If they do charge this year, will yo upay for the edubot? Why? I was just wondering… cause I thought it was interesting, but WAY too delicate, the motors broke too easily, but it is great for teaching autonomous I think, I just don’t think it would be worth paying that much for practicing autonomous and teaching rookies though.
Our money is really hard to come buy and I can’t speak for the team but I definitely wouldn’t pay for it.
What they should do is just make the kit cheaper and not include it and make it available to purchase separately.
well acctually what was said at the team forum, is that only rookie teams will recieve edu bot kits, everyone else has one, and can re-use them
We bought three last year in addition to the one we got for free. And we already had two from a summer high school robotics camp that WPI had (we were actually a “testing platform” for the EDUbots).
So why did we need so many? Well, for the annual “miniFIRST” competition – aka The Intergalactic Savage Soccer Competition. http://www.massacademy.org/minifirst
In the past we had used R/C car chassis and allowed the students to build stuff on top of that which was battery powered, but that’s it really. We decided last year to make a huge leap forward and use the EDUbots and it really was great. We made the playing field better, made a much more interactive game, used TacOps (our custom scoring software which was developed originally for BattleCry in place of using FIRST’s) for field control and scoring, loud music, big screen complete with camera views and Flash overlays. Yea, so we went all out last year, and it was so great we may actually be inviting area teams to compete this year (it has traditionally been a MassAcademy-only competition).
I have a video that summarizes miniFIRST which I made for a class that one of our grad students was teaching, it shows the game and the robots and stuff 
If you’re interested in seeing it just let me know (through any means, email, IM, whatever) and I’ll send it your way
i have two problems with only supplying to the rookie teams.
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the control system is radically changing, as there will be a new programming language. the EDUbots should be running that new programming language, or are otherwise rather useless.
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If the EDUbots are running the new language, it’s unfair for veteren teams that lack money (like my team) because we don’t get a change to actually create and test our code until we have a semi-working robot, which is way too late to go and learn a new language.
if there wasn’t a new programming language, i wouldn’t need an edubot, it’d be nice, but not needed. if there is a new language decided upon and revealed by that time though, i think it’s only fair to give it to everyone, or no one.
We can’t reuse the kit we got last year very well if that’s the case… the motors broke very easily and even though we geared things, we broke some of them not knowing how fragile they really were. Especially if they DO change the programming language they should offer it to veteran teams.
I need to know how to program it!
If i could i would Pay for it
HELP ME!
Alright, just IM me when you get on AOL. miketwalker86… you know my sn lol.
i found the EDURobot to be somewhat useless and as more of a hassle than a tool. As mentioned earlier, the motors and stuff were very fragile and the lack analog inputs voided most of the practicality of using it for auton practice.
the stock motors are garbage, thats why i hooked it up to victors and the Big Boy motors and i used servomotors becaise they work good on the ISAC, no anolog input tho, Pitty
There are four analog and eight digital inputs on the RC.
Only rookies will be getting an edubot this year. Bad luck for those of us who cannibalized the kit for stuff to put on the robot.
Only rookies will be getting an edubot this year. Bad luck for those of us who cannibalized the kit for stuff to put on the robot.
Meh You could probably get the parts from the edubot kit cheaper from other retailers then buying it from IFI.
I guess from my experience, its pretty hard to break the motors unless you force them to turn, especially force them to turn opposite of the direction they are trying to turn.
My guess a new programming language wouldn’t be that different from what already exists, so wouldn’t be difficult to port.
From a teacher’s perspective I think each team should have at least 2 or 3 edurobot kits. This will allow teams to get their rookie members up to speed and prototype various ideas in the pre and post season.
Would I like to spend my budget on 2 more Edurobot kits? No, free is always better, but if I don’t have a choice, I’ll make sure we try and get someone or some company to sponsor the kits for the team.
Right now we only have the Edurobot kit that was included in the 2003 KOP, this year I will purchase at LEAST 1 more edurobot so that we can have two kits to compete against each other with.