You could SSH into the RoboRIO and retrieve the compiled jar file. The file is located at /home/lvuser/FRCUserProgram on the RoboRIO. Afterwards, you can decompile it using a program such as this.

Let me introduce you to Thomas & Betts zip ties. In normal zipties, the first thing that breaks is the plastic tongue. Instead of a plastic tongue these use a metal one.

aiight

Rice Eating Meetup on Friday, somewhere in Cobo: Be nice 4 free rice. Y'all better bring some furikake to that meetup bc eating with only soy sauce is kinda boring imo

It probably won't cause any harm to you, your team, or your equipment, but make sure you take precautions such as not parking your vehicles under trees that could lose limbs during the storm, making sure your team knows relevant safety procedure regarding tornadoes ( https://www.wunderground.com/resources/severe/tornado_safety.asp ), and double checking that your insurance covers hail/storm damage.

Are you asking about how Git works as a collaboration software?
Each programmer works as they would on a single-user Git project, except when they push their commits to Github, their code will probably change the same parts as other users changed. Git will sometimes auto-resolve this, and sometimes the programmer has to manually choose what to keep.

On a more complex project, you might have multiple branches, one for each feature, and only merge those branches to master when the feature is complete.

Git is a very expansive software. I've been using it for years and have only scratched the surface. I recommend you read at least a little of the documentation.

https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/ is the primary IDE I use for my day job, the community edition is free to use, I highly recommend it. Add in the plugin for git integration and change control is handled as well.

If you don't have the original e-mail with download instructions you can fill out the link below to request sponsorship for the 2016 season. They usually get back in 3 or 4 business days.

https://www.solidworks.com/sw/education/robot-student-design-contest.htm

Robot Scouter Blurb

So this app is our teams response to a frequent problem that we've seen arise for apps in the past. The features of Robot Scouter addresses some of the issues or shortcomings we've had with using other teams scouting apps in the past. We've been developing this app since June and we really hope you check it out and enjoy using it as much as we have at the past two competitions.

Direct Google Play Store download!

Features:

• Seasonal updates: Apps wouldn't update by season. Our app updates automatically based on the season, eliminating the need for a new app every year.

• No setup required

• Easy sharing between users

• Seamless collaboration: multiple people can scout the same team, different teams, or go solo on Android N and use split screen mode to scout several teams at once.

• Customizable scouting templates with several different metrics to choose from: header/title

  • true/false (checkbox)
  • stopwatch (for keeping track of cycle time)
  • number (counter)
  • list (item selector)
  • text (notes)

• Integration with The Blue Alliance to automatically populate relevant team info

• Export scouting data to a spreadsheet with pre-computed averages and statistics

• And more!

Windows works too. FYI AMD graphics cards are the most price-efficient for mining. See here for more

Although the learning curve might be high, I'd reccomend trying to learn the git command line. Once you know it you'll be able to use git (and github) no matter the IDE or language.

I personally started learning using this tutorial and then got super comfortable simply by using it on a daily basis. If you have to refer back to the tutorial and google, that's okay. I know I did :). Aside from that if you have any problem with git, I guarantee someone else has had the same problem. Google it and you'll find an answer.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Alright so some software you need to download beforehand.

Cyberduck - A program to retrieve files over SSH.

A Java decompiler - Decompiles the jar file into readable code

1. Connect your laptop to the RoboRIO the same way as when you deploy code.
2. Open Cyberduck and open a new SFTP connection to the RoboRIO.
3. The server: "roborio-319.local", username: admin, password: (blank)
4. If successfully connected, the robot's code should be located at /home/lvuser/FRCUserProgram.jar
5. Copy that file to your laptop. It should be a .jar file.
6. Use the Java decompiler to open the jar file. You should now be able to see your source code. I believe this is view only, so you would have to copy the code into Eclipse.

If you have any trouble with the process, feel free to PM.

I made one of these to help reduce shaking when shooting. It really helps, and is much easier to wield than a shoulder mount or tripod. I painted it black so it looks a bit more pro. I'm interested in trying more slow motion stuff. I use the Canon HV20 which shoots 60i, so that should work. I'll check out those subreddits, thanks.

This may at first seem offtopic, but I recommend that you guys read the first five paragraphs starting at the top of the linked page [link], from Malcolm Gladwell's book David and Goliath. (It's a great book, by the way, and I highly recommend it.) This section talks about how in WW2, those in the Military Police were far more satisfied with how promotions were handled than those in the Air Corps were. The probable reason for this is that the Military Police had one of the lowest rates of promotion amongst the entire US armed forces, whereas the Air Corps had one of the highest rates, so those in the Military Police saw promotions as something that only the very best would get, and those in the Air Corps saw promotions as the norm and were disappointed when they didn't get one. I worry that with the addition of a second Championships, teams' attitