In the past, our team has only used paper and pencil methods of scouting. However, we wish to move away from this method and on to an easier, faster, more technology incorporate way of collecting data and analyzing it. We have been considering using wii remotes with a laptop, but there have to be more ways than that…any suggestions? what would work the best? especially considering this year’s challenge
If you use some type of gadget to do it, then you need enough gadgets for all your scouts. Scouting seems to work best if you have six scouts working at one time, each scout is assigned the robot that starts in one of the 6 positions on the field. So that means you’d need six (or seven or so including spares) devices. We’ve used the Nintendo DS in the past, which worked well when we had a lot of students who owned the device. You could use smart phones, or some other device instead.
Things to consider when trying to decide on a platform include the cost of the platform, battery life, ease of use, cost and availability of any ancillary parts needed (wiimotes or special DS cards for example) and ease of programming.
Battery life with laptops is especially important, because it’s not easy to get AC power in the stands where your scouts will be sitting. You can figure on needing the device to be running for roughly 6-8 hours a day, at least.
And ease of programming is important because of the limited time you have now to get something working.
One year we did attempt a scantron system. In theory it was a good idea. In practice it was difficult. The basis of the scouting system does not change from year to year. We have since moved away from this method, but I wanted to mention the concept as it may be simple enough to implement at this stage of the game and meet your basic requirements.