosen to be my teams scout. I have no idea what i am doing though. I have heard about stamp, and the network, but one i don't know how to work, and the other i can't find. The competitions in 10 days, and i afraid of turning up with nothing. Can anyone give a few tips, or something?

[DjAlamose]

My suggestion, Watch the regional’s and make your own database. I have found it easier to make your own in MS Access or Excel. You get the information you want, its customizable, and you don't have to enter extraneous information that you might not want of need.

As for scouting wise, on Thursday get all of the pit scouting out of the way. By pit scouting I mean going up to each and EVERY team and asking them about their robot. This is when you want to ask as many questions as possible. The answers may be biased but you will know things like number of speed transmission and how fast the robot is. You will also know their main functions such as shooting or corner dumper. Also take pictures of the robot for reference (it helps allot). We use PowerPoint for this. That way we can view the PowerPoint and go through the robots and see what ones do what.

Then on Friday and Saturday have a group of student watch the matches and take down information on what the teams actually did. Its hard to count the number of balls that go into a corner goal but you can count the number of shots made into the center goal. Also look for things like is the robot strictly defensive and how good is their human player. This will be the most valuable information. All you need is a database to enter that information into. I would suggest using Microsoft access. It provides a good way to enter and sort data. But you can always use Excel.

Start designing the database now. It’s actually not as hard as it may seem. Tthe programs come with wizards that can help you make the forms and databases work.

[Lisa Perez]

Also, don't forget to check the White Papers section of Chief Delphi. Some teams have already uploaded scouting sheets for all to use.

Keep in mind that, while pit scouting can be done by one person, it is *awfully* hard to do match scouting solo. I'd suggest pulling in 5 other students so that each one can keep track of one robot during the match.

Feel free to PM or IM me if you have any other questions.

[Tim Delles]

OKay so you are going to SVR.

If you are really that worried about not havig anything prepared for the competition I would suggest talking to some veteran teams about what they do to pre-scout. You have a lot of teams that are veteran teams going, and I am pretty sure that team 254, The Cheesepoofs would be glad to help you in any way they could.

One more helpful hint for you is did you watch any matches from last week. If not it may be helpful for you to watch it so that you can understand how the game has unfolded to this point. You can catch all of the NASA/VCU Regional Matches here

Also if you do go their with nothing it is not that big of a problem. You will thursday(Practice) to see how things are begining to unfold for your regional. This will give you some time to see what teams are working toward being able to do both in and out of autonomous mode.

Good luck

[EricH]

Two tips:
1) When you do pit scouting, act like you believe everything the other teams tell you, and take pictures. The other teams may be exaggerating, but you'll find that out when you do match scouting.

2) When you do match scouting, you need a minimum of six people. It is impossible for one person to do three robots, and two is very hard. Use something simple, like a printout of an Excel spreadsheet with a simple data system, and keep it as objective as possible.

[DjAlamose]

Originally Posted by EricH

Two tips:
1) When you do pit scouting, act like you believe everything the other teams tell you, and take pictures. The other teams may be exaggerating, but you'll find that out when you do match scouting.

2) When you do match scouting, you need a minimum of six people. It is impossible for one person to do three robots, and two is very hard. Use something simple, like a printout of an Excel spreadsheet with a simple data system, and keep it as objective as possible.

Not alot of teams (like ours) have the resources to have 6 people do match scouting. That is why we have come up with a solution that utilizes 4 people:

You split the students up into two groups. Each group has a computer with the database and software loaded and ready to go. Then each of the m watches an entire alliance. They take notes about robots and what they do. Then after the matches are over, they collaborate and enter the data into the computer.

It would be great to have 6 people watching the matches but then it can become hectic to organize all of the papers unless you have a way for each person to enter the data separately. Data organization is the hard part, especially when you have limited resources. These days laptops are commonplace and you don’t need anything fancy for what we are doing here. You must also look at what is the most important information to gather. If you are trying to gather too much information then you won’t get the same results. You want to limit the amount of data for the resources you have. Do not try and get too much data, it will just cause too many problems.

If you can, partner up with another team to do your scouting. It is a great way to show your willingness to help other teams as well as get to know new people. Plus the data will be less biased because you will have multiple points of view. There are plenty of ways to get things done it’s just a matter of deciding what you need and how to get it done.

[EricH]

We don't have enough people on the team to do it either. We enlist parents and family and mentors that aren't in the pits to help.

