Introducing RoboRegistry.org (Seeking Feedback and Beta Testers)

kingc95 · December 20, 2023, 3:41am

Name, Logo and URL subject to change

I’m thrilled to share RoboRegistry, a unique platform developed in partnership between frczero.org and FRC Team 453, designed to revolutionize FRC team fundraising. It’s a place where everyday actions like dining out or online shopping can support FRC teams, thanks to partnerships with businesses offering deals beneficial to both supporters and teams.

Core Idea: RoboRegistry was inspired by a simple thought and a Panda Express fundraiser. The platform lists various fundraisers, from local events to digital campaigns, making it easy to contribute.

Schema Specifics: Our detailed schema includes event types, financial transparency, location details (online and physical), and contact information for internal use, ensuring clarity and effectiveness in fundraising.

FA23-FO_RR-01_Unified Event Schema_V.1.0.0.pdf (31.4 KB)

Key Features and Future Plans:

Geographic Filters and Search Functions: To find nearby fundraisers or specific types.
Social Media and Analytics: For wider reach and understanding of fundraising patterns.
Lead Mentor Focused: Each FRC team has an account managed by the Lead Mentor, enhancing consistency and security, with annual password resets.

Call for Beta Testers: Currently in its early stage, we’re inviting you to be beta testers. Visit roboregistry.org to learn more and provide your invaluable feedback. We aim to gather community insights to refine RoboRegistry, making it a powerful tool for all FRC teams. Beta testing will open right after Christmas. Currently the site only hosts some basic info and a form to sign up for beta testing or provide some feedback on the concept.

This project is more than just fundraising; it’s about empowering the FRC community. Join us in shaping a platform that turns everyday actions into meaningful support for FRC teams!

Looking forward to your participation and feedback! My goal of posting it here without the full system open is to prevent everyone entering in their data and having to wipe it all of the community finds something terribly wrong with this concept and current unified schema.

Boring Technical Specifics and 'Jiggery-Pokery' for Nerdy Web Devs and Beta Testers

First off kudos to you.

You’re my kind of person.

This project is being run via firebase hosting, functions, authentication, Firestore and finally a basic express and html node server. I am paying the hosting costs and whatever the Google and firebase cloud costs add up to. It won’t be very much, but to limit this and the number of posts made and storage I’m not including file uploading or the ability to upload pictires. You can link to an external location though and use any markdown formatting supported by Marked.

I’m limiting accounts to lead mentor and there will be a hardcoded password for each team. Think like FIRST choice. I don’t know what is involved in getting a password into the voucher system, but for now Lead Mentors or Adults ONLY could DM me, fill out the contact form on the website or email the team email listed on the website. The beta test will be live next week so please fill out the form by then!

kingc95 · December 20, 2023, 7:29pm

Here is the spreadsheet teams can use to start collecting all of the data for the schema. As an example we have some of our team events written in as a partial example. If you collect all of your data in the template you’ll be able to just copy and paste it into the expected fields later.

FA23-FO_RR-02_Unified Event Schema Spreadsheet_V.1.0.0.xlsx (38.7 KB)

AdamHeard · December 20, 2023, 7:31pm

I suggest workshopping the name a little bit more and go with something that doesn’t cause people to assume it’s a YPP list.

kingc95 · December 20, 2023, 7:33pm

Hmmm I didn’t think of it that way but I see what you mean. When the name came up with was sort of like a registry for fundraisers or wedding registry where you’d be able to post “We are fundraising for X with a crowdfunding program”.

Any other names that make more sense?

wgorgen · December 20, 2023, 7:44pm

Since you are trying facilitate support for robotics (on both the team side and the supporter side), you could go with something like:

These are just off the top of my head. Workshopping it with your team might generate names that are more on-brand and distinctive.

davepowers · December 20, 2023, 7:58pm

Here are some ChatGPT suggestions in no particular order. YMMV.

"Certainly! Without using the word “Registry,” here are variations and alternatives for the name “RoboRegistry.org based on all the information you provided me.”:

Maybe a quick brainstorming session with the team will yield some better results.

kingc95 · December 20, 2023, 9:42pm

How about RoboRaiser?

wgorgen · December 20, 2023, 10:02pm

How about:

FundRoboConnect.org (FRC for short…)

kingc95 · December 20, 2023, 10:09pm

It’s clever definitely. I’m wondering if it’s too long.

Our team website is rockemsockemrobotics.com… I hate how long it is and typing it in and since then I’ve tried to keep it to two words or less and under 16 characters. Yours is right under the char limit so it’s a possibility. Anything else is a mouthful. I like the way you are thinking though. Seriously keep it coming.

Another reason I’m against longer ones is if we ever create an email with the domain it’s also less to type in communication. Not a big deal though.

wgorgen · December 20, 2023, 10:19pm

Sure. But there is also value to making it more obvious what the site is all about. When I first clicked on this topic, I had assumed that “RoboRegistry” was some sort of historical list of robots. Once I read your opening post, I figured it out, but I still wasn’t really able to connect that with the concept of a registry without squinting…

RoboRaiser is better, but still wouldn’t be obvious to someone unfamiliar exactly what it was for.

