As some of you know I’ve been programming mentor for my sons high school robotics team. He graduate last year (and now in college) but FIRST robotics is a little bit like the mafia - there is no exit strategy. For the last 4 years I’ve designed a Xojo app that helps with scouting at tournaments and while it works great, but keeping 6 laptops charged for 8+ hours for 2 straight days has proved to be a fools challenge. We’ve thought about switching to iOS but that has similar issues.
So this year we’re thinking of converting to a simple paper form - almost like a survey. Paper is simple and has no issue with batteries and we can recruit other teams to help out where using software is a challenge with school issued computers and security. Each team has their own piece of paper with a form that we design. Each ‘line’ would be a match with the data we think is desirable. We have not decided all of the data we might collect but it might be simple numeric fields, or checkboxes and maybe some free form input.
While we can do the analytics software input by hand I’d love to find something that makes this a little easier/faster/more reliable. Ideally I’d love to either have an iOS app that can take a picture of the form, or use a portable desktop scanner, and use OCR to create a csv or other format that we can import into an analytics app.
Since I have no expertise in this area I thought I’d ask. Any ideas?
This will preempt my XDC session on accessing AI services from Xojo apps… but Google Cloud Services has a OCR REST service. Pass it a jpg or other format and it will return all the text including the x & y coordinates of each string… It can even now do handwriting recognition… On top of it all you can probably do it for free… The first 1000 files-pages/month are no charge and after that it is only $1.50/1000 files-pages.
I have Xojo classes that will do the authorization and the other heavy lifting… which you will get at XDC… but if you need something before that contact me with a PM.
[quote=423517:@Dave S]Still trying to envision why said “software” would have to run continously for 8+ hrs straight (and with no access to an outlet???)
Sorry… but “pen and paper” is such an ancient concept [lol][/quote]
You’re absolutely right, but after 4 years of doing this I’ve learned a few things. You are in temporary bleachers not anywhere near a power outlet and there’s not enough down time to recharge.
The software itself only runs about 5 minutes at a time (match and setup) but the laptops stay on all the time. All the kids in our district have Mac laptops, and the robotics program has some pretty ancient Windows laptops and all have varying degrees of battery capacity (or lack thereof).
We partnered with a team last year that did the ancient pen and paper and it went really smooth. Then they had someone input the results into the analytics application. What I’m trying to do is marry the two to eliminate the ‘excessive’ work of some poor kid doing data entry for a few hours during the tournament.
More things to take and more things to setup. If it was me I’d do this but I’m just herding cats. Plus, one more thing to purchase, more things to get lost. One more advantage with the paper forms is no one is going to walk off with a clipboard with a form.
Another thought: I bet they all have phones.
I bet their batteries last all day.
Would an iOS app or a web app, with a string of questions in a listview, which can post the results to some end point or save to a web based database (with a reference number for the event) , do the trick?
Bob, we have been working on this sort of problem for a while - you might like to check out docblaster.com The proof of concept UI is written largely in Xojo.
It’s a thought. Most of them have battery cases and there are plenty of portable chargers for phones.
However, we can’t guarantee an internet connection during the matches. Hundreds of cell phones are hitting the cell towers at once and at the tournaments the field management system is wireless and we’ve been asked to keep WiFi signals to a minimum. This year will be especially heavy as on-robot cameras are a must.
I’m still leaning away from a device for recording data. Paper is so 20th century but it works. And, let’s be honest here, this is for a group of high schoolers that are most likely not going to be in the position to make use of the data. But we have more kids this year and it’s a way to get them engaged. And it’s always possible lightning will be captured in a bottle (like last year) where we made it to the finals and had to pick our alliance members.
a friend of mine’s daughter is in competitive gymnastics and the gym they do it in had several issues with WIFI when all the players, parents, coaches, etc were there. So I and my cousin installed extra WIFI access points and changed the network configuration to handle it. They still had/have a small internet pipe but it works.
I would some how take “pictures” or snapshots of the data and process the data once you get “back home”. Which could be home, the hotel, motel, Starbucks, whatever. Unless you need the data inside the matches themselves. This gets you the “no student data entering” issue and you arent running with the 1980s style methods.
I did some similar data capture on mobile devices, it included also pictures and a signature. I did it without internet, using a local server with MySQL and a web service app running. All the devices were in a private LAN, with my own 5 GHz Access Point. You can use a wifi channel scanner app to look for channel usage and config your AP to the lesss crouded to avoid interference.
When I go out geocaching, I log finds on the mobile even when there is no data connection.
At the end of the day, when in range of wifi, I just hit ‘send’
Plus, one more thing to purchase, more things to get lost. One more advantage with the paper forms is no one is going to walk off with a clipboard with a form.