Teams 4030 Null Pointer Exception and 1983 Skunk Works are proud to present our scouting platform, http://FRCscout.com/. Designed to be user-friendly and easy to implement, our platform includes these following main features:
Internet Connection:
The platform is designed to work around spotty internet connection and the lack of Wi-Fi at competitions. Connect to the internet once to load the entire scouting process, leave the connection and scout an unlimited number of matches, then connect to the internet again to push your local data to the database.
Website Advantage:
It’s usable to anyone with a tablet, smartphone, or laptop. If your device can access the internet, it can scout. The screen will resize and orient to remain as ergonomic as possible. You will never have to update it, and your device already has an internet browser installed. Also, with the exception of uploading pictures from the pit, the website is not very data-intensive (it is basically just sending and receiving short text files).
**Easy Analysis: **
The platform has a built in connector to Tableau (data visualization software included in your KoP, click here for tutorials) for custom and quick analysis. The platform also shows basic analytics about teams.
Built in Pit-Scouting, Commenting, and Pictures:
You don’t have to connect it to additional apps to get a full picture of the robot, literally and figuratively.
Intuitive, Easy to Use Interface:
Also comes with a built in Match scouting tutorial.
Team Management:
Using an encrypted login system, the platform makes organizing and keeping track of scouts easy for a lead. Because every match has a scout associated to it, you can find which of your scouts are making mistakes and train them to fix it.
Publicly Accessible Database:
Not only will you have your own data, you can access data taken by all other teams using the platform. The more teams using the FRC Scout, the more balanced and accurate the overall data becomes. Data from all teams is accessible and can be easily filtered down to just data collected by your team if you want that. This feature also lets smaller teams work together to split the work and share the data.
Thank you! The database is publicly available and updated in realtime as soon as a team pushes data. So as long as you have internet access, you can access all of the latest information.
I am the lead web developer for FRC Scout – if you have any questions about things specific to the website and its functionality, you can ask me.
Is there any way to figure out who has the manager role for your team? I thought I made the first account for my team, and everyone I’ve asked at our meeting so far says they haven’t made an account.
If you were the first to make an account, you should be manager. In your case, Robert Marshall beat you to the punch. I went back in and made you a manager. Hope you like the app!
Love that it can be shared among teams. Very helpful for us smaller teams.
I do see the prisoners dilemma as noted above, but I don’t think this will be an issue. You will have to CREATE a prisoners dilemma to have a prisoners dilemma. With multiple teams watching the same match, they would have to agree not to share that information with the other teams. If one team breaks that agreement, they will share with others and get more info back.
You might want to include a walk through on how to use this app and scout a match.
Either step by step or youtube.
Lot of rookie teams could benefit from this and walking through the process of explaining it to someone new, you will find lots of improvements that can be made.
Really proud of you Quinn. Everybody did amazing work on this. I’ve heard nothing but great reviews about the new system. I’m excited to see how it works out this week.
Data quality is huge and this is a great step forward in that regard. The fact that it’s easing the strain on teams Is a huge plus.
“[li]Publicly Accessible Database: Not only will you have your own data, you can access data taken by all other teams using the platform. The more teams using the FRC Scout, the more balanced and accurate the overall data becomes. Data from all teams is accessible and can be easily filtered down to just data collected by your team if you want that. This feature also lets smaller teams work together to split the work and share the data.”
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I really like the fact that the database is publicly accessible and that it is possible to write your own SQL queries to extract data from it. Being able to query the data that you’ve entered in anyway that occurs to you is fantastic. Thanks for this feature!
Could you explain some more about how it possible to scout the matches when offline? Where is the data stored what do you, as a user, to submit the data to the server?
Once you have loaded the match scouting page, it never needs to reload. All of the matches are cached into local storage until you reconnect to the internet. At the end of each match it tries to push to the server. If you have internet at that time, it will push it online, otherwise you can manually push it with a button that is on the prematch page and a button on the main menu.
At the Auburn Mountainview district, two teams scouted offline all day without any problems. It works surprisingly well.
So you only really need to connect to the internet when you want to push or access your data. I recommend having a single phone with bluetooth tethering and pushing a different tablet (or laptop) between each match.
They will get an email for every user that signs up. If they do it on accident they can just approve another team manager and then delete their own account.
If they are being malicious, both me and our lead developer are very easy to reach and we can appoint some new managers and remove the troll.
If this becomes a big issue, we can add more tools for account creation and team manager reclamation. Right now though, we are focusing on more analytics and for ways for teams to edit and manage their own data.
