The Blue Alliance is going to be entering its third year of operation this season. We started the website back in the fall of 2006 to produce tutorial videos, then added the Match Archives during the 2007 season. The website has gotten a lot more useful (and prettier!) over these two years, and we’re still trying to improve things further.
To this extent, I feel like it would be very useful to involve the community more tightly with going-ons with The Blue Alliance. There are a lot of smart people with a lot of great ideas that read these forums, and if we could figure out some way to tap into that, we could make The Blue Alliance more useful for everyone who participates in FIRST.
One of the most immediate ways we’re thinking about is opening the website redesign we have planned for this fall to the community. If everyone works together to fix the UI issues the current site has, we could wind up with a new TBA site that is a total breeze to use.
What do you think are the best ways to enable people to contribute to TBA? What skills, knowledge, or passion would you be willing to contribute to the community?
The site is already great!! The one improvement is somehthing more could help with and that’s getting more match video up. The two regionals we attended last year were not included in the archives. This is exceptionaly sad because last year’s Palmeto Regional I think set a record for the most matches played to decide the champion. There were two ties in the final alone!
I wish someone would make a recorder that triggered off of the match start and would then record the next 5 minutes. This would auto parse the match footage and thus require less edit time to get video on the blue alliance. Pinancle has that nice straight to hard-drive recorder. If it could be triggered off of a match controller system, that would be awesome.
TBA does an awesome job. We just need to do a better job feeding it.
One thing I’d like to see is the score screen at the end of each video (and complete videos… sometimes the parser cuts off the very end (ex. IRI, final match)).
I wonder if we could get FIRST to give us access to start, stop, match aborted, and score up signals for a match that could be read using a serial port or something similar. That would make a recorder easier to write and very powerful.
I personally think that the site is great as it already is.
Just like others have already said, have videos for all matches and have the FINAL score of the matches as some might have what it was throughout the game and not the final after peneltys and such.
Maybe have people help in making thier own torturials as those seem to of stopped, at least since the last time I looked, or submit ideas for them.
I’m not sure how much support FIRST has given, but I definitely think with the amount that we pay to attend regionals, some sort of funding/technical support should be used for this effort.
TBA has proven to be an effective way to document match footage and I’m sure hundreds use this site.
I will be testing the Pinnacle Setup at Kettering Kick-off, I am going to work with the Video Mixer Technician and have them start the recording just before the teams are announced and then stop after they show the final score of the matches. That way all of the matches are already separated. I would also like to get the alliance selections and award ceremonies as well.
The setup is fairly simple and takes up minimal space. The Pinnacle recorder actually powers the usb portable hard drive, so only one power cable is needed.
If you would like to see the setup at Kettering, feel free to find me in the pits.
It would be really cool if The Blue Alliance turned into the FIRST Encyclopedia way beyond what it is today. Taking all the info from team logos, robot history, parts catologs, everything that would be described into a powerful resource.
I’d also like to see TBA turn into SportsCenter for FIRST. Lots of talking to other teams about their progress and letting other teams know with a type of FIRST news series. Large discussions on how to best play the FIRST game, What teams have been able to accomplish in the game.
I know its hard enough to get match video from regionals as is, but what about a short interview with some of the key teams? Say when I go to look up 1114 and 233, there is an optional video I can watch that has one of the students in the pits discussing how the team designed their arm and how it works. If a team, say 272, had a really cool idea for a magnetic shooter, they can talk about how great it has worked for them, or elude to any troubles they have had during a specific match (like the trackball firing toward the audience after power was shut off, but luckily the arm held it inside the robot), Then I could go find that match and watch it.
This would be a pretty easy addition, Just give people that are already scouting a camera with video mode.
To keep developers interested in contributing to community websites, you should make a developers mailing list (on googlegroups or mailman). Have people discuss what they can contribute and ask questions about additions.
I think integrating FIRST wiki information would be a crucial step to getting more information on a team.
I’d be totally willing to help out if TBA wanted to do this. Then again, I’d be willing to help TBA with anything! It’s a valuable resource and I would love to see it grow- if I can be a helpful part of that, then please y’all, let me know.
This is exceptionaly sad because last year’s Palmeto Regional I think set a record for the most matches played to decide the champion. There were two ties in the final alone!