The Green Alliance
Team 4909's 2018+ Scouting System.
The Green Alliance Scouting Platform has been designed from the ground up to enable teams to share data beyond any event, district, or region. This influx of data is especially beneficial to teams at higher levels of play as they have more data to reference in strategic decisions and picking alliance partners. TGA consists of a cross-platform application and a community of FIRSTers willing to gather scouting data for the collective.
Installation
Raspberry Pi 3 Configuration (for offline TGA usage only)
1) Install Raspbian Lite (not Desktop) to your Raspberry Pi 3
2) Run sudo raspi-config to configure the correct keyboard layout and WiFi network (if not using ethernet)
4) Run curl -sL http://thegreenalliance.team4909.org/INSTALL.sh | sudo -E bash - on the Pi
Please read the resulting output as it provides important information regarding configuration.5) For Bluetooth usage, pair up to six Android devices using the Terminal on the Pi OS
Android Devices (for online/offline TGA usage, enables Bluetooth -> Pi)
1) Enable Installing via APK File
2) Download & Install APK from https://goo.gl/xoWPmL
Browser-based Scouting/Analysis Devices (Laptop/iOS devices)
Visit thegreenalliance.team4909.org, and wait for the alert saying that the webpage has been cached. The app will save itself on your device and update whenever it is connected to the internet.
Note: this only occurs when there is a newer version of the site not yet cached
Supported Hardware
The Green Alliance tries to accomodate the workflows of most teams by supporting a variety of configurations.
Recommended Hardware
- 6x Kindle Fire
- Raspberry Pi 3
- Laptop(w/ Chrome) w/ Ethernet Port
Supported Devices
- Hybrid(Online/Offline) Usage
- Android Devices(v4.1+) Connected to Raspberry Pi 3
- Connected via Bluetooth 4.0+ (max. of six devices)
- Laptops(w/ Chrome) Connected to Raspberry Pi 3
- Connected via Ethernet switch
- Online Usage Only
- Devices (Laptop/Tablet/Phone) Connected to Cloud CouchDB Server
- Connected via Event WiFi or Cellular
Platform Architecture
Syncing within the TGA Platform
All devices run either CouchDB or PouchDB to store and sync data. The Bluetooth transfer protocol uses the pouchdb-replication-stream project to tunnel the API calls between the Kindle Fires and the Raspberry Pi CouchDB server.
When connected, devices will connect and sync data to reach eventual consistency.
EDIT:
Due to time constraints, the Bluetooth transfer protocol will not support bidirectional communication for the 2018 competition season.
Hosted Infrastructure
- Web Hosting via GitHub Pages
- CouchDB on Azure VM
Offline Usage
All data will be replicated locally in PouchDB or CouchDB, while the website will be cached for offline access using HTML5 AppCache
Third-Party Data
To help scouts, TGA will reference third-party APIs to obtain team names, event schedules and official match results using the TBA API v3 and FMS Events API v2. If internet access is not available or should circumstances change, manual override will also be supported.
Accessing the Database
To leverage the data collected by TGA for additional analysis, you may replicate from the TGA CouchDB server using your existing credentials. The data is stored in a JSON format.
TGA CouchDB Server: tga-cloud.team4909.org:5984
If you need credentials, please contact us at team4909@gmail.com
Data Transaction Mechanisms
- Cellular Data / Event WiFi (Device <-> Cloud)
- Bluetooth SPP (Tablets <-> Pi)
- Ethernet (Laptops <-> Pi)
Bugs / Feature Requests
Please create a GitHub issue for any bugs or new feature requests.