Some new info on FLL posted...

On the Education blog, there's some new information related to the FLL... check it out here.

NOTICE the inclusion of the Ultrasonic sensor!

And can someone explain the meaning of "There are no restrictions on the quantity or source of non-electric LEGO pieces,"?

Comments

I'll also add the first comment...

The RCX team can use an extra light sensor or touch sensor to balance the inclusion of the Ultrasonic sensor... I wonder if that's a good balance.

Also, I guess this rules out a mixture of NXT/RCX sensors and/or motors...

Jim
Anonymous said…
"There are no restrictions on the quantity or source of non-electric LEGO pieces," simply means that you can have as many non-electric LEGO pieces as you want from whatever set pleases you. There are no restrictions on non-electric pieces besides the fact that they must be LEGO-manufactured.
Thanks... I was reading too deeply into that :)

J
Anonymous said…
They have also announced that the RCX will be allowed in competition next year.
Anonymous said…
Thanks... I was reading too deeply into that :)

I think you where. I was reading it and wondering what there was not to get about it:-)

I have mixed fealings abouot the limitations. I still don't think that it evens the playing field. I don't think that most RCX teams are going to have three rotation sensors, and even if they did, the lose all their ports and can't attach any other sensors.
One thing I'm wonding about. What is the deal with Cybermaster touch sensors? Not the most usefull sensor in FLL, but with the ability to attach multiple sensors to one port, and distingush whitch was touched...
Brian Davis said…
Cybermaster touch sensors are very handy for stacking multiple touch sensors on a port... but that's not the only way to do it. You can also use a careful arrangment of LEGO lamp bricks and wires to hook two touch sensor up to a single port and get full information out of it.

--
Brian Davis
Anonymous said…
For FLL, only Lego brand parts are accecpted, and only in orginal condition. So you can't do your own wiring or use some other company's parts. This is a Lego sponsored event, so it makes sense for them to only want Lego parts. It's also supposed to be a student-built robot, so creative wiring is not usually something that a 10 year old can do. FFL tries to keep the playing field as even as possible, and the entire challenge should be able to be accomplished with just the parts sent in the official robot kit from FLL. I'm sure (at least I HOPE) the designers of the challenge only use the basic kit to solve the challenge.
Anonymous said…
Jim,

Actually, there is more to the, "There are no restrictions on the quantity or source of non-electric LEGO pieces". In past years, there's been a rule that you couldn't use any pieces that came in a bionicle set, so I guess they're clarifying that isn't a rule anymore.

-Jonathan
Brian Davis said…
Now that's a strange clarification... especially since Bionicles use studless construction, and I sometimes pick up deeply discounted sets just to get studless parts. That would seem to be a rather difficult rule to enforce in some cases as well... I wonder what the motivation is.

As far as the "creative wiring", using lamp bricks as resistors is not something that's very difficult. Take a look at:

http://www.plazaearth.com/usr/gasperi/twotouch.htm

I'd be curious to know if any FLL teams have ever used this trick in the past (I guess you'd need two lamp bricks, however, which probably tosses it out).

--
Brian Davis
Anonymous said…
I think you misunderstood. The bionicle parts "are" allowed. A few years ago they were not. The current rules state that teams can use any non-electrical parts they want, as long as they are lego and have not been altered (cut, fused together, etc.).

Regarding stacking sensors, I haven't seen teams do that but it doesn't look like it breaks the rules - they are not exceeding allowable parts, and it can be programmed in the allowable languages. In previous years, teams were only allowed a few sensors (max 4, I think, including only one rotation sensor) so these tricks were not necessary. This year, with more sensors allowed (max 8 including rotation sensors), we might see these sorts of solutions for the RCX teams wanting to use as many sensors as they can stack on their brick.
Brian Davis said…
Ah, I se... comes from ading comments when half (completely?) asleep. It still leaves the question of why Bionicle parts were disallowed *before*, however. Curious.

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Brian Davis
Anonymous said…
I would also presume that allowable parts include all the parts that came with the RIS sets: tank treads, rubber bands, foam hocky puck, &etc.
Anonymous said…
I'm on an Fll team. Please tell me how to stack sensors. I'm using an rcx, and am using 2 rotation sensors and one touch sensor. The field has many black lines on it, and we would like to add a light sensor. We are using robolab. We need to stack sensors!!!!!!!!!!

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