Quote:
Originally Posted by davidthefat
Hopefully, if things go well, I will be mentoring for local rookie FLL teams sponsored by our team next year. First of all, I want to know if the programming is done graphically like LabView, or will it be very simple pseudo C? Where can I learn the ins and outs of it? Now, I am very hard wired for written languages, but I am pretty sure I will have no trouble transitioning, but teaching is one thing. So any advice on how to teach?
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You're limited in what you can use; my teams use NXT-G. This is a graphical language that's built on the LabView engine and has a number of similarities. And a lot less capability.
NXT-G comes with the Mindstorms kits, and the kit you should order with your team registration also comes with a CD with a pretty decent tutorial. Note that the commercial kit (Mindstorms 2.0) is *not* the same kit that comes with the educational version. They have slightly different parts, and a different version of NXT-G. Close, but there are a few things that a just a bit off. But for all practical purposes they're the same.
There are a LOT of on-line resources you can use. Here's a small subset of what I have bookmarked:
http://forums.usfirst.org/forumdisplay.php?f=24
http://thenxtstep.com/smf/index.php?board=17.0
http://drgraeme.net/DrGraeme-free-NX...rials/ChV4.htm
http://www.teamhassenplug.org/NXT/NXTGTips/
http://www.ortop.org/NXT_Tutorial/index.html
http://www.legoengineering.com/
Your problem is not going to be finding info. It's going to be deciding which info you want to use.
There are some pretty decent books out there on a number of Mindstorms topics. How to build, how to program, etc. One book that I do recommend as a supplement to the FLL coaches' handbook (a must read, for many reasons) is __First Lego League: The Unofficial Guide__. See
http://www.amazon.com/First-LEGO-Lea...3787631&sr=8-1
I'm an old programmer, and I've been using text-based languages for well over 30 years. I'm getting used to both NXT-G and LabView and it's really not *that* bad. Once I got over my "I really want to type this" roadblock.
Although I will say that I've just implemented a general-purpose subroutine (a "my block" in NXT-G) that took about 20 lines of nicely structured, easy-to-read, Perl. The NXT-G version is UGLY. But it can be done.
If you'd like more info, let me know here or PM me. Odds are we're nowhere near each other, but you never know, and there's a lot that can be accomplished via email.
Good luck with the team. I found our involvement (my wife, the 5th-grade teacher, started a team this year; we ended up with so many kids that we had to register 3 teams) to be very rewarding. Plus it gave me the excuse I needed to buy my own Mindstorms; I've been looking for a valid reason for years.
One warning: when you're trying to teach kids to program NXT-G, the more robots you have available, the better. We only had 1 robot for every 7 kids; they spent a LOT of time waiting for robot time. Our goal is 1 for every 2 kids, but it's going to take a lot of fundraising & a number of years to get to that point.