FIRST promotion video

This is a nice video summarizing the idea behind FIRST. The video features actor Morgan Freeman, FIRST founder Dean Kamen and president Obama.

Central European FLL winner: avaloq from Switzerland

The winner of yesterdays's Central European FIRST LEGO League Finals is (as in 2005) the team avaloq from Switzerland, which will go to the World Finals at St. Louis (USA) in April.
Congratulations!

The first eight teams will also take part at the FLL Open European Championship at Delft (Netherlands) in June.

Journey account on Atlanta FLL world finals

Austrian MCP Mike Brandl has published a travelogue of his six days sojourn at the FLL world finals in Atlanta in mid of April. Have a look at his site where you will find a lot of interesting photos and videos.

Besides, it's a good opportunity to see how some of the people that are posting here actually lool like... ;) 

Hello World

Hi, My name is Marc-André Bazergui, bazmati or bazmarc on social media.
Jim asked me to join The NXT Step as a contributor, It is a challenge I must accept and hope to bring information you will enjoy.  But first let me introduce myself.

I'm a 42yo Adult Fan Of LEGO Mindstorms, French Canadian living in Montreal, Quebec. It all started when the RCX took me out of my dark age. I have to admit I got charmed on the idea of mixing my newly found passion (computer) with an old one i had as a kid (LEGO). The Internet showed me i was not alone and provided me with answers idea and... new LEGO friends worldwide.

I got my first NXT when it came out in 2006 and soon after joined QUELUG.org.  Back then we were 6 members, with only one other owning an NXT. Today the Quebec LEGO User Group counts over 40 active members many of those now have an interest in Mindstorms

Today  I take part in many organizations involved in bringing NXT into schools. go check them out, there is  Zone01.ca (competitions) and ProfAQUA.ca (after-school activities) I've even had a chance to teach WeDo to 4yo which is great because they will be Mindstorms future users.  I also help our local LEGO Education reseller by hosting a Robot Invasion shows usually held just before xmas... This  give me a chance to talk with parents and kids and introduce them to the greatest 'toy' ever!

But most of all, i enjoy building robots, programming robots, making video of and talking about my robots! My most popular one to date turned out to be my rendition of WALL-E !! Who would have known this little robot would have propelled me so far! (read more on this in BrickJournal Issue#9 or on my blogs). Most of my work can be seen on my YouTube Channel. I enjoy playing and talking LEGO with kids and grown ups from around the world via video conferences or chats.

All of this is my hobby that I plan to carry out for when i retirement!!!  Meanwhile, i work as a Remote Technical Support Specialist. Occasionally i even find myself talking about my robots to customers, those always turn out to be fun calls :)

Enough with the BIO,  Let me start by posting a video montage of my recent trip to Atlanta for the FIRST Worldwide Championship 2010 where i met thousands of Mindstorms fans, many MCPer and the LEGO crew for the first time!



(... nothing fancy just using iMovie templates ...warning it is 7 min. long high paced video ...oh ya and thanks NeXTSTORM for the cool soundtrack you let me use!)

I: /. 7.

Climate Connections Perfect run 400 points

Technobotts³ Preparation for the UK Final

This year the Technobotts3 FLL team had a fairly successful regional heat, they walked away with two trophies: Robot design award and 2nd place overall. With 280 points they had qualified for the UK finals in Loughborough.
Encouraged by the unreliability of their old robot, the team voted for yet another total redesign. Although this may sound a bit risky, they had also done it two years ago before the finals, to great success.
So it came as no great surprise that the first ever practice run with our new robot achieved a score we were aiming for 400! And here's the video of us getting 400 in only 130 seconds.

Well done !!

(Origional post by NXTBoy)

martyn

Dutch FLL2009 FINAL (BeNeLux)

Saturday 31 January in Utrecht was the Dutch FLL Final, in total more then 250 teams competed and over 2500 visitors were present.
The polar bears from Hillegom won the first price, and are invited to go to Atlanta.

