Hi all, 

I saw this response to Rajesh's book question and now I have doubts about competing this year. 

We are a division I completely rookie team - we've had our robot kit a couple week longer than Rajesh, but that's about it. The team is getting into the project and has just started building a robot, but neither is approaching presentable as rapidly as would be necessary to do terribly well (the project has had to take a radical turn, as they'd chosen a food and factor that don't often combine in a way that causes contamination - both have issues, just not with each-other - They COULD have a robot in time, but only if everything they try works the first time - Did I mention they and I are complete rookies? I'm not holding my breath).

So, we're registered for a local tournament (on 11/12), should we take whatever we have at that point, or go as spectators? (If spectators, some guidance on how to cancel would also be most helpful).

And, thanks to all of you who take the time to answers all these newbie posts - I've found them all to be most respectful and extremely informative.

Brian

On Oct 23, 2011, at 10:11 PM, B Bergenstock wrote:

Do you mean that you just started your team and are registered for a local tournament?  Because competition is just 2 to 3 weeks away, and that's a pretty tall order. But good luck to you and your team.
        If it were me and I had just started, I would not enter into this year's competition, but hold an after school program starting in January every other week, teaching them programming and then enter next fall's tournament.  Definitely go to this year's event, even as a spectator, because being at the competition teaches you a lot.
     As for books to teach lego to your team,. I highly recommend Educate NXT
http://www.educatenxt.com/
It's the best value for your money and time.  Carnegie Mellon also has an excellent series called Robotic Engineering.  They started a free online class equivalent but I can't seem to find that link right now;  Maybe someone else has that link. 
Regards,
Brandy
. 

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Rajesh Shah <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

We are new FLL team recently registered with parents as coach and mentor. We
are all new to LEGO Mindstroms NXT Constructions and Programming.


I was a thinking a good book will be a nice way to get a jump start for our team.
I see a bunch of books available in Amazon.  Any suggestion ?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?
ie=UTF8&keywords=LEGO%20MINDSTORMS%20NXT&tag=nxtprogramsco-
20&index=books&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325#/ref=nb_sb_noss?
url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-
keywords=LEGO+MINDSTORMS+NXT&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3ALEGO+MINDST
ORMS+NXT


Thanks for your help.

Rajesh Shah

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