Getting started with Lego robotics?

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Hi,

 

I did a very brief stint of lego mindstorm in college in a basic programming class. Now I know that lego robotics has become something HUGE, and I'd like to know more about it. Specific questions:

 

- What age can a lego-maniac kid get started?

- Can this be done without a group/co-op, etc?

- Any other useful tidbits to tell me?

[WVNA]

Both of my kids are involved in Lego robotics and we think it's a great addition to their science and math work.

 

Answers to your specific questions:

1. My daughter started to use a Mindstorm kit when she was in kindergarten. She would basically build projects and have them move and make sounds. She's going into 2nd grade now and is just starting to learn about how to use the sensors.

 

If you are asking about the FIRST series of programs, they have programs for any school age child. My daughter is involved with Jr. FLL(FIRST Lego League) and my son is in FLL.

 

2. Yes, you can do Mindstorm work with just one kid. If you want to create a team, it's relatively easy to do as well. There are maximum numbers you can have on a team and I'd recommend having less than the maximum you are allowed. If you are going to create a team (or find one for your children), I'd be looking into that now. The FLL season officially begins on August 28 and Jr. FLL has begun.

 

3. As for general advice, just let them have fun with it. There are also a lot of free resources online to learn how to build and program with the NXT.

 

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Hi,

 

I did a very brief stint of lego mindstorm in college in a basic programming class. Now I know that lego robotics has become something HUGE, and I'd like to know more about it. Specific questions:

 

- What age can a lego-maniac kid get started?

- Can this be done without a group/co-op, etc?

- Any other useful tidbits to tell me?

[WVNA]

Hi,

 

I did a very brief stint of lego mindstorm in college in a basic programming class. Now I know that lego robotics has become something HUGE, and I'd like to know more about it. Specific questions:

 

- What age can a lego-maniac kid get started?

- Can this be done without a group/co-op, etc?

- Any other useful tidbits to tell me?

 

Also, one more piece of advice. If you do start a team, see if there are any FTC or FRC teams in your local area. These are the FIRST programs for kids in high school and a lot of these teams mentor FLL and Jr. FLL teams.

[Soror]

I'm interested in this as well. I'm pretty certain we don't have anything locally. I think the closest I know of is about 1.5 hrs away but I don't know if it is anything official. I had thought about dh starting a group here as he is super geek but I need to look into it more.

[Kathryn]

:bigear: interested in learning more about this and know nothing.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

WVNA- Thank you for all of that information! Do you think being on a team adds a lot to the experience? Are these super competitive type things, or what? I don't want to get involved in a team where basically some geeky parent does their kids work and blows everyone else out of the water (I've heard this said about the boy scouts box car races...), but collaborative work and gentle competition would be great!

[WVNA]

First, my son is also in cub scouts and I HATE the pinewood derby. When you see the cars out, you can clearly tell which ones were built by parents and which ones weren't. I feel like it's just a p***ing contest for the cub scout dads.

 

Within FLL and Jr. FLL, the kids are supposed to do all the work. The organizers really do want the kids to have fun and be encouraged to study STEM subjects. You can see some coaches discussing this here - http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=19318.

 

Jr. FLL(for K-3) is not competitive at all. FLL(grades 4-8) is more competitive, but they do their best to encourage what they call "Gracious Professionalism" in the kids. It's definitely a different a atmosphere than most places where there is competition. When I was a new coach, I received a lot of help from local FLL teams who were more than willing to help our new team. Now that we have some experience, we've tried to do the same to other teams as well.

 

One example of this came at a local tournament last year. There was a team who had their NXT brick(the part you program that controls the motors and sensors) die on them. Another team had a spare and let them borrow it for the tournament. The team that had the NXT brick die went on to win the robotics portion of the tournament because another team let them use their spare.

 

I do think being on the team has helped out my own kids, but these are benefits that are more intangible and hard to quantify. One area that it has definitely helped has been with presentations and increasing their confidence speaking in front of kids and adults.

 

I hope this wasn't too long winded. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

 

WVNA- Thank you for all of that information! Do you think being on a team adds a lot to the experience? Are these super competitive type things, or what? I don't want to get involved in a team where basically some geeky parent does their kids work and blows everyone else out of the water (I've heard this said about the boy scouts box car races...), but collaborative work and gentle competition would be great!

[FairProspects]

B

If you are going to create a team (or find one for your children), I'd be looking into that now. The FLL season officially begins on August 28 and Jr. FLL has begun.

 

To add to this, just be aware that it is CRAZY expensive to start a team. We are talking a minimum of $1000 in parts and fees, and the teams I spoke with who were successful said it was easily double that since you need to add optional laptops to program the robots and ideally have more than one robotics kit. I know there are some grants available, but nearly all of the national ones I looked into wanted the project to benefit a school or community, and it looked very hard to get a grant for a homeschool situation. The best bet is to try it out with a local group or class, because I just can't imagine asking 5 families to shoulder those costs at this point.

[WVNA]

The cost of this is a good point to bring up.

 

Jr. FLL is actually pretty cheap. It costs $50 to register the team and the Lego Wedo kit (http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/lego_education_wedo_robotics_construction_set/2096) is $130. My daughter's team just uses her Mindstorm kit so I can't comment on how good/bad the Wedo kits are.

 

FLL can become a lot more expensive. However, if you look around, there are often grants and other ways to cover the costs. For example, the local FRC team coordinates a fundraiser that FLL teams can participate in. If they do, the registration costs(about $300) are covered.

 

We also received the robotics kit from a grant last year(about $400) and received a grant from our state homeschool organization this year to cover our registration costs. Since we are a homeschooling team, we just use laptops that belong to parents.

 

I'd highly recommend looking at the FTC/FTC teams in your area since a lot of them do help out with FLL teams. They may be able to point you in the right direction with in this area.

 

If you can get some of the costs covered and then divide up the rest of the costs on a team with up to 10 kids on it, it becomes much more manageable. Also, once you have the initial parts(NXT brick, sensors, motor, etc), you won't have to pay for those the next year.

 

To add to this, just be aware that it is CRAZY expensive to start a team. We are talking a minimum of $1000 in parts and fees, and the teams I spoke with who were successful said it was easily double that since you need to add optional laptops to program the robots and ideally have more than one robotics kit. I know there are some grants available, but nearly all of the national ones I looked into wanted the project to benefit a school or community, and it looked very hard to get a grant for a homeschool situation. The best bet is to try it out with a local group or class, because I just can't imagine asking 5 families to shoulder those costs at this point.

Edited August 15, 2012 by WVNA

[Soror]

Thanks to FP and WVNA. Ds is JrFLL age now but thinking more about this I don't know that dh would have enough time to help with everything else he has and his work schedule and since I'm due in a few months I'm not going to be up for it either. I looked on the Lego site but I'm not finding anything anywhere close to me.

[SunnyDays]

I'm interested in this as well. We have some already established teams in the area, but they tend to be pretty exclusive to the schools the kids attend. (Not run by the school, of course, but all team members attend the same school.) I've been poking around to see if there are any homeschoolers starting a group, or even interested, and I think the cost scares a lot of people off.

 

So we'll probably do something on our own. If we wanted to start a Mindstorms project at home, what would we need to get started, assuming we're starting from scratch??

[moonlight]

I don't have answers for you since I'm trying to figure out how to do it on our own too..just wanted to give you a heads up that the homeschool buyers coop has a deal on Lego mindstorms til the end of the month...

[WVNA]

We found the same thing happened here. There are a lot of teams, but most of them are based out of schools or are run privately of kids from the same school. That is why we started a group just for homeschoolers in our area. The other problem is that only 10 kids are allowed on a team(and that is really too many) and I can guarantee that a lot more than that want to do this.

 

You can do a lot with the Mindstorm kit(http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-4544091-Mindstorms-NXT-2-0/dp/B001USHRYI/ref=sr_1_1). That is all you would need for a FLL team as well. There are several different building instructions there and a lot of web sites with instructions(nxtprograms.com). You can also get books that have more detailed instruction on how to use sensors and programming techniques.

 

The other thing to do is to just make up challenges for your kids. For example, my daughter(going into 2nd grade) is working on a project right now where she has to put a stuffed animal on the floor and have her robot drive around it.

 

I'm interested in this as well. We have some already established teams in the area, but they tend to be pretty exclusive to the schools the kids attend. (Not run by the school, of course, but all team members attend the same school.) I've been poking around to see if there are any homeschoolers starting a group, or even interested, and I think the cost scares a lot of people off.

 

So we'll probably do something on our own. If we wanted to start a Mindstorms project at home, what would we need to get started, assuming we're starting from scratch??

