FTA Buddy

Web App
Report a Bug · Request a Feature

---

About

This project was inspired by the original FTA Buddy app made by Ken Schenke. It has since evolved to have a more mobile friendly field monitor, custom flashcards, more information in the reference page, and a notes section for communicating with other FTA(A)s and CSAs at events. The field monitor uses a Chrome extension installed on a computer on the field network to scrape data. The extension sends the data to a locally run server that broadcasts it to the app through a websocket. It also sends that data to the cloud server, that way you can give volunteers a portable field monitor without having them on the field network. Plus, having fewer SignalR connections is always a good thing. The cloud server also enables the notes functionality. The notes are also persistent between events, so if you have a team with a weird problem you can leave a note and the FTA at their next event can benefit!

Getting Started

• Install the extension from the Chrome webstore
• Go to ftabuddy.com on a computer connected to the field network.
• Click Host and optionally login first.
• Enter the event code (e.g. 2024miket) and a passcode of your choosing, and click create event
• Visit ftabuddy.com on your phone, add/install the web app to your home screen for the best experience
• Login or create an account for yourself, then connect to the event with the same code and pin!

Full Feature List

• Dark theme
• Mobile optimized
• Reduce signalR congestion
• Access without being on field wifi
• Detailed status view with troubleshooting steps
• Vibration notifications when a robot drops during a match
• Tracking how long since the last status change happened
• 👀 emoji helps identify robots that are taking longer than expected to connect
• Flashcards to communicate through driver station glass
• Reference page with status light codes and other handy information
• Dsplay signal strength information
• Display last cycle time and timer for current cycle
• Audio notifications to quickly know which robot dropped and what disconnected
• Cycle time tracking
• A way better event log viewer, give your CSAs access to the data that can help them help you help teams!
• Synced team checklist to help track radio programming
• Ticket and note system that's synchronized between events
• Current cycle will become more red as you approach 2x your average cycle time
• Last cycle time will be green if it's your best that event

Coming soon:

• Tracking connection time per team, and display 🕜 emoji when there's a team that takes 1 std deviation longer than the average team to connect

Development

The project is a Bun workspace with three components:

Component	Location	Stack
Server	src/	Bun + Express + tRPC, PostgreSQL via Drizzle ORM
App	app/	Svelte 5 + TypeScript + Vite (PWA)
Extension	extension/	Chrome MV3 extension that scrapes FMS and relays data

Prerequisites

• Bun (v1+)
• Docker (for the local Redis, Postgres, and Firebase Auth emulator)

Setup

# 1. Install dependencies (covers the app/extension workspaces too)
bun install

# 2. Create your env file
cp .env.example .env

# 3. Start Redis + Postgres + Firebase Auth emulator (defaults match .env.example)
docker compose up -d

# 4. Apply database migrations
bun run migrate

# 5. Run the server + app with hot-reload
bun run dev

The server requires Redis and Postgres at startup (it exits if REDIS_URL or the DB_* vars are unreachable), so step 3 is not optional. The bundled docker-compose.yml provides everything with the credentials already in .env.example.

Most other keys in .env.example are feature-gated and can be left as placeholders for local work. The notable ones:

• TBA_API_KEY - event-code validation
• OPENAI_KEY - AI event reports
• SLACK_*, TOA_KEY/FTC_KEY/TOA_APP_NAME, GCS_BUCKET, VAPID_* - their respective integrations

Authentication (Firebase)

Auth runs on Firebase Authentication (email/password + Google). Locally it uses the Firebase Auth emulator from docker-compose, so dev never touches the real project and needs no credentials:

• The app auto-connects to the emulator in dev mode (http://localhost:9099). Emulator UI (create/inspect test users, see "sent" reset emails) is at http://localhost:4000.
• The server's Admin SDK auto-connects via FIREBASE_AUTH_EMULATOR_HOST from .env.example.
• Create a test account right from the app's login screen, or in the emulator UI.

In production the server needs a Firebase service-account credential, set as inline JSON in FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT (or a file via GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS). The web apiKey in app/src/util/firebase.ts is a public client identifier, not a secret.

Other commands

bun run server              # server only
bun run app                 # app only
bun run build               # production build of the app
bun run generate-migration  # create a migration after editing src/db/schema.ts
bun run format              # prettier

Deployment

Production runs as a single Docker image (see Dockerfile) built by CI and deployed through Coolify. Two instances, A and B, run behind ftabuddy.com and are load-balanced by Traefik with sticky sessions; deploys roll out to A first, then B, for zero-downtime releases. Each instance is also reachable directly at a.ftabuddy.com and b.ftabuddy.com for debugging.

Traefik terminates TLS and serves HTTP/2, which the live tRPC subscriptions rely on: SSE streams are long-lived, and HTTP/1.1's ~6-connection-per-origin limit gets exhausted when several tabs subscribe. HTTP/2 multiplexes them over one connection.

Verify HTTP/2: Chrome DevTools → Network → enable the "Protocol" column. Subscription requests to /trpc should show h2.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.

See LICENSE for more information.