So anything that is going to be a) easy to remember and b) clues you in to what it is all about will probably have the concepts of Robots (or robotics) and Funding.

How about:

GoFundRobots.org

Like gofundme, but for robotics.

kingc95 · December 20, 2023, 10:57pm

I get what you mean. GoFundRobots is pretty good and unless I see something better here or the team comes back with a true winner this might be it.

CuteRedpandas · December 20, 2023, 11:11pm

goFundFRC might work because the C sounds more like the me in gofundme, just a thought though

kingc95 · December 21, 2023, 4:05am

Alright, the business team deliberated and they thought GoFundRobots, RoboRaiser or GoFundFRC were good and they also didn’t think about what @AdamHeard pointed out.

I’m good with any of them and I think at this point I can leave it to a poll closing at noon tomorrow.

RoboRaiser
GoFundRobots
GoFundFRC

0 voters

bigbossg13 · December 21, 2023, 4:14am

Any shot this will eventually expand to FTC? I know a certain FTC team would LOVE to be on the registery…

kingc95 · December 21, 2023, 4:16am

That’s fine with me, all the more reason to leave it more generic and not explicitly say FRC but I have no issues with FTC or really any FIRST team. We’ll not let Vex or other leagues though. But if you are a FIRST team that does VEX you are not excluded . Just limit your posts to fundraising that is in benefit to the FIRST parts of your program.

The biggest limitation is how we distribute password to lead mentors. Ultimately I would love to have a system like FIRST choice where we can generate new passwords each year for any registered teams in each league and the lead mentors will be able to get their password from the dashboard on first inspires. For now we’ll have to just manually verify mentors who register and limit one account per team.

We had 4 FTC teams but currently have none so I tend to forget about it. Great catch!

BABER · December 21, 2023, 3:40pm

I think font used for the “Want to know when we go live?” form is hard to read.

kingc95 · December 21, 2023, 4:43pm

Will change this. Fixed to Roboto font

kingc95 · December 21, 2023, 5:11pm

Looks like GoFundRobots.org is the winner. I do have that domain leased so we will work on a short rebrand and get the Beta up for just after Christmas. If the beta passes muster we will then release it en masse after kickoff.

I had the opportunity to speak with an FRC staff member and I mentioned this project and requested information about getting the password system into the FIRST dashboard. We’ll see where that goes, but either way we are a “Go” for GFR

I really appreciate the feedback so far and I’m glad none of it has been about the concept in general being a bad idea or the schema lacking some critical information.

People who signed up with the form for the Beta keep an eye on your email starting Dec 26th.

I will leave the roboregistry.org url up and the page up but will eventually redirect it to the new url.

Edit: the page at roboregistry will look identical to the one eventually at GoFundRobots.org. just pushed the new logo and did a Ctrl+f and replace of the old name. I’m not going to redo the screenshots and hopefully by tomorrow the DNS for the new URL will be good to go.

Will redo the page for FIRST general language, not just FRC anymore. We will cover all FIRST leagues

kingc95 · December 22, 2023, 1:24pm

DNS seems fixed at least so GoFundRobots.org is live with the rebrand and updates for FIRST general language rather than FRC specific. The site is still just the welcome page and beta sign up form. Roboregistry.org should now redirect you as well.

Further updates:

Currently we have about 8 signups for beta testing. Some of those are students. That’s fine for the beta testing, but ultimately the account will be tied to the lead mentors so your beta accounts may have their passwords changed after the official release.

We tested the login system with authorization tokens and expiration. This worked however we are trying to settle in a fair but secure expiry time. As the users of the system how long between inactivity should we wait to sign people out?

While there is no credit card information, there is basic contact information for the mentors and the ability for someone to write posts representing your team if they had access to your machine and you forgot to log out. We assume most students in our programs would not do anything nefarious, but it’s better to be overly cautious and protected than to find out we were wrong later. Is 1 day fair, should it be less than a day?

When I think about stuff like CD I hardly ever have to re-sign in. Could be because I use it so often or it has a really long expiration window. First inspires on the other hand we have to long it twice it feels like multiple times a day.

Thoughts?

Edits:

I had notes about https certificates and etc. these seem to have finalized during the day so both urls and www version should all point back to the same GoFundRobots.org url now. If you have any issues please let me know what browser and what errors are displayed. For a little bit I could only get to it from desktop or mobile on WiFi but not on mobile 5g. Again DNS propagation at work.

kingc95 · December 23, 2023, 3:51am

Some more screenshots of the behind the scenes testing. Currently i did a flood test of 1000 randomized events and checking loading times and if we will need pagination right away. So far no need from a technical standpoint, but we’ll see about UI and if it it’s make sense to show all or limit what’s shown at one time. Also testing login some more and getting the help menu written.

Screenshots