[Gdeaver]

Over the summer,our team has gone thru basic tool training and built a basic robot. Last week we bogged down trying to bring up the electronics and programming. A father and I work thru the problems and have basic control of motors and servos. Next meeting we should be able to mount everything on the robot and have the kids driving around. This should complete our summer goals.

REALITY CHECK FTC PEOPLE!!!!!

OUR team is all 7th and 8th graders. Smart but not geniuses. The Java programming model that Qualcom has created is full blown object oriented, event driven and multi threaded. In stead of the students working on specifying the behavior of the robot, we mentors are going to be teaching and beating a whole lot of very complex CS knowledge into their brains. This is going to take allot of work on the mentors part. Many teams are not going to have the people available to do this. Right know I have 2 students that are good enough to take this on. Unfortunately, the rest are most likely going to be blown away and give up on programming. Qualcom people, Have you worked with 7th graders on this system? This is a step back. I know many people hate Labview, but I have always been amazed at how the young minds picked it up. Even our good students who programmed last year's robot have called this a mess. Their has to be a better programming system. It's to late now. This fall is going to be long and hard. I've got some real home work to do. Yuk, YUK, Yuk, YUK.