This season, I wanted an app that I could use as a companion while volunteering - so I wrote one!
FRC Notebook allows you to download the schedule for an event and, as each match goes by, attach a note to a team. Notes you make on a team for one match show up in the rest of their matches as reminders. Perfect for keeping track of what happened to teams during each of their matches and having it all organized nicely for you. And I bet you can find this useful for scouting, as well.
The app also supports predefined notes, so you can input a set of notes you use often and avoid typing them out again and again.
I ran the app through its paces with the FTA and CSAs at a Week 2 event, and it worked really well - I made some quick updates and I’m ready to share it with the rest of the community.
I wish the app came out last week (I just finished up my season as the FTAA at Dallas). It would have been much easier to use this than noting things on sheets of paper or on an endless note application. I did notice that the app crashes and restarts when I attempt to clear event data. I like your attempted integration of the field monitor (I do not know how well it will work as I do not have acess to a field). One potential issue with the field monitor connection is that it destroys the battery. Overall, I am happy this is here and hope it will be here next season.
Speaking as a new CSA, this sounds like a really useful app for us! At my first event I was trying to remember to go to the field for certain matches to see if a problem recurred - but it became difficult to keep track of which teams I wanted to monitor and which matches they were going to be in. I’m going to give this a try at the next event.
Thanks!
Dale
Sorry for the late reply - I had to fly back to school today (which was a whole other headache…). But I’ve got version 2.3.7 rolling out in the next few hours…
This should be fixed.
Yeah, that’s a real concern. It’s as simple as possible on my app’s end - it’s just a webview that loads the page on the event server. But that’s why it’s a setting you can turn off (for battery and for those who use it not connected to the field).
In just want to bump this thread back to the top before St. Louis. I’ve made lots up updates to the app, and it’s prefect to keep by your side for whatever situation required notes coupled to teams during the event. So if you’re working the field or scouting, give FRC Notebook a try!
I used this app at the championship and found it very useful for keeping notes on teams I was watching during matches. But I found some bugs that need addressed.
I was unable to get the match schedule to load for Galileo, the team list loaded but no match schedule.
Also, when sorting the teams by the different options like number of notes, the list sorts, but when you click on one it takes you to the team that would have been in that position based on team number sorting. Here is an example in case what I said is confusing. With the Galileo team list, I sort it by number of notes, the team with the fewest notes appears on top, but if I click on that team I always get the notes page for team 45.
Also, when sorting by number of notes, the secondary sort algorithm seems to sort by the string representation of the team number instead of the actual team number. It might be easier to use if it sorted by the numerical value of the team number instead.
I will continue to use this app in the future if some of these bugs are worked out. I found it extremely useful, even though I didn’t get to use the match schedule functionality which seems very nice.
Another suggestion would be some way to export all of the data. Whether that be just saving to a file on the device, or emailing the data, etc. This is just a possible enhancement idea for the future.
First off, thanks for the feedback. I wrote the app originally to help myself working fieldside, and figured it could be helpful for others around.
The app scrapes data the same way TBA and Spyder do (from FIRST’s published HTML pages), and that datafeed was broken during CMP; they changed the format used to publish it. Sorry, but there’s nothing I could have done - if you want more stable schedule scraping, complain to FIRST and have them publish the data in a better (or at least unchanging!) format.
The first paragraph there is really strange - I haven’t head of it yet. The second one I know of. I wrote the sorting pretty close to CMP and didn’t have time to test it thoroughly (clearly), but I wanted to push it out before the season ended. I’ll get those bugs fixed after my finals are over next week.
I actually have all the code written for that (it can export to internal storage), but I’m waiting for a big update to add all the features that would require additional permissions - since it can’t autoupdate without confirmation, and I’ll do all of it in a major update. It’s on my radar, though.
Thanks again for using the app and helping me improve it, I really appreciate it!
And of course, the usual open-source plug. This app is on my GitHub page. Got an idea? Contribute!
Any updates on this app planned for the 2015 season?
I just downloaded it and installed it on my phone, and it crashes as soon as I click the + button to add an event.
I assume this is normal since there are no events (officially) assigned yet, but would like to explore the app and get a feel for the layout.
Yes, I’m working on some updates for 2015. They include:
Updating and using better data sources (rely more heavily on TBA APIv2 - it’s in a better place than it was a year ago)
Add in some cloud features: have the ability to specify accounts to share your notes with, think Google Keep (might be behind IAP, depending on server costs)
Add some splashes of material design and 5.0 goodness
I did see and reproduce your crash - I’ll hotfix it tonight and make sure it’s possible to play around with. See the issue tracker