So there is a cool scouting application for Android phones, but we are going to go “old school”, and do paper forms (keeping them together using our cool "Round Up clipboards from TwoPencilDesigns)
Tell us about your form! What are you looking for, how are you calculating how helpful / good a team will be? Post your form! Lets make the 2011 Worlds a great event for scouting!
We created a form that can be used on an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, but the information we’re collecting could still be helpful for teams using paper and pencil. We have 2 different forms, one for scouting a team at a match, and one for scouting a team in their pit/off the field. Here’s what our forms looks like:
Match Scouting Form:
Team #: [Text]
Overall Rating: [0-10 Star Rating]
Autonomous # Of Goals Scored: [Number]
Autonomous Description: [Note]
Overall Robot Description: [Note]
Hang?: [Text Pick-List]
Help: [Note] (Used to summarize how to use the form.)
Pit Scouting Form:
Team #: [Text]
Compatible Autonomous?: [Check Box]
Robot Notes: [Note]
Robot Photo: [Picture] (If using an iPhone/iPod Touch 4G/iPad 2.)
Help: [Note] (Used to summarize how to use the form.)
Hope this is of some help!
~Jordan
This year we are just using a Numbers form on iPads that will dump into a spreadsheet (which we will print results from), but next year we plan on having someone write an actual app for us that will (hopefully) be able to sync over bluetooth.
but we record the type of drive train, and speed.
Also the type(s) of mechanisms for picking up tubes.
I don’t deal with much of the scouting for my team, so I don’t know much more. Though hopefully I’ll get Verizon signal for my laptop so I can look at the online stats and scoreboard.
Wow. I wish they had a Numbers equivalent for the iPhone/iPod Touch… I’m using Tap Forms for mine. It’s pretty good, and you can sync over Bluetooth, although it is a huge pain because you have to send each individual record over one at a time. Hopefully they fix that eventually, or we’ll just make our own app. 
We hope to have ~6 people going (between our 3 teams) around with iPod Touches and scouting, then dumping the data onto a laptop, in an Excel Spreadsheet for editing/viewing/sorting. Hopefully all three of our teams will end up in the same division… that would certainly be a big help…
~Jordan
I think the plan is, (but this really isn’t my decision) to write the app for us, and then offer it on the App Store, But it will almost certainly be iPad only, because that’s what our school can give us for scouting. If VEX allowed us to use WiFi at worlds, I could definitely set up a cross-platform solution, but seeing as they don’t want any networks running at all its not really an option.
So my team hasn’t done nearly as much scouting this year…
Mainly, we haven’t really needed it… If we’re in the top eight, we know all the teams from the area, and we know which ones we want…
That being said, I have a 5MB Excel file that has been built to rank, sort, file, and do anything else you want to as many or as few teams as you want… You can have as many things as you want, with individual weighting for categories, and then group weightings… So you can change how important you think something is from competition to competition…
I am considering rebooting it for next year, and releasing it… It is amazingly complex, and yet easy-to-use… But you shall suffer the death of ten thousand screams if you try to edit any of the macros! (seriously. I built it, and sometimes, when I change even one little thing, it ruins the entire system…)
Believe it or not, it actually works! Well, for us… When we really used it two years ago, I would prepare a list of the top 24 teams for our captain, and it would match almost exactly to her personal list. And yes, it does allow for multiple people to watch the same robot… That too can be changed… Anywhere from one to infinity. 
Thoughts?
I have a copy of SPAM’s FRC scouting excel script. Seriously this thing ia freaking insane.
Like most complicated crazy excel document that I’ve ever seen.
They factor in not only scores, but actions taken in a match.
Each action adds or subtracts points, these points are totaled to give a performance number, teams are then ranked by these results.
They also calculate a robots autonomous effectiveness (accuracy).
Even defensive plays are calculated in. It’s so crazy that they devote one person per robot playing on a field, so for FRC it takes 6 people on data entry per match.
Believe me, playing these things by the numbers is a great idea!
-Cody
My thoughts are: I want to see it.
~Jordan
This sounds amazingly similar… We might have the same parent document…
I’ll see what I can do, but this might be just the thing for that flight down to Orlando… Maybe have it for download, available at Worlds?
We have a few people walking around and talking to people, but I’m not sure what their form looks like.
I am watching each and every match, and I’ve developed a method for scoring using an Excel spreadsheet. I rate each team on a scale of one to ten on how they’ve performed in each match. I then add their total scores together. After that, I rank the teams to find the top twenty-four teams. If there are any ties, I sort first on driver’s challenge score, then on programming challenge score, and then on rankings.
-Emily
it would be nice if all the “permanent” scouts (they watch every match) can sit together and scout together! 
that would be a great way to get-to-know each other and to have people to talk to while you scout together