VEX IQ vs. LEGO EV3

[Foster]

One of my pet peeves is the perceived difficulty in running the smaller robot events. I get that FRC needs mongo space, power, etc.

For a VEX IQ event you need a room big enough to hold 12-16 (depending on the number of teams) card tables and the 4*8 field. So a cafeteria is great, or a room at the local fire-hall, church, YMCA, etc works. You will need a laptop to run the scoring software. You will need 2 people with clipboards and the paper score sheets to count the scores up at the end. Since its not a 1 vs 1 event, but a 1 "Helping" 1 event there are not the fouls and stuff to watch for.

So for about $25-30 per team you are good to go. (Based on Fire Hall Rental and the VEXIQ trophy pack (http://www.vexrobotics.com/228-3053.html)

Start at 8 run a ton of matches and be done by 12 (four hours will give everyone about 8 matches)

It's super easy to do. In our area most of the schools will run one event that's how you quickly get 10 events in a season.

If you want to judge the projects then you will need judges for that (2 people) Projects are not hard or complex to look at.

The entire reason I stay in competition robotics is for the competitions. Let me be the first to say "I don't like the projects that are not directly related to the robot". I understand that they are nice, expand roboteers outlook, etc. If you want to do a project oriented event, organize a science fair. I want to see roboteers doing robot engineering on their robot that they are competing with. (If you want to start a side discussion on this, lets do it in another thread, don't derail this one).

12 teams * 2 adults per team = 24 people you can ask to help. So an hour a person gets you more than enough help. In most of our cases there is a big brother/sister/grandparent that we can get to do scoring, etc.

Please don't let the lack of IQ events deter you. If you are in an hour drive of Philly and want to have an event contact me.