This is my first year helping out with scouting for my daughter’s team. I have a web development background and while my daughter’s team did things paper based last year I want to help them get into the digital age. I am looking for a scouting application that is app based, on android, and can be used while having a Bluetooth server built into the app to keep all data synced for matches.
I have seen the krawler app and thunder-scout so far. are there any others out there to evaluate. I was also wondering when thunder-scout and frc krawler might be updated for this season comp. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Developer of ThunderScout here! Just want to let you know that I am working on a 2017 release. A usable version should hopefully be available in Week 0, but no promises…
Please be careful jumping directly from paper to electronic, the transition takes time. If everyone is gung-ho then by all means, just don’t force it. I found this out the hard way.
I am working on 876’s implementation of WildRank, it does not meet all of your criteria, as it is usb sync based. I am not positive on my release date for 876’s 2017 update, I am thinking sometime on or near Feb. 7th (After F.U.N.). The code is being pushed to a github repo, however the current version is broken (due to porting over to the new season).
Wildrank is a great, feature-rich system, but with that come a high maintaince nature. If someone does go with my implementation after relese please note that a large portion of the code was changed since the 2015 version (on which it is based). I will not be providing the companion spreadsheet for further analysis of the output ( we have to keep some sort of competative advantage eh?)
Important points about wildrank:
USB sync based (tablets must support usb OTG)
Built for Android 4.2.2, however newer versions should work
Team based scouting, not alliance or location
Offers multi screen scouting, high data redundency, data compilation, whiteboard
Immune to holes in data
In short, Wildrank is not for the scouting beginner, if you are seasoned in java and android development you will do just fine. It is a well rounded app offering a ton of functionality.
That all being said. If you are coming from straight paper I recommend an intermediate season with paper slips and excel. If there is a year to do this 2017 is it, there is a lot of quaitative data that will be collected so a well laid out spreadsheet should be a breeze for data input (Just make sure students switch out on the data entry position every 5 matches or so, plugging numbers in is NOT fun as a spectator). An access database may also be a good way to go about this as it has surpurb input forms.
I posted this to the general forum last night; probably should have posted it in this scouting sub-forum.
Redshift/4048 has released our scouting app from 2016 on github and it’s available to anyone who wants to play with it. The code consists of 2 parts. Part 1 is an Android app that allows a scout to enter data on a tablet, chromebook or phone (if you have sharp eyes!). Part 2 uses bluetooth to download that data onto a Windows laptop where the data is stored into a database and retrieved by Tableau for analysis.
The code we released is for 2016 so it will need to be adjusted for 2017. But we figured each team has their own needs so it’s up to them to decide what’s important in their game play. Making changes involves changing the user interface on the Android app (what data to log from a match) and changing the corresponding database schema to reflect this data. The laptop code is written in Java and it uses mySQL for its database. We haven’t ported it ourselves for 2017 yet which is why we released last year’s code only.
The nice thing about this setup is that scouting data is very quickly transferred to the laptop, there are no cables, the tablets have decent battery life so only the laptop needs to be kept charged. And best of all, Android tablets are cheap - we bought Amazon Fire tablets during the holidays 2 years ago for about $50 each. You can get cheaper but we wanted a name-brand in case something went wrong (and students are torture on devices!).
And don’t forget that there’s a free license for Tableau too.
I have built/building a web based scouting application that is very mobile friendly. The url is https://www.frcscout.resnick-tech.com. I have begun updates for FIRST STEAMWORKS so some stuff is still in progress. Please feel free to sign up and register your team and play with it.
On my team, I worked with a group of developers to develop a scouting app system we call Scouting Radar. It currently does not use WiFi or bluetooth since ours uses QR codes to transfer data. Currently, the system is on android and uses 2 separate applications. The links are posted below. If you need any help using it, please see the thread we have, link down below. Thanks!
Team 3489 is working on an android app that will use blue tooth server capability. I haven’t seen it yet but our team will be using it this year once we get a copy. I am really excited to see this years scouting app from them.
Here is a link to the scouting app that 836, the RoboBees have developed. This is the 4th year of building/updating the app.
The app is designed to be used on Android phones. Students enter data and it periodically updates our database via cellular data. It can hold data in a cache until it can connect. The database then generates two files - one with pit scouting data, and the other with match data. We use Qlik Cloud (www.qlik.com), which updates the analytic software prior to our matches. The app has some analytically capability, graphs, trends, etc. if you don’t have a front end analytical tool. We have also developed, as part of this app, a picklist function. All of this relies on just cellular data, avoiding any issues with wifi at the event.
For this year, I suggest developing a Google Sheets format that you can use on tablets or laptops, and then transfer data by either Bluetooth or by wire to be compiled on a master Google Sheet. Then have your drive team access the Google Sheet from their phone.
How many programmers do you have? If you have at least 3-4, you can build a system like ours that we’ve evolved since 2013. There is a whitepaper that describes our 2016 system (which was pretty stable), including both the hardware and coding requirements. (I don’t remember if we released the code because we want other teams to work on learning to develop their own systems.) If you have any questions about setting up this type of system, we have Powerpoint and video presentations, and we will consult with you to the extent that we can.
This is a great opportunity for students to learn app and database programming. The student who developed the system now has a continuing summer internship at Apple on the basis of this work.
Tying in with Sheets, if they have time I’d take a look at AppSheet. It seems to be a pretty simple way to develop an android (ios?) app that syncs to Sheets.
There are a couple notable features, like being able to set permissions for editing entries (input only vs. changes allowed) and the possibility to save data to the device for syncing later.
Someone recommended it last summer, so I haven’t used it for real, but trying it out it seemed to work alright. I also recall it can use pre-existing Sheets (of tabular data) to build the app fields.
Since replying I looked at a template app I tried and made some quick changes and it is 80% towards being a workable pit scouting app. Just need to add in a couple additional photo fields and a few game specific questions and then figure out the whole deployment. BTW the template was for a product catalog and I just substitute teams for products. For your app do you allow all changes? For pit scouting I’m thinking of pre-filling all the teams and just allowing updates.
Ya for pit scouting, i prefill all the teams for that event, and just let people update the information by selecting the team. Same for match scouting, I prefill all 6 spots for every match and scouters just select the position/match they want to scout at that time.
Just gonna throw it in here, GearScout 2017 was just released for android. It does not sync via bluetooth, but it should be pretty easy to adapt, as all server data will be synced once an internet connection is made. The GearData app will allow you to easily view/export your data, and will work nicely with excel/tableau.
I have built/building a web based scouting application that is very mobile friendly. The url is https://www.frcscout.resnick-tech.com. It is built using The Blue Alliance APIs an webhooks so a lot of stuff is automated. Updates for the 2017 season is pretty much done. Please feel free to sign up and register your team and play with it. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, requests, comments…