[Sila741]

Thank you all for your good advice and tips. As it happens, we do have a partner team, team 254. But i have to ask, how do you use stamp? I can't figure it out.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Sila741

Thank you all for your good advice and tips. As it happens, we do have a partner team, team 254. But i have to ask, how do you use stamp? I can't figure it out.

After seeing the STAMP interface a couple days ago, I'd say it's a network thing. You enter the match number and the sytem will automatically keep track of team number. You click on the little boxes with plus signs to add balls to the goals. You enter the other information, then hit submit. We'd have used it, but the boxes are too small for us to find and click during a match.

[Ethulin]

Originally Posted by Sila741

Thank you all for your good advice and tips. As it happens, we do have a partner team, team 254. But i have to ask, how do you use stamp? I can't figure it out.

STAMP works as such:

You set up a "server computer". This computer must have some sort of web server, PHP, and mySQL installed. We recomend XAMPP for people not too sure what they are doing. After setting up XAMPP you drop the extracted files from the stamp dir into your htdocs dir of XAMPP. You then start up XAMPP, run the database setup with the config of sqluser=root and sqlpass="" (''" meaning nothing) and you are good to go!

STAMP does require a pretty good scouting team, it functions best with 6 people. I find that many teams hawe this many people meandering the croweds. Just pick up your meanderers and get them to work!

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by Sila741

Hel-lo. Right now I am going three kinds of crazy trying to make my schedule work, and i got chosen to be my teams scout. I have no idea what i am doing though. I have heard about stamp, and the network, but one i don't know how to work, and the other i can't find. The competitions in 10 days, and i afraid of turning up with nothing. Can anyone give a few tips, or something?

Sila-
scouting is probably best as a team effort and it is VERY important this year. You should determine what YOUR robot can and cannot do and use those strengths and weaknesses to search out potential partners that can supplement your skills to effectively play the game.

There are lots of sophisticated programs out there that teams use. But there are many teams that use a clipboard and homemade questionnaires with facts they would like to know about the others so they can find the best matches. I am sure CD white papers have some. You can pm me if you need one and I'll send you ours.

Some other observations that may be helpful-

1. people tend to overestimate the abilities of their own robots (rose colored glasses syndrome) . Be polite but dont take their words at face value. Get some actual numbers from your own assessments.

2. Therefore- be sure to watch the rounds where the other teams play under different circumstances. Do they function reliably? Or do they do the job once in a while?

3. Look for quality and robustness in the machines that will assure they survive to the end of the day.

4. Look for teams that work with others as partners. Sometimes we see teams who insist on doing things their way only- despite repeated failures.

5. plan to spend Friday compiling data and get a ranking report ready for your team Friday night for Sat morning. Update it during the day Sat and be ready before 11 so you have a good set of 20 partner picks in order.

6. Work with your drive teams and go over the picks early so that your rep will have a handicap sheet to check off at the lunchtime picking session.
As the picks are made- if you are a part of the picking 8- you check off the taken ones and it is evident who you have left to work with.

Even if your team isn't one of the top eight a good scouting effort can help the team that picks you immensely. A good alliance will include all three teams' knowledge in playing their elimination game.

Our team generally assigns every first year member to a scouting team and we use this to teach them what robots are all about. The drivers rarely have time to look over the guts of all the machines and see the weak spots. You can save the day and maybe pick up some tips for next year's machine by looking at the ideas of the other teams.

Again- if you want our head scouts to talk to just PM me and I'll hook you up. You can do this and it is a lot of fun.

WC

[Sila741]

Wayne, thanks for the offer, but i don't think i will need it after all. Our partner teams scouts have been training me a bit, also letting me look at thier old scouting sheets.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

Sila-
scouting is probably best as a team effort and it is VERY important this year. You should determine what YOUR robot can and cannot do and use those strengths and weaknesses to search out potential partners that can supplement your skills to effectively play the game.

There are lots of sophisticated programs out there that teams use. But there are many teams that use a clipboard and homemade questionnaires with facts they would like to know about the others so they can find the best matches. I am sure CD white papers have some. You can pm me if you need one and I'll send you ours.

Some other observations that may be helpful-

1. people tend to overestimate the abilities of their own robots (rose colored glasses syndrome) . Be polite but dont take their words at face value. Get some actual numbers from your own assessments.

2. Therefore- be sure to watch the rounds where the other teams play under different circumstances. Do they function reliably? Or do they do the job once in a while?

3. Look for quality and robustness in the machines that will assure they survive to the end of the day.

4. Look for teams that work with others as partners. Sometimes we see teams who insist on doing things their way only- despite repeated failures.

