Date: Saturday, May 25, 2013
Time: 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM

Where: Cafeteria of Livingston High School (30 Robert H Harp Drive, Livingston, NJ)

Parking: The north parking lot of Livingston High School (near the football field and the swimming pool) and enter from the north entrance.

See more details about this on this post (http://www.livingstonrobotics.org/2013/05/21/2013-lrc-jr-first-lego-league-expo-super-seniors-may-25-2013/)

Come and cheer young children ages 6-9 from 7 NJ Counties: Bergen, Camden, Essex, Mercer, Middlesex, Morris and Passaic. This event is open to the public. 

Date: Saturday, May 25, 2013
Time: 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM

Where: Cafeteria of Livingston High School (30 Robert H Harp Drive, Livingston, NJ )

Parking: The north parking lot of Livingston High School and enter from the north entrance.

The Jr. FLL Expo will include additional free enrichment and outdoor activities:

• An exhibition from Saint Barnabas Medical Center on the “50 Years of Medical Technology” to look back on how the lives of our seniors have changed in the medical cares.
• A 45-minute interactive science show related to medicines by “Mad Science” (from 12:30 PM to 1:15 PM)
• Jr. FLL teams (ages 6-9) presenting their “Super Seniors” projects and LEGO models that incorporate motors and computer programming.
• “Livingston’s Stuff The Bus” food drive for Livingston’s C.H.O.W. (Community Hunger Outreach Warehouse) of the St. Philomena Church (Each person brings a can if you can!)
• FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Tech Challenge robot demonstration by team Landroids, Exit 5 Robotics, Alpha Force and PowerFlow
• Enjoy many family friendly activities including pony rides, a petting zoo, craft tents, face painters, a giant blow-up obstacle course and slides, fire trucks, adopt-a-pet, and a chalk walk, Go Karts, food and music among others.

Learn about why the Livingston Robotics Club Jr. FLL Expos are so special! http://www.livingstonrobotics.org/expo/

Photos from LRC’s past Jr. FLL Expos can be found here: 2010 Smart Move;  2011 Body Forward; 2012 Snack Attack.

Attending teams (19 teams):

This is our first Junior First Lego League project.  We learned that our challenge was to make a model and do research on a change that has happened from our grandparents time till now.  We bugged our grandparents with a lot of questions and came up with lots of research ideas. We also had a huge box of Legos and at first didn’t really know what to do so we kept playing and built different machines. We’re building our model to show a supermarket from the past and one from now.  We have so many ideas, it’s hard to fit everything into the model.  We think we may make the model in two levels!  Is that allowed even????

Our Super Seniors  project is about how supermarkets and the technology they use have changed since our grandparents time!

We had some fun with our research when we got a tour of our local Shoprite.  We scanned the UPC codes on food items and the price of the item popped up on the computer screen.  It was so much fun!  We learned so much about how technology works in supermarkets and can’t wait to share the info. in our Show Me Poster.

Her are some pictures of our tour………….

Upcoming Jr.FLL Expos:

• NJ Jr.FLL Spring Robotics and Engineering Expo  on March 16, 2013 in Eatontown, NJ, organized by Girl Scouts of the Jersey Shore.
• LRC Jr.FLL Expo on May 25, 2013 in Livingston, NJ, organized by Livingston Robotics Club. The event for this year will also be coincided with Livingston’s Bicentennial activities. We are planning for an exciting show!

Although it’s a tough feat to repeat, this essentially replicates their success at the same point 12 months ago.  In 2011, the team won a regional Champions Award at Liberty Science Center.  At subsequent NJ State Finals, they won the 2nd Place Champions Award.  They were one of 64 top teams out of over 20,000 worldwide, to qualify and compete in the 2012 World Invitational Open in Florida.

The annual FLL competition involves three areas of competition: core values, a research project, and robotics.  This year’s competition them inolves improving the lives of our senior population.  To prepare for the next competition, the team is hard at work researching solutions to keep our senior partners engaged, connected, and independent.  Also during this period the team is staying active in their core values efforts.  And… of course the team is inventively investigating improvements to their robot.

To anticipate questions from FLL teams, LEGO Education has published a detailed Q&A. In short, EV3 is allowed for the 2013-2014 FLL season, while the current Mindstorms NXT will be supported by LEGO till 2015.

More reviews and information can be found online.  These video1, video2, recorded at the LEGO EV3 unveiling on Jan. 7, 2013, give a quick overview of the new product.

Basically, LEGO will once again introduce a EV3 Retail kit ($350) and an EV3 Education kit ($435 with software) as it has previously done, where the software for the Education core set ($340) is sold separately.

The EV3 Education software will include many multimedia, user-friendly, short classroom curriculum, which is more suitable for formal instructional use, or for someone who has no prior Mindstorms experience. In-depth Mindstorms instructions was previously supplemented by Carnegie Mellon, now LEGO Education is recapturing that market in its new EV3 product line.

EV3 has a new programming language and is compatible with the NXT sensors, but NXT cannot program the EV3’s sensors or use the newly developed EV3 programming language. The rechargeable battery packs are not interchangeable between the NXT and EV3 bricks, but the charger is. All other LEGO Technic pieces can be used in both sets.

The Retail and Education core sets come with different components as well:

Education Set: 2 large motors, 1 small motor, 2 touch sensors, 1 color sensor, 1 ultrasonic sensor with red LED, 1 gyro sensor, 1 rechargeable battery. Software with multimedia instructional curriculum is not included.

Retail Set: 2 large motors, 1 small motor, 1 touch sensors, 1 color sensor, 1 IR proximity sensor, 1 remote IR beacon. Software is included.

There are definitely many long-awaited new features in EV3, such as the remote control capability using the remote IR beacon or iPhone/iPad/Android interface; the expanded memory with a USB port and a SD memory card reader; 4 motor ports (although FLL still only allows 3 motors for now); Wi-Fi data logging directly to the EV3 brick, and direct simple programming on the EV3 brick, etc.

The new EV3 brick is Linux-based, open source will sure pleased the hacker enthusiasts. It can be still programmed in NXT-G, LabView, RobotC as used in the middle school and high school robotics competitions.

FLL teams who are new in the 2013-14 season are advised to budget for the EV3 product line for fall 2013, but can do pre-season training using Mindstorms NXT if available. Veteran FLL teams has the option of continuing with Mindstorms NXT (since most teams are very familiar with the programming environment, and most bugs have been resolved by now), then phase into EV3 in 2014 or beyond.

As of now, EV3 is not yet part of the 2013-14 FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) season.

Happy New Year!