Vex Easy C Demo

[Ken Delaney 357]

Check out Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Academy site http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/education/index.html for a preview of their VEX curriculum. The presentation format is similar to the EDUbot CD we got 2 years ago.
Click on the Square Bot and then click the light sensor programming link. The EasyC program looks pretty slick. I have taught basic programming classes in high school and EasyC really enforces good programming techniques pretty seamlessly. It emphasizes comments, which most student written programs lack.
I highly recommend the Preview the Vex Curriculum Interface. Some links are broken, but the Programming section has lots of examples using the new sensors. It seems like Vex will live up to its hype. So far I am pretty impressed.

[dlavery]

The reason that the format (and content) look familiar is that both were developed by Robin Shoop at CMU. Robin has ties to FIRST going all the way back to the second year of Team 117. He was one of the first to work with IFI and the early EDUrobotics kits to develop targeted educational materials, and is continuing to work with them as VEX comes out. His programming modules were initially developed as part of the NREC "summer robotics camps" and have gradually matured to the "C" tutorials that you see now. If you like his stuff, then let him know next time you see him.

-dave

[Rich Kressly]

The history of development between IFI, CMU, and FIRST dates back many years as Dave states. Now with Radio Shack in the mix, the potential here for the classroom and in competition are both huge. Along with the work of Tony Norman and others (recently including our JVN) at IFI and Robin Shoop at CMU I'd also like to mention the current work of Dan Larochelle at Intelitek for his efforts on EasyC. I recently attended an EasyC presentation that Dan made, and five minutes in I was like, "Oh man, an English teacher (I) could do this!" I could say a ton about EasyC right now, but just know it's got something for the complete novice all the way to people who dig advanced programming language and concepts. The entire programming module, complete with tutorials, sample code, and a USB connector for your Vex controller will be available from Radio Shack very soon if it isn't already for $100 retail (and there's a 10% educational discount too)...

[Dan Larochelle]

Rich, I am glad you liked the easyC demo! Intelitek is really excited about the potential of this software. Being a FIRST mentor for the past 13 years, I have always wanted something like this to reduce the programming learning curve for my students. We have been working closely with IFI, FIRST and Radio Shack in the development of the easyC software. CMU gave us some great feedback on the software while they were creating the programming section of the Inventor's guide, which is included with the easyC software in RadioShack's programming kit. This guide shows the power of easyC and how quickly you can program your Vex robot.

If you think the software is cool, wait till you see the curriculum we are developing called REC (Robotics Engineering Curriculum). It is based on our learning management system called LearnMate which can be delivered over the Internet anytime, anywhere. For more information on easyC or the REC curriculum, please contact us at info@intelitek.com.

For those of you who do not know who intelitek is, we are the merger of two educational companies - Light Machines Corporation and Eshed Robotec. Both of these companies have been developing educational equipment and software for the past 20 years. Light Machines Corporation is a benchtop CNC manufacturer based in Manchester, NH and is known for its Prolight 1000 milling machine. Eshed Robotec is a robotics company based in Israel and is known for its ER4 robot. The Prolight 1000 Mill and the ER4 robot are both used in PLTW's CIM course and in competitions at Skills USA.