C14 LEGO Robotics to go to the 2014 FLL Open European Championships in Pamplona, Spain!

Amazing news! C14 Robotics, the team of home educated Lego robotics enthusiasts that got through to the Nationals in Loughborough, have just found out they are invited  to the 2014 FLL Open European Championships in Pamplona, Spain! Very few teams have been invited from the UK so this is a real honour and a reflection of all the hard work they've put in.

The Championships is in May so C14 will need to raise a considerable amount of money in a short amount of time to enable them to go. Over the next few weeks they'll be looking for sponsors, donations and a bucket load of support.  

To find out more see their website  or if you wish to make a donation, however small, please check out their fundraising link (on the right hand side of my blog -->  ;)  ) [Note, by popular request they will be adding a paypal option soon!]

C14 Robotics introducing themselves to possible sponsors at The Big Bang Fair, Birmingham NEC, 2014

Taking time out to regroup and swap ideas, C14 at The Big Bang Fair, 2014

C14 Team success - and a well-deserved rest!

It was a long haul. A lot of hours. A long day at the competition.

But they did good.

 The robot performed consistently well (though not achieving the 400+ scores they know it can). Apparently, several features of the competition table were different to those they had been rehearsing with. I'm told the 'wall' was higher than they'd expected. I'm also told the lego man (known fondly by C14 as 'the hobbit') had been given flexible legs and this required an adjustment of the robot between runs. Not being an expert in areas of walls or hobbits, all I could do was nod, sympathetically.

Despite the robot not doing as well as they'd hoped, on the competition table they got into the final top 8 - 7th we think in the final scores. The other aspects of the competition went well. Their presentation (they said) was a success. They spoke to members of other teams, got to chat with last year's winners, Untitled 1, whose 6 years of attempts had culminated in a truly amazing lego robot. They had a lot of fun.

All the competing teams were awarded medals. Then, to their surprise, C14 were given the 'Innovation Award', an award for 'extraordinary creativity and innovation' in robot build.

Some very chuffed boys.

Behind the scenes of C14 Lego Robotics: It's not just bricks and pizza.

The videos produced by C14 Lego Robotics might lead you to think that the First Lego League competition is all high-tech and whizzy and glamorous. Sure, there's a lot of building and programming, and quite a bit of pizza eating (surely the realm of the rich and famous), but there are other aspects to the competition that aren't so well advertised.

The team has to research a problem associated with 'Nature's Fury' (the FLL theme this year) and then present their findings, and a proposed solution to the problem, to the judges. It takes a lot of work to get that presentation right. And quite a lot of my sofa, dining room table, floor...(you get the picture). There was me thinking that a presentation was about the spoken word. Apparently not.

Ds1. More research. More editing. More late nights.

Outside of the robot construction and programming, there have been additional requirements for lego building. For example, ds1 created this attachment in order to carry a video camera on top of the robot . This means they can get better footage of the robot attempting challenges.

Behinds the scenes mothers are working hard, too. This mother has been producing home bakes to send with her two team members as they head off for yet another mammoth roboteering session. Yes, I know the pasties look like a road traffic accident, but I'm told - by the boy who doesn't eat normal things - that they are very good.

On Monday they worked from 9.30am to 5.30pm. Today is the second day of their 2-day intense Weds-Thurs session. Last night they slept over at another team member's house and I don't suppose they'll finish early today.

There has been an awful lot of packing, unpacking, packing: a constant pile of ingoing and outgoing bags in my hallway. And tomorrow we pack, yet again. This time for Loughborough and the national competition.


If you haven't 'liked' c14 robotics team on their Facebook  page, please do so. They would love to reach 200 likes before they set off for the competition - only 25 to go! (I know, I'm nagging...)

C14 Lego Mindstorm Robotics Team (First Lego League)

The team are still working overtime with their Lego robot, preparing for the Nationals on 1^st February. My boys spent almost 6 hours on Monday - in between biology class (ds1) and Lamda drama session (ds2) - working on the robot and the research presentation. Monday was also the team's ‘Open Day’, the second opportunity they've had to share their work with the public. Team members showed other families how the robot worked, how they programme it, and demonstrated the robot in action completing some of the challenges.

I know I'm a mum and it's my job to be proud of my boys, but I am *really* impressed with how far all the team members have come and how much they've grown in confidence. When they started, some had never programmed a Lego robot before, most had never researched and written a presentation, and few had read out anything in front of an audience before. Not to mention the experience of working really closely as a team, under pressure. It's been an amazing journey for all of them.

At the open day on Monday they spent a little while sharing their research project with the audience. [Here's the First Lego League website with details for this year's project challenge]. C14's problem was how to help people trapped in fires following an earthquake.  (They discovered when they started researching natural disasters for their project that more damage and injuries/fatalities are caused by fires following earthquakes, than the earthquake itself). Their proposal is for an autonomous rechargeable drone that maps the location and extent of fires and relays that information back to emergency services. It is also designed to be able to carry cargo (e.g. supplies for emergency teams). They've been working on acronyms for the design. I don't have high enough clearance to be given that top secret information yet! 