5. plan to spend Friday compiling data and get a ranking report ready for your team Friday night for Sat morning. Update it during the day Sat and be ready before 11 so you have a good set of 20 partner picks in order.

6. Work with your drive teams and go over the picks early so that your rep will have a handicap sheet to check off at the lunchtime picking session.
As the picks are made- if you are a part of the picking 8- you check off the taken ones and it is evident who you have left to work with.

Even if your team isn't one of the top eight a good scouting effort can help the team that picks you immensely. A good alliance will include all three teams' knowledge in playing their elimination game.

Our team generally assigns every first year member to a scouting team and we use this to teach them what robots are all about. The drivers rarely have time to look over the guts of all the machines and see the weak spots. You can save the day and maybe pick up some tips for next year's machine by looking at the ideas of the other teams.

Again- if you want our head scouts to talk to just PM me and I'll hook you up. You can do this and it is a lot of fun.

WC

Excellent advice from a longtime veteran of FIRST.

Begging Wayne's pardon, but the list in #5 should have at least 24 teams (minimum number of teams in the playoffs).

I would also add that if you find yourselves picking, evaluate the teams ranked higher than you as well. Just because a team finished ahead of you doesn't mean the two robots work together well. Too many teams get caught up in the emotion "They picked us #1", and don't take time to consider if it is a good matchup or not. Be prepared to graciously accept or decline the selection; don't look quizzically into the stands for help from your team. It's too late to consider the pairing at that point.

If you follow Wayne's advice, you are guaranteed to have a top-notch scouting effort, whichever regional you attend.

Good Luck with your robot!

[ScoutingJunky]

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, however I might add that you should be tactful in what you put on the scouting forms. No matter what you think of a robot you should be sure to be polite in your evaluation of them. I mean, who knows, you may be their partners in the next round and they may ask to see your sheet on them (it's happened to me before, luckily there wasn't anything bad on the form).

Also, when making your scouting form, be sure to make as many fields as possible check boxes or multiple choice. This is really important because it is a really hard game to scout this year, and the less you have to think while scouting the more information you will be able to record.

In my experience (I've been scouting since my day one, and am in my second year as head scout) I have found that the more scouts you have the better. My perfect system has 9 people working constantly.

6 to fill out the scouting forms, one person per team.

1 to organize the scouting binder and make sure that the 6 get the forms for the next match in time.

1 to enter all of the information in to a computer data base and provide the last person (me) with any statistics he/she needs for the next match.

And the last person overseeing everything and watching the matches as a whole instead of just at individual robots. This person also takes notes on robots that to exceptionally well, break down, or what have you. In addition this person takes the scouting sheets for all 5 of the other robots in the team's next match, gets all of the statistics for those robots from the guy on the computer, and runs it down to the pit to talk it over with the drivers and the coach to get the best strategy for that match.

In an even more perfect world you'd have a couple extra guys so you can actually take breaks, get a drink, something to eat or just sit back and enjoy a match. But, when you're at a competition not too close to home it doesn't always work out.

good luck to everyone, and to everyone going to the Silicon Valley Regional: I'll see you there

[Sila741]

Originally Posted by ScoutingJunky

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, however I might add that you should be tactful in what you put on the scouting forms. No matter what you think of a robot you should be sure to be polite in your evaluation of them. I mean, who knows, you may be their partners in the next round and they may ask to see your sheet on them (it's happened to me before, luckily there wasn't anything bad on the form).

Also, when making your scouting form, be sure to make as many fields as possible check boxes or multiple choice. This is really important this year because it is a really hard game to scout this year, and the less you have to think while scouting the more information you will be able to record.

In my experience (I've been scouting since my day one, and am in my second year as head scout) I have found that the more scouts you have the better. My perfect system has 9 people working constantly.

6 to fill out the scouting forms, one person per team.

1 to organize the scouting binder and make sure that the 6 get the forms for the next match in time.

1 to enter all of the information in to a computer data base and provide the last person (me) with any statistics he/she needs for the next match.

And the last person overseeing everything and watching the matches as a whole instead of just at individual robots. This person also takes notes on robots that to exceptionally well, break down, or what have you. In addition this person takes the scouting sheets for all 5 of the other robots in the team's next match, gets all of the statistics for those robots from the guy on the computer, and runs it down to the pit to talk it over with the drivers and the coach to get the best strategy for that match.

That is a great system, and sounds like it would work great. Small problem though. Our team only has 10 girls, and 6 mentors. I could proboly snag a few people off your team , but it would still be tight. Besides, you will all proboly be busy.