Hey guys, I’m wondering if you guys have any recommendations for resources and tools for scouting?
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Try to have the students attend an off season competitions near you (if there is one), and scout the teams there. It’s a great low pressure way to scout for the first time, before doing it at build season competitions.
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I wouldnt directly throw all of these directly threads into the hands of those brand new to scouting but this is a good set of threads to get the bearings on a good baseline of scouting and common pitfalls to avoid as you set up your scouting system and train scouters.
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Can I just use a google form for scouting?
Yes you can, and that data can go into a spreadsheet. Pretty much how my team’s been doing it up to now.
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As @asha_forever mentioned, you definitely can.
Two things to be aware of though with this approach is that not all venues have cellular service readily available, and not all students (or mentors in some cases) have access to a phone with a data plan.
If your team can manage those potential hurdles, then a google form may work well for you.
Also remember that data collection is only one piece of the puzzle. Sorting that data into an easily readable format can be equally challenging, and then there is being able to interpret the data presented to you and make sound decisions based upon it.
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Cool, thanks! Is your team also using a google form?
I’ve not used google forms before for scouting, but do think it could be a potentially viable solution.
This past year we used ScoutingPASS by PWNAGE, in combination with 2194’s Scouting Analysis Spreadsheet. It worked well for us, and I’d say helped contribute to our teams successes this past year.
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Thanks!
SocutingPASS is a cool program, especially for its offline capabilities. I can also recommend Scoutradioz for its predesigned functionality, which makes beginning with scouting easier.
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(I am not sure of your specific team circumstances)
If you have members of your team who have been to competition previously, I would recommend asking them how your team does scouting and asking them for training on that.
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I remember seeing this thread last season and loved the concept. Was really interested in trying it out, but the “Voyager” offline mode never seemed to get released, and that’s a hard requirement for our team.
If the offline mode ever does come to fruition, we’ll be looking into it for sure!
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Yeah, I think the “Voyager” mode is still in development. I too would love to see an “offline mode”, though I’ve never had to much issue with cell service in venues (I’m sure your experience is different).
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Google form is great. Real time updates a plus.
Review of other scout sheets, past years, or supplied forms is helpful.
However until a game reveal how can you know what to scout. Further much of what you scout need be data important to your specific robot function. Where do other robots compliment your gameplay? Are there other bots that would interfere with your play?
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Just a note:
A lot of systems out there (perhaps all in this thread) rely on 6 people available at any given time in order to scout.
If it is difficult to reach those numbers you need to either:
A) Work with another team to bolster numbers (this can be beneficial if you are leaning a common system they have adapted as you can learn from them)
B) Adopt a system that scouts alliances instead of individual teams and pulls info from that
C) Quickly reduce the number of teams you are scouting (this has the added benefit of having matches where there are few/no teams you are interested in, providing a much needed break for people)
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7431 is going to be testing a google forms version of scouting with a google sheets dashboard in our upcoming offseason event. It provides a dashboard sheet that can be viewed/edited through the google sheets app for the drive coach/strategist at competitions and before matches. By imputing a team number into the box it updates all of the information on the team pulling from the google form responses. Here’s a link to the dashboard-Scouting Database 2024 - Google Sheets. Team data in the dashboard now is as a proof of concept and is not accurate/true. Our team has historically used paper scouting which has been ineffective and lacked real time updates for our drive team which rendered it useless for match strategy. We are hoping this will be a more effective and streamlined process.
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Adding on to this, last season, at our first competition, my team scouted 20ish “teams of interest” for as many matches as possible. After this being quite intense, at our second competition, we switched to doing 5 matches per “team of interest” + Pit scouting. This change made scouting easier to fit into busy comp schedules, gave Scouters more time to enjoy the competition itself, and made it more focused on teams/robots as a whole. Our data was just as useful, and shifted the focus of scouting away from purely mass data collection.
Switching up scouting strategies can be helpful for smaller teams, enabling us to get the same insights, but with less repetition and a greater focus on the purpose of it.
There are a lot of resources out there, I think that @Real-Life-Data has a lot of potential and I am really excited about it, right now they are undergoing beta testing with some teams. Winners of the 2023 Scouting Palooza will have access to RLD licenses!
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@cad321 @vladb fwiw, team 102 alpha-tested the “Voyager” mode in November at Brunswick Eruption and it worked surprisingly well pretty much exactly as expected; it will be polished up and ready for public review and use by Feb. 10th. 
The team just posted this year’s update thread
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Very cool. Unfortunately I couldn’t be at Brunswick Eruption, but I’m following what’s posted on the Discord. Happy to see it coming out of beta and excited to try it.
(Just saw the Discord message).