I know that right now, we don’t even have the slightest idea of how this system will work. However, i think this is something to bring up early on, because this data collection method might need something special to be done in the system’s core design.
Ok… Now, I’d be willing to guess that more teams use Paper to collect their scouting data than any other method. If it is because no one knows how to use the device which they have, well… that will be fixed. BUT… As i may suspect in many cases, it is because the team can just not afford anything but paper.
SO… What would be some ideas that would allow someone who uses paper to:
Be able to see the data that has allready been collected and is in the system for a team. Could you fit all the collected data on to 1 sheet of paper?
2)What would be the best way for the scouts to collect data on a team during the competition and then be able to view it again?
3)What would be the best way for the collected data to be uploaded into the system?
I know these are some very hard questions to answer, but the sooner thery’re out, the better we have at finding a soultion. I think that a paper system will be necessary in order to get a lot of teams to use this system.
1)Teams without computers could go to other teams with computers.
2)Our scouts do all the scouting on paper on thurday and friday, then on friday night we make it into an excel format. On saturday morning we photocopy it then distribute it to other teams. We could do everything but the photocopying and distributing.
3)You could, wait, WE could do an ftp server that allows anonymous connections that support uploading. I am able to do that with my server, and i would be more than willing to let u have access to it.
Other comments: im sure that there is a team out there who has a projector and is willing to let it be used. We could project an image onto a screen, so that way teams dont need a computer to view the data. If we did that, we could just let teams enter the data into the computer that has the projector. Just type it in. I would be willing to bring a server and wireless network setup for this project.
We use paper for scouting. We transferred it to computer by just typing it in. It’s kind of tedious, but it gives us something to do on the way home Friday and the way there Saturday.
What we do is print out a scouting form that has all the same information as the excel spreadsheet. After the are filled in they are manually entered.
I just had an idea tho…You know the tests where u have to bubble in 1,2,3,4 or 5? My school has a reader for those types of tests. The scouting forms could be ratings of 1-5, and ten scan in. All you would have to type is team, field, and any special comments.
If I understand you correctly, you’re talking about the Scantron system like they use on the SATs and such. I don’t think it would work with scouting though because as far as I know it just compares the answers on the sheet to the answers on the grading key then prints a score on the sheet. I’m pretty sure it can’t store this information in any format that could be transferred to an Excel spreadsheet.
*Originally posted by Kevin A * You are right about the scantrons.
Has anyone ever done anything with scouting that uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on a scanner?
Ex: Have a paper form which is filled our then is able to be scanned directly into a computer?
or…
Has anyone ever used another way which took something off of paper and then was able to get it to the computer w/o haveing to type it all in? At this point, i really don’t care if it’s text or simple y/n.
I have used OCR, but not for handwriting.
Today i asked my teacher about scantrons, and he said that if you write a driver for the reader, it would probably work.
I think just doing it the way most teams already do it. Which is make a sheet that has the same fields on it as your digital database and then just filling out the sheet and later entering them by hand is the easiest and most robust method. Since each team has the option of using as much or as little of the unified system as they choose it wouldn’t be neccisary to make standardized sheets (Though if someone just wants to use the system stock off the shelf then making an appropriate scouting sheet would be a good idea). If teams want to use a palm or laptop and scout directly into that, and as long as it can intergrate into the system they have which can inturn intergrate into the big unified system then there is no reason why that wouldn’t work either.
If a team wants to set up a scan tron system or a system to use a scanner to read the text they thats up to them but since this is open source and everyone is going to have the own ways of doing stuff and their own individual systems if they want them then they can do what they wish. If a team wants to set up a scanning system of some sort and share it with a whole regional thats great, but it really doesn’t matter how they get their data into the system as long as it gets into the system.
Personally, I would rather try to avoid entering data by hand.
I’d already been kicking around the OCR idea… I think that it could be done. If we made and printed off our own forms (just distribute them via PDF) and then scanned them in, I’m confident I can write a program to take data into the database. I’m not talking about handwriting recigntion or anything, but multiple choice shouldn’t be that hard to do.
I’ll put this towards the top of my projects list.
I still say that alot of this stuff is great. And if people want to do it, well then its even better. But there doesn’t HAVE to be a standard for the whole system. Since its open source there can be a basic way of doing it (the simpler the better so more teams have access and ability to use it) but then teams can use other methods like palm scouting programs and OCR and other cool stuff.