The below team (windkracht zeven also form Hillegom) won the second place and with that a ticket to the Open European Championship in Kopenhagen (DK) in May.

The team that won the third place (WereldWierdeWijs from Almelo) will have their project worked out in real.



Team watt build this impressive robot that could do all but 3 missions!


This robots was featuring a real interesting principle called MOT, (Main On Top).
They say that removing and attaching parts during the game costs precious seconds, this robot has one part that can be swapped within a split second It might be the difference...


(Two members of team Watt, and their robot)

MOT motor and NXT, this unit can be pulled and placed in all their base robots.

Here is a movie on how to do the full house mission.


I even spotted a FTC robot.


The next years theme will be ‘Smart Move’.

Martyn

NJ State FLL Tournament

Since Built On The Rock decided not to compete in FLL this year, I was asked to be a head ref at the NJ State Tournament, which was held on Saturday. This was my first time reffing, and it was neat seeing all the different solutions that teams came up with for the missions. Here's a few thoughts about the tournament and season:

1. This year's challenge definitely seems harder than those in recent past years. The highest score at the tournament was a 300 by the Robo Invaders, as opposed to last year's 400 followed by a 395. Also, I haven't heard of any perfect scores being made anywhere else yet... has anyone heard of one? The difficulty of this year's challenge doesn't seem to be caused so much by hard individual missions - many are simple push-objects-to-the-right-zone missions - but more by the sheer number of missions. There are 18 missions this year: twice as many as the number of missions in Nano Quest, and 7 more than in Power Puzzle. Many of them aren't all that short, either. It seems that the key to scoring high this year is to combine multiple missions per run.

2. I refereed half of the matches, and of all the robots I saw during that time and all the other time at the tournament, I only recall seeing one RIS robot. It's nice to see that just about all teams have been able to make the switch over to the NXT system.

3. One interesting change of rules this year allows teams to accomplish missions before they leave Base! So theoretically, a team could make a robot that stays in Base during the entire match, and uses some sort of extending arm to accomplish all the missions. However, I only saw one team make use of this rule change; this team had a scissor arm set up in Base aimed at a mission model, which the robot activated as it went to complete a different mission. The scissor arm then pressed a bumper on the model, accomplishing the mission. BTW, I should note that this rule change does not make it possible for teams to grab their robot without getting penalized... a Q&A (Ruling 14) specifically states that using any kind of "leash" that "tethers" the robot to Base for this purpose will not keep the team from getting penalized.

4. Probably the most unknown rule at this tournament was part of the Active Robot Touched rule. Because of the confusion with this rule, I thought I'd post about it here so that reading teams could make sure they don't get an unhappy surprise at their tournament. This rule first states that once an active robot (one that has been started) is touched, it immediately becomes inactive and must be taken back to Base. Then the rule says the following:

"If any models or strategic objects were being strategically moved by the robot at the time of the touch:

• Those being moved from Base go back to Base with the robot, eligible for continued use.
• Those encountered out of Base are taken out of play (off the field)"

This rule is quite simple... any object your robot is strategically moving from Base goes back to Base with the robot. Any object the robot started moving when out of Base gets taken off the field, if it's still being moved by the robot at the time of the touch. So for example, if a robot drives over to the Insulation models and starts pushing them towards the green grid, but then a driver grabs the robot and brings it back to Base, the Insulation models do NOT come back to Base, but must be taken off the field and therefore cannot be scored in that match.

5. The two-team mission this year seems to encourage the use of sensors, which is nice, especially since it's possible to find clever ways to solve it without sensors. However, not many teams attempted it, and I didn't see anyone use sensors to determine how to align the arrows. The one team I saw accomplish the mission used a mechanical solution; they added or removed pieces from their robot to make it turn one of the arrows the right number of times - great idea!

What are your thoughts about this year's challenge?

-Jonathan