Table of Contents
Scoutradioz News and Updates
Scroll down to see the latest updates as well as any earlier updates you might have missed. Use the Table of Contents to jump straight to an update if needed!
February 10th, 2025 - Now Pit and Match Scouting Forms Can Include Images!
What if you wanted to have a labelled image for asking teams during pit scouting (say) “what are your possible auto options?” For example:
(or perhaps during a match having a labelled full-field image and having scouts mark where teams set up to start)
Now you can include your own images in your Pit and Match forms! On the https://qa.scoutradioz.com/manage page you'll now find a “Manage form images” option where you can upload images and give them IDs… and then, those IDs will be how you'll reference them in your scouting form designs via the new image
type.
See in the UI Organization and Annotation section for details!
February 6th, 2025 - Improved Tuning and Customization of Scouter Accuracy Analytics
Scoutradioz uses a metric called Scouter Performance Rating (SPR) to help Scouting Leads see which scouts are being the most accurate vs. which ones may need some assistance or attention. Through the 2024 season this was done using a specific per-robot metric key called contributedPoints
, adding up the three robots on a given alliance and comparing the total points contributed by those three robots (as calculated from that robot's scout's data) to the official alliance score (not counting points from fouls, which came from the other alliance). This works great when alliance scores are built up by individual robot actions.
However, some games have additional scoring elements - e.g., “links” in 2023, or (in 2025) human player shots into the barge. These extra elements can make it difficult for Scouting Leads to develop a good formula for contributedPoints
which still accurately reflects an individual robot's performance but also incorporates all the non-robot-specific scoring elements so that all the points (aside from other-alliance fouls) are included.
That's why today we're releasing additional design capabilities to allow teams to customize how SPR is calculated:
- Teams can create additional 'total points' metrics which just reflect individual robot actions (and not other scoring elements such as “links” or “human player shots”)
- They can then define which scoring elements should be subtracted from the alliance score so the comparison is correctly “apples to apples”
Check out the details on Scouter Performance Rating (SPR) and specifically the “Customizing SPR” section for details!
January 30th, 2025 - Improvements to Form Design and Derived Metrics
BIG CHANGES! It's always been the core value proposition of Scoutradioz to enable FRC teams to…
- Customize their own pit and match scouting data collection forms
- Along with incorporating complex analytics
- Within a 'low-code' “scouting-as-a-service” platform, without needing to develop or deploy your own servers or dedicated hardware
However, the process of defining the custom analytics - known in Scoutradioz as derived metrics - has historically been somewhat clunky and verbose. For example, in Team 102's schema for 2024, calculating the “total points contributed by a robot” across auto ('totalAutoPoints'), teleop ('totalTeleopPoints'), endgame ('totalEndgamePoints'), and overall ('contributedPoints') required 186 lines of JSON.
With the new system, here is that same information encoded in just 20 lines of easily-readable mathematical formulae 👀 (also check out the improved online JSON-aware editor!)
Additionally there have been usability and coding improvements to other form elements, such as labels, counters, sliders, and so forth.
For a fully-fleshed out example, check out Team 102's form from 2024 refactored for the new system
Then jump over to the form design guide to see the details!
NB: The system is backwards compatible, so any form definitions using the old schema will still work!
January 4th, 2025 - Wiki, Reefscape, and More!
It's officially the 2025 season! Reefscape!
Has it been a while since you've visited? Are you newly onboarded? Looking for info on manage your scouting operation or getting started on how to design your own forms? Or looking for JSON definitions shared by other teams? Or perhaps even wondering how YOU can get started as a Scoutradioz contributor?
There's a lot here!