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I don't have answers for you since I'm trying to figure out how to do it on our own too..just wanted to give you a heads up that the homeschool buyers coop has a deal on Lego mindstorms til the end of the month...

 

Thanks for the tip!

[threedogfarm]

Thank you to everyone who posted about this!

 

It has been on my mind to look into this for my son who loves, loves, loves his legos. These posts pushed me to google search (I put in "first lego league" and our hometown) for a team in our area (the middle school team wouldn't be an option because of all the reasons brought up by other posters). It turns out our local science museum has started a FLL team! Yay! I think that they just posted the sign up so there was actually still openings on the team (registration was only $35!) I signed my son up and I guess I'll have to look into the HSCB's sale so that my son can do some playing ahead of time.

 

So thanks again for this timely post. . .you made me get into gear this morning and look into it. One more thing checked off my long term to-do list that I never get to. . .

[Saille]

We've done FLL for a couple of years now, all on teams, attending competitions and so forth. In upstate NY, our program was run by SUNY-IT, and here the local program is run by Purdue University. Some programs offer loaner kits, so look into that before you buy. The program here technically doesn't have any, but when I pressed a bit, the director said he thought some of the schools might have extras, and he's emailing around now trying to get us one.

 

In addition, some of the programs have funds allocated for start-up teams. He told me there wouldn't be much available for me b/c we're new in town, and are relatively late asking for it, and when he came back with a number, it was enough to cover our team registration and field setup, almost, which is HUGE.

 

In addition, our teams (my dd's and my ds's) both did successful fundraising. A lot of STEM based companies, or even just locally owned businesses that want their names on your team tees, are happy to contribute. The only stumbling block we've found is that some larger companies will only donate to groups with non-profit status. Ds's coaches (I coached dd's team) made up some literature with photos to submit to potential donors, and our best find was a local engineering firm that went from design to production of machined parts on site. They did an annual charity lunch, and hosted the kids, donating all the proceeds to the kids, then gave them a tour. It was amazing!

 

WRT time commitments, I find that we spend an average of 3-4 hours a week in team meetings. Typically we have two meetings a week September through early December, sometimes with a few last minute extra meetings right before the competition.

 

There's also an iPod app (this, I think, is a team in CA's entire fundraising strategy for the year...I bet they make a MINT.) that allows kids to time runs, and check off the tasks they completed, giving them a projected score.

 

There are a lot of youtube videos of FLL competitions, if you want to see teams in action. Searching the annual themes is probably best. Body Forward, Food Factor, etc..

 

I've been VERY pleased with the program. It takes a LOT of practice and small, incremental tweaks to get a robot to perform tasks consistently, so the kids develop persistence. Small changes can make big differences to the overall trajectory of a run. They learn to keep records. They learn to save older versions of a program, ALWAYS. They learn to think scientifically. The research project keeps the kids centered on real-world applications for robotics.

 

The only other thing I can think of is that you really need an actual battery pack. Do not rely on AAs. You will drive yourself crazy and eat batteries like Pez. *Always* keep your battery charged, or it will slow your robot's response, and the kids will end up troubleshooting problems that are based on power, not programming.

 

Edited because I thought of more things: I really liked the program director at SUNY-IT, who was a professor. Contact with professors is another benefit of the program. So is the 14 million dollars in scholarship money disbursed last year. Additionally, we had *one* First Tech Challenge team in our area, and they were wonderful kids. They demo'ed at all the competitions, and they mentored the kids at SUNY-run camps in the summer, so the younger kids were learning skills from the older kids. I loved it. SUNY also held coaches' trainings. If you had the chance to go to one of these, I'd highly recommend it.

 

Also, some regions do elimination trials before the competition date. I think Purdue does. SUNY is starting this year. Don't let it deter you. It's just that the programs keep growing. We were at SUNY on competition day from 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and that competition was very well run. There were just that. many. teams. (They did do a dance party while the judges tabulated results, which was brilliant, b/c the kids had been living in their heads all day, and it gave them something physical and non-disruptive to do. They played every single cheesy dance song ever...YMCA, Macarena, Electric Slide, etc..)

 

FLL and AoPS have turned my kids' attitudes toward math around some, too, and before FLL I never heard a kid of mine talk about engineering as a possible career choice.

 

I can't say enough about our good experiences with the program.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Saille
Adding more praise!