Will there be wifi in Houston this year? Is it a good idea to have our scouting on google forms or is there a better way to do it that another team has used that works better?
There is only WiFi in common areas of the convention center and not in the pits or field.
From the A-Z Guide:
Will there be wifi in the stands?
Extremely unlikely. The stands are considered part of the playing area/field.
Ok Thank you, do you have any suggestions on the best way to do scouting because at the last competition we did it through Google Forms. Do you recommend paper pencil?
We have always done it via paper forms, later entered into Excel.
You could also use Google Forms in offline mode and then at lunch and/or end of the day, sync data when you can get WiFi. We did that last year in St. Louis and it worked great.
Also think about maybe using a scantron so that you don’t have to manually enter in all the data.
Lets face it, with the amount of people at this event that will be attempting to connect to the access points, I wouldn’t expect it to hold over very long.
IMO Appsheet works better than Forms. It works on most devices (Android, iOS) and you can have it sync data later when the internet isn’t available. It works with Google Sheets. The learning curve is pretty low and it is pretty capable. A couple feature need an upgraded account, so we spent $10 to make sure we could sync the app offline, that is a downside but not much of one.
Here is our app this year: https://www.appsheet.com/portfolio/308261
It is simple, but more can easily be added. The easiest way to do that is to make a google sheet with the columns you want, and then add it as a new table – letting it pick out the columns. Then in the column data you can specify what type of data (yes/no, number (range), enum (very useful), etc).
My app had two tables, one for the teams for pit scouting and one for matches. I didn’t use the matches at all because our team was too small, but it just replicates some paper forms we made up and allow someone to enter them quickly. I had set-up some analysis equation in a different sheet (same workbook) to summarize that data – another option would be to make a Tableau workbook that connects to that Sheet (pretty easy since Tableau added that feature).
Mainly we used the pit scouting, which consisted of taking a picture (nice with the phone–app being together) and writing a short impression (didn’t do the multiple questions but this would be easy to add). The pictures btw save to google drive and you could add multiple picture fields (columns) if you want more than one. Anyone with the app could easily add or look at the pictures/notes.
115 used QR codes to transmit data. Scouters would enter data into an app and a QR code containing all the data would be generated. The Master scouter would scan these QR codes to get data.
I believe we released the code at the end of last year, but I can’t be certain.
We use Bluetooth and cell service to connect our tablets, servers and smart phone apps. You can find more in the Citrus Circuits scouting whitepaper.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1599691
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a practical use for QR codes. I like it!