All this research on drones has inspired them to set their sights even higher. There have been rumours (mothers eavesdropping on teen conversations) that some team members are planning to design and work together on a flying model quad copter, once the Lego competition is finished. I don't even know what a quad copter is, but I'm seriously hoping its insides aren't going to be on *my* dining room table! 

There are also plans in the pipework for some of the team to mentor a younger group of budding Lego robotics enthusiasts later this year. There’s been a huge amount of interest from other families, stirred up by the C14 demonstrations and the publicity from their website, so I can't see they'll have a shortage of willing participants.

The team are meeting up again tomorrow (mine are working on the project from home) and again at the weekend and on Monday.  It’s going to be a long week. However well they do at the Nationals, whatever place they come among the 29 teams, they couldn’t possibly have worked any harder than they have.  

The team has been adding more to the website to get it looking its best: http://mindstormc14.weebly.com/

They also have a youtube channel, where they've posted videos of their robot in action (and a few fun videos of times where things didn't go to plan). [Insert proud mum moment...Ds2 made the computer animations at the beginning of each video. He loves his tech!]

And...if you happen to be on Facebook, I'm sure the team would love a few more 'likes' or just a comment to wish them luck for the Nationals. Search for "C14 robotics team".

Shameless plug/Proud Mum moment over :)

LEGO Robotics: the end is in sight...perhaps

Since the summer my two boys, as part of their team, C14, have been working towards a Lego Robotics competition run by First Lego League. Before Christmas they successfully beat all the teams in their regional competition and are now headed towards the nationals on the 1st February.

It has been a long haul.

Not just for them, but for their mother, whose diesel expenditure has gone through the roof, ferrying them backwards and forwards to team meetings and who has shuffled filed carefully a years worth of bills and bank statements while sitting in Sainsbury's cafe waiting for meetings to finish. Lots of filing, interspersed with fretting about whether Sainsbury's really do enforce their 2-hour parking limit. I even went to the library and lent a man a stapler while I sat and pondered the mental health of the - obviously borderline insane - woman on reception. My life has been thrills and spills.

Of course I can't help being their mother. Making helpful comments about their project write-up - "How about you put a full-stop somewhere in that paragraph?" - have resulted in occasional bad feeling and frequent teen sulking. Despite this, the whole exercise has, I think, been productive, (even if it hasn't vastly improved their ability to punctuate a sentence). I now have children who are willing (and able) to give a presentation in front of people. I have children who have shown how nice they can be to other children - if only to score a few more marks from the judges for 'coopertition'. And yes, that is a real word, apparently trademarked now (will me using it here be infringement of copyright, I wonder?) And I truly think they have learned lots of other things, I'm just not exactly sure what those things are. Educational, life-enhancing stuff, I'm sure.

I wont post team photos up here, but here's the link to their website where, if you want to see Lego robots doing Lego robot things, you can see for yourself what they've been up to.

http://mindstormc14.weebly.com/



[Sometimes real life intrudes when I am writing, so I feel compelled to mention that I'm typing this to the background noise of dd yelling 'left paw' at an animated dog on her Nintendo ds. Apparently the dog now does handstands. I am trying to sound excited. Except that we have a real dog that doesn't even come when it is called. I can't help thinking that the world is getting very surreal. ]

This month (November)

November is nearly over and it's time for a quick catch-up of what we've been up to this month.

Autumn walks in the woods

 (with home-made dart shooters)

Visits to home ed group to do Chemistry, Spanish, Art, Arts Award (and time for dd to sneak off and play on the communal computer)

Bat-themed activities

Bat origami

Online bat jigsaws (here )

Putting together a festive mini-swap for Worldwide Culture Exchange (sent to the USA). Pick three to five items representing Christmas/The Winter holidays in your family and send it to another family. Mini-swap sign-up form can be found here (festive mini-swap open til the end of November)

Digging for dinosaurs in a wolf suit (thank you 99p shop!)

Playing lego games

 Fungal foraging

 And spore printing

 
 Enjoying outdoor times with friends

Looking at lichen

Sewing Christmas decorations and printing cards

Making a mobile of the solar system (printable here)

Ds digs up our area in the name of archaeology (and finds pottery, nails, bones and a medieval tile painted with a griffin) 

Leaf rubbings

Making a printer out of Lego Mindstorms

Artwork (experimenting with symmetry)

 Trip to Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (me, without the children). Hence plenty of time to take arty photographs...

Fencing competitions

Bug handling workshops

Saturday 10th November.

Today we are mostly...

 Making bird boxes

Constructing tracks on Lego Loco:

Making a printer on Lego Mindstorms: