ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Back in February when I was at FIRST I met with lots of bright kids at the MINDSTORMS booth but they where mostly asking me questions about upcoming EV3 and my WALL-E robots. The Next day I decided to drive my robot around and visit surrounding FLL teams booth this is when I came across the Radical Robotix Team 10147 member Kyle Markland who talked to me about his personal robot he was bulding, the Timmyton!  He said he would send me more details and a few days ago, he did! Hello... we met at the World Festival. I was the one who told you about my NXT robot, the Timmyton 3.5. I wanted to inform you that I finished an upgraded version, the Timmyton 4.0. It has similar functions as the last model, but the mechanics are very different and all of the last model’s flaws have been resolved.  I attached some pictures of the 4.0 above. If you want all of the details, you can find a complete rundown of both the Timmyton 3.5 and 4.0 on my NXT Log page. Just type in Bu...

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

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.

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... ;) 

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 A dult F an O f L EGO 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, the...

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

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 e...

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...

FIRST LEGO League: The Unofficial Guide is now in stock on Amazon... you can get it here . If you get the book, please give us a review on Amazon and let us know how you like it! -Jonathan

On the official LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT News page there's an announcement that Dean Kamen , the founder of FIRST (best known amongst LEGO aficionados for the FLL sub section), has been awarded the LEGO Prize for his passionate commitment to FIRST. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, Owner and Vice Chairman of LEGO, says "We are particularly proud to be able to honor Dean Kamen for his personal and untiring commitment to child development and learning. [...] Dean Kamen plays an immensely important role in creating a better future." The LEGO Prize was founded in 1985 by LEGO® and was last awarded in 1997. So this is a very particular honor for Mr. Kamen. Congratulations!

3 Days to go. LEGO posted a small agenda , with nice Actions : - Quizzes - where you can win prizes! - Cool MINDSTORMS models to play with, made by the expert users! Presentations: - 'Using 3-D programs to build LEGO MINDSTORMS models' - by Fay Rhodes and Jim Kelly. - 'Open Source and alternative programming for LEGO MINDSTORMS' - by Ralph Hempel, creator of pbLua. - 'Taking LEGO MINDSTORMS to the Sky - The LEGO Autopilot' - by Chris Anderson. Celebrating 10 years of LEGO MINDSTORMS: - Kick-off for the LEGO MINDSTORMS Global Roadtrip. With sending off two robots across the planet! Come and sign up, so one of them might visit your FLL team! So make a note in your agenda too, and visit 17, 18 or 19 April the MINDSTORMS booth in Atlanta . Martyn

It was a great day, and I hope some of you got a chance to look at the webstream, it was professionally done. I was standing close to the arena and heard a lot of the competition going on. These are the results: 1st place University Twente Chamions Award: (going to Atlanta!) Herta-Mechanics fom the Herta-Lebenstein Realschule in Germany (This was one of the cross border schools that were allowed to compete with us) Second place and second place in Robot Challange: icNRG as a friendsteam from Eindhoven Third place : De Spaarlampjes from Johannesschool in Hillegom First place in Robot Function and second place in robot Design : 3T Rox from De Telgenborch in Almelo First place in robot Design and Programing : C3PO also a Friends team from Den Haag Congratulations to you all and I hope you had a great day. More images will follow soon. Martyn

The Benelux final of the First LEGO League will be held at the University Twente on Saturday 26 January. You can follow this live online , (just during the games) but you are also welcome to visit us, the 32 best teams of Netherland, Belgium and Luxembourg will show their robots and fight for a place in Atlanta. There are also several Workshops MINDSTORMS and science demonstrations, I will show several demonstration models and some models from the IDEA book. See this page for the location. Martyn

As usually after the end of the regional finals, the FLL commitee has announced the topic of next season's FLL competition: Climate Connections Citing from the German FLL site : Climate Connections - Building A Global Game Plan The "winds of change are blowing" and with them comes FIRST LEGO League's 2008 Climate Connections Challenge! Join us as we explore why many experts believe the earth's climate is changing and how these changes impact you and our planet. The causes, contributions, and consequences are all interconnected and the experts are telling us to "think globally - act locally." People, resources, and local actions need to be united to establish a global game plan. Do FIRST LEGO League teams have what it takes to make these global Climate Connections? Registration will start on 1st of March.

The Central European FLL finals , taking place at Triberg, Black Forest (Germany) on last Saturday, has been a great experience! A lot of competent teams took part - the Alleskönner?! from the Ketteler-Realschule at Hopsten (Germany) finally made it to FLL Champion (and thus attendee of the FLL World Finals in April at Atlanta, USA). Congratulations! This is a movie that I have created from my own photos. Unfortunately, the rechargable battery of my camera gave up rather soon, so the greatest part of the teams and of the event can not be seen there. :-( Nevertheless: Enjoy!