FLL NJ Qualifying Tournament in Montclair

Built On The Rock competed in the Montclair NJ qualifying tournament yesterday, and what an exciting event it was! Only 13 teams competed, but four perfect scores (3 of which were official) were achieved there! Built On The Rock got two perfect scores and a 390, and a team called the Robo Invaders got the other two perfect scores (one as a fill-in). Other teams achieved fairly high scores also, which was surprising, since I thought this year's challenge would be harder for teams. I also noticed that none of the teams used the RIS system, which was also slightly surprising since there's a nice fairness bonus for using the RIS. The picture shows the puzzle from the mat, which the Robo Invaders put together and displayed at their pit. Great job!

Built On The Rock won the Robot Performance award, and congratulations to the Robo Invaders (Champion's Award), Landroids (Robot Design), Gears (Teamwork), and Torn (Research Project), who will also be competing at NJ State on December 8th. We heard that the NJ Champion's award winner will be going to the World Festival in April (not all states are going), so it's going to be an exciting tournament!

Here are some pictures of the event:

Built On The Rock with the Robot Performance award. A couple of the old members and I aren't on the team this year, since we're older than 14.

The awards were shaped like puzzle pieces, with the Champion's award being a combination of the four others. The competition tables.

Team Gears had this wooden model of a robot displayed on their table... notice it doesn't have any gears. :-)

The Landroids, a first-year team, doing a practice run... they were getting perfect scores in some of their practice runs, but unfortunately didn't get them on the official rounds.

Built On The Rock in their Teamwork interview.

You can also read about the event on our website: http://www.TeamBuiltOnTheRock.org

-Jonathan

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT...

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort...

Ghostbusters R.T.V Remix

Nino Guba is from Torrance, California, USA. He played with LEGO as a kid, but growing up in the Philippines, it wasn’t something he had easy access to. He only got reintroduced to LEGO when he moved to the US and had kids of his own. When his sons were younger, they received LEGO sets as gifts, but as they grew older, the sets got put into storage as their interest faded. Fast forward a few years, he started coming up with his own product ideas and thought about how he could quickly prototype them. That’s when he discovered LEGO MINDSTORMS—and was hooked! He raided his kids’ old collection, got everything organized, and now he's designing and building his own creations, blending his coding skills with LEGO robotics to bring ideas to life. Tell us about your Ghostbusters Remote Trap Vehicle (R.T.V) project. This project is a LEGO Technic adaptation of the Ghostbusters R.T.V.—a ghost trap converted into a remote-controlled vehicle. Its companion build is a prop replica of the Futaba...

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