I’ve been asked to head up our robotics club for the school I teach at. I think I know what all to purchase after going through the forums (I’d love to see a getting started/new team pinned thread as there are a lot of opinions on how to get started), but I wanted to advice on how I should approach our wide age range of students. We have four 6th graders, three 7th graders, a 9th grader and an 11th grader. We may have more as originally we had several sign up that didn’t come to the first meeting, but for now, it’s the 9 of them. Of those that are joining, I’d say about six are really excited and the other three are interested, but still a little skeptical.
We have a sizeable budget but I wasn’t sure if I should get these younger kids straight into the V5 ecosystem or have them start in the IQ ecosystem. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on IQ just to have to buy new stuff in a couple years, so I’m leaning towards only using v5. In y’all’s experience, would starting these kids out with v5 be too much? Most of them want to learn programing but have little to no experience in it. All of them have worked in our LEGO stem lab and have a general understanding of how to build and problem solve.
Since we won’t start competing until next year, five of the students will be 8th+ when we start competition. For now my plans are to get them familiar with the system and to help them gain a foundation in robotics.
Finally, I’ll add that I’m 100% new to this. I do have some coding experience, and I enjoy building things, but I’m primarily our school’s media guy so I’m a little out of my element with this, though I’m excited to give these kids any opportunity I can!
As an 8th grader right now, I think what my school is doing is a very good job on making the robotics program fun for all levels of skill. We only use V5, which isn’t to much more complicated then IQ in my experience. Lower level students can start by exploring with parts by building a simple pushbot, where they can use a manual, or just giving it their best shot. After they get familiar, they can start to go into things like claw bots or other simple robots. For the higher level students, they can work on building a robot for the main game, even though they can’t compete in tournaments, you can do mini, in class tournaments were the teams can get familiar with the competition. This tournaments can also push students to focus on strategy and design by experimenting with the game.
What my school does for less experienced students is design a very simplified game, impose a low motor limit, and let them build using V5. The complicated part of VRC isn’t really the components (in my opinion), more of just the rules, strategies, and super complicated mechanisms people build. From my understanding IQ is just more or less big LEGOs, so I don’t know how much your students would get from that. Plus, there’s a wider range of skill levels with V5: a less experienced student can build something as simple as a clawbot (I think a 6th grader could handle that), while a more experienced student can go as far as pneumatics and odometry with the same kit. Also, students moving up wouldn’t have to learn a new build system: sometimes teams have difficulties getting students moving from FLL to FTC or IQ to VRC involved just because they have to relearn a lot of building fundamentals to get any working product, while the rest of the team is already constructing prototypes.
I would say start a V5 program. It’s for middle and high schoolers.
The target age group for IQ is elementary and middle schoolers.
FYI: To setup a V5 robotics lab with the intention to run teams and go to comps, you will need to set aside room for the 12’ x 12 ’ competition field for robot testing, auton programming, and match practices. You will also need space for tools, organized parts storage, and maybe a rolling toolbox to take to comps.
The learning curve in all aspects of V5 is substantive and I think therfore very valuable for student learning growth.
For teaching design and building, it will be easier for you and the kids if they start learning to build using a pre designed kit from Vex like a HeroBot or Clawbot. V5 Build Instructions - Downloads - V5 - VEX Robotics.
However, none of these Herobots are typically suitable for actual comps and Vex is clear about the bots being starting points only.
Vex has you covered here. They have a free coding app that will let beginners start using very intuitive Blocks style coding while also providing a built in transition to text using Switch blocks and finally allowing more experienced coders to use Python or C++. The bonus is that simple to follow tutorials for using Vexcode are plentiful directly from Vex and youtube.
[VEXcode Overview - VEX Robotics]
Programming a Vex robot involves 3 basic tasks:
Programming the joystick controller which can be done with simple point and click actions in the VexCode graphical interface. Trivial. Super easy.
Programming a 15 second autonomous routine to score points during matchplay at a competition. Basic routines can be done using Blocks to get started, but improving speed and precision for higher scores and consistency may require use of advanced coding techniques such as PID and or Odmetry using text coding with C++ or Python.
1 minute Skills Auton routine. This is where advanced coders can shine when paired with a very well designed and constructed bot. Low scores can be achieved using blocks, but typically high scoring routines will be making full use of finely tuned advanced text coding techniques.
This is an ambitious timetable since you are starting from the ground up with no experience. It can be done though.
I would start them out with V5 and build the hero bots to get started. I’m not a fan of middle school and VIQ, and since you want to start MS and then move to HS, doing V5 is the easiest way with your dollars.
You should check with the parents or extended family members, they may have build skills to help. I had a grandfather that helped out, he was a former machinist and he was amazing.