Eagle Robotics 5417 - FRC Scouting System

[brett-kaplan]

Introducing 5417’s Scouting System

Hello! I’m a programmer from Team 5417 Eagle Robotics. Our team has been working on this scouting system project for over a year. We started the project during the Rapid React season and had a functioning product; however, we were not happy with the amount of effort it took to tweak the tiniest thing inside of it. We started anew this year intending to be completely configurable with minimal effort.

The system consists of two parts, a mobile application, and a desktop application. The mobile application is used to gather data on teams competing in real-time. The scouter then saves that information, which can be turned into a QR code. The desktop application utilizes a QR code scanner to read these codes and transfer data to a centralized location without breaking the wireless communication rules. An analysis is then possible on the computer with the ability to visualize data through graphs.

The features of the mobile application include automatic team number generation (requires a Blue Alliance API key, a selected event, a one-time WIFI connection, and a selection on which team you are scouting [e.g., Blue Two]) and the ability to have headers, number inputs, slider inputs, text inputs, and checkbox inputs. The features of the desktop application include no-compile required changes for the dataset, configurable sort options, configurable plot options, and the ability to filter data. You can use one or multiple data points in the plot options and sort options, allowing even more opportunities to analyze the data.

Links:

• Mobile Application Github
• Desktop Application Github

Images:

If you encounter a technical issue, please report it to the “Issues” section of the corresponding github repository so we can look into it!

[NewtonCrosbyJr]

What framework are you running your database from, and is there a way for mobile devices for access it?

[brett-kaplan]

The goal was to minimize the character count as much as possible since the data is transferred through QR codes, so the data is stored in a key=val,key2=val2 format. It isn’t using a SQL based database to allow rapid changes to the dataset without requiring a DB rewrite. There isn’t a way for the mobile devices to access the centralized database; only the desktop application can. We use pretty old phones, so we wanted all of the analytical computing to be done on a more powerful system. Also since there’s more room to display data on a computer.

[Kylepowers]

This looks great. But I am not as familiar with github and QT. Does the mobile app already have the blue alliance key or do I need to add it and how do I do that? Also is QT5 free? Thanks!

[brett-kaplan]

You would need to add it. There are full instructions are on the github, but basically clone the repository, open it in android studio, head to the strings.xml file, put it in the designated section, and build the apk. QT5 is free. The windows version requires a login to download, but it is an apt package on debian.

[rileybrownLFC]

Wanted to say that 2996 used your scouting app and analyzer app for both of our regionals and it was great! It was nice to be able to focus on collecting data rather than debugging issues with our own app. Awesome job and we really appreciate this resource!!

[brett-kaplan]

Thank you very much! We are very glad you used it and it worked for you! If you have any suggestions or requests for the app, please let us know!