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Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
Vex is the "middle-ground" between FLL and FRC. I have seen multiple posts concerning how much harder it is to "tinker" around, deconstruct, and reconstruct a Vex robot than a Lego one. Coming from an FRC perspective, I found FVC bots to be much simpler to tinker and play around with.
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Yes, Vex is the "middle ground", but where you start from (FRC "moving down" or pre-FRC "moving up") greatly colors your perspective on Vex and how willing you are to work with the system. While it's not a good idea for pre-FRCers to indulge in too much complaining, FIRST will need to be sensitive to the frustrations of pre-FRC teams if the Vex program is to grow. Otherwise, Vex teams will largely be siphoning students from FRC teams, simply serving the same students in a different way, rather than attracting new populations to robotics.
Our team reflects the dangers of ignoring the difficulties. We were a very successful FLL team for 2 years and "aged out" in time for the 2005 FIRST Vex Pilot (FVC-38), which we were privileged to attend. During 1-month build season, the team had good ideas, but couldn't make most of them work. I'm not an engineer and relatively non-technical, so I wasn't much help, and there were no adult mentors in town available (we did contact the FIRST Senior mentor 100 miles away, but there were limits to what can be done over the phone with someone who had never seen the Vex kit). The Atlanta experience was awesome, but the team didn't feel they'd learned enough to "make things work", and more importantly, they didn't see a way that they COULD learn. As a result, when we returned home, each of the 4 members took home a kit, but those kits have gone largely untouched all year, and the team's enthusiasm for robotics in general was largely doused. If there had been a Vex regional pilot in our area this year, we would not have participated.
This is in marked contrast to Lego Mindstorms. My son begged me to buy him a kit, but I was a tightwad, so he saved allowance for 2 years to get it. For the next year, he couldn't put it down and built and re-built projects from every available book from the library on Mindstorms (more than a dozen) and scoured the web for building ideas, and his teammates immediately caught the fire for robotics from him. If the team members had the same enthusiasm for Vex as for Lego, they would be posting here, not me.
I managed to coax a reluctant team back into robotics by entering a competition that potentially involves both Lego and Vex. This time, I opened my wallet and stocked up on Vex parts during the 50% sale, but the team declined to participate in the Vex portion. Having regained some of their confidence, I'm hoping that they will give Vex another try, and I've come to the conclusion that the following resources are essential in attracting AND KEEPING other pre-FRC teams.
1. Adult mentorship is key. While many of the teams at the 2005 Pilot had students who had never participated in robotics before, it was my impression that almost all the coaches had some FRC experience, or close connections with someone with FRC experience. Our team model had previously been kids learn by doing, researching, and doing again, then me learning from them. The team needed more guided instruction, which so far has not been found in our region.
2. Written resources that are organized in a systematic, orderly way are also needed, beyond the Squarebot instructions. These could include tutorials, overview books like "Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms" for Vex, or a "Constructopedia" of several cool projects with building instrucions. While veteran builders may feel these are "crutches", for teams in isolated areas without engineers, these mean the difference between making progress and stagnating.
3. The programming platform should have been one of our first purchases, because of the step-by-step tutorial. This might have captivated the team's interest enough to overcome the frustrations if we had purchased it early on.
There may be hope for us yet! I may have found a mentor (former FRC college student) only 40 miles away, and the team is willing to commute to him.