Scouting Tablets and Storage

Amazon Fire HD 8

Spectrum is moving to a digital scouting system next year. We purchased 9 Amazon Fire HD 8 tablets on Prime Day for around $420 total.

We worked on a quick system to get all the software installed on the tablets and configured and a storage solution for them as well.

Install Script for APKs

We wrote a quick batch script to install all the APKs located in a folder using ADB (Android Device Bridge).

Here is the link to our folder of APKs, the necessary ADB files, and our script.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MxfJFbN3rsMKVT2xSXu0Qg_1lGFUl3F6
You can download any other APK and have it install on your device as well. For us we installed the Google Play store and necessary dependencies, several FRC scouting apps, Google Drive, Excel, etc. We also installed launcherhijacker and Nova launcher to make them feel more like stock android tablets. You will need to make sure you enable USB debugging in the developer options of your table. 

Building the Dividers with the new laser cutter

You can download the CAD model for this assembly here.
Grabcad link

We laser cut the wood on our new ThunderLaser laser cutter and assembled it. The parts fit nicely together and we didn't even need wood glue since it won't be under much load.

We spray painted it black and we also laser cut some carpet/felt to line the dividers to protect the screens.



We used spray adhesive to keep the fabric on to the sides of the dividers.

The dividers all fit inside a 15 Qrt Sterlite bin

Charging

We are going to add a 10 port USB charger that uses an external 12V power adapter so that we can charge the tablets using that power supply or by making a cable to connect it to a FRC battery while we are in the stands at competition.

The charger we are going to test first is this one.