After many years mentoring FRC, my kids are finally old enough to do FLL EXPLORE. Woo hoo!
After talking to some folks I plan to stick with the FLL EXPLORE kit for the team until they all get a little older. I wanted to get one of the old challenge kits to start messing with the kids at home outside of team time. Let’s be honest - I wanna play with the Spike Prime too! I was curious if anyone could recommend which past challenge(s) are your favorites. My recollection from FLL tourneys many years ago is that some challenges are better than others for a variety of reasons. Happy to buy a kit if anyone is selling a full set - DM me.
If not, AndyMark is selling these and I am not sure which to get:
World Class: FLL Challenge Set 2014
Trash Trek: FLL Challenge Set 2015
Animal Allies: FLL Challenge Set 2016
City Shaper: FLL Challenge Set 2019
My favorite is 2011-12 (Food Factor). My dad still makes reference to the rat getting the cheese (which I’m not even sure is exactly what happened with the rat in that game…but…you know).
Of those on your list, I’d say 2014 and 2016 are both pretty solid games. When Scott used to design the games, I liked every one of them. Since LEGO took a heavier hand, there’s more emphasis on form over function and challenge, but they’re still a lot of fun (has anyone spun this year’s moving parts yet??? I think the windmill night actually generate power if you click it enough times).
As an aside, I was speaking about judging at this weekend’s Southern California FLL kickoff workshop and it was brought to my attention that many of the students were not born yet when I started FIRST. I know I’m not alone in that on this forum, but I thought of myself as pretty darn young, and this reminded me I’m a boomer at heart that 2011 wasn’t two years ago.
My favorite one is probably 2015 Trash Trek since it is the only one i competed . Looking back, I can still see very likable features of that game. Best part of it is there are only 90 degree turns your robot needs to take. I find complex FLL pathing really annoying since the sensors are not as accurate as needed. Game objects usually don’t malfunction except the composter mechanism. There is only one little area that needs line following, but it is not mandatory. All in all, it can probably be an encouraging game for practice.
This reminds me of the kids that come into judging and say “we decided not to use sensors because it made it less accurate.” No, you decided not to use sensors because you don’t know how to properly use sensors – which is fine, but you should know there’s a lot you can do with LEGO sensors and if you don’t believe me, you should search YouTube for world champion teams.
I and my team tried our best and we uploaded the solo world record video for that year with our pacific open robot. I didn’t involve in any software work, but even starting up the lego gyro sensor is very frustrating for an FLL student. Any vibration or rapid drag ruins the sensor values. Since there is a beginner practice needed, I thought it may be a suitable game.
Into orbit (really fun and presented some challenges for line following/squaring because the mat had lots of dark colors. I know it’s not on that list but it was really fun
(Also bias coz that was the year we won our qualifier event)
Personally, Trash Trek was my favourite, with World Class coming in close second. Continuing with the bias, we got to Worlds with Trash Trek, and I went overseas for the first time ever for World Class. Its amazing where FIRST has taken me over the years.
Since you’re looking to have your kids try it out as an introduction to FLL challenge, I think World Class has the widest variety of tasks, and certainly allows for the basics of FLL challenge to be put into practice (Line follow, wall follow, push/pull, lifting, one way gates). Biggest downside is that the pieces you get arent very valuble for an FLL challenge robot, with the exception being the bendy tubes.
City shaper is probably the best kit to purchase for parts, and probably the most bang for your buck. There are lots of technic plates in the bridge, and the frames in the purple building are fantastic too. Both very valuble pieces in building an FLL challenge robot. The down side being the challege itself is pretty boring and lacks a lot of the basics.
My favorite was Hydrodynamics, but out of the those options I participated for both animal allies and city shaper and city shaper was more fun for me. For City Shaper I wrote, directed, and filmed a short film to enhance our project presentation. Also for the robot game, it was my last game so I had a lot of experience and was able to make a better robot. Although lego has to make better gyro sensors because those would always drift, we actually had a bit of code which would prevent you from running the code if the gyro changed too much in a certain amount of time, to combat it.
Since FLL was run out of my house for a few years I have a bunch of challenge mats, though the lego pieces are all combined into other sets.
Probably 2006 Nano Quest or 2007 Power Puzzle. Both were a lot of fun and we were able to do a lot in those matches - 2007 we had a program that went forward and back once and scored like 100 points in that one go, scoring the wind turbines, power lines, trees, and the shared satellite model.
Since the OP’s objective is to learn about how to compete in FLL, then the Trash Trek Field Setup Kit from AndyMark would be a good choice. In the beginning, learning is more important than acquiring parts. Otherwise, they will just be able to build bigger robots that don’t work properly.
It is not clear what you mean by this statement. The complex paths are there to separate the teams that have learned how to navigate accurately and consistently from those who don’t. It is part of the challenge.
Your video shows you were using the EV3. There were well documented issues relating to drift with the EV3 gyro as well as well documented countermeasures.
In your video, it appears that you used wall-following for a lot of your navigation and some line-squaring as well as possibly line following. My guess is that there were many sections where dead-reconning would have been sufficient.
I also see evidence that your programmers applied high power levels to the motor when starting move along one segment of a path and that they braked at ends of some segments. With a tall and heavy robot like what you had, it is likely you were experiencing some slip in the wheels at those times, making your navigation less consistent. In one year, one of my sons wrote subroutines to ramp the motor power up and down to address such issues.
. Looking back, I can still see very likable features of that game. Best part of it is there are only 90 degree turns your robot needs to take. I find complex FLL pathing really annoying since the sensors are not as accurate as needed. Game objects usually don’t malfunction except the composter mechanism. There is only one little area that needs line following, but it is not mandatory. All in all, it can probably be an encouraging game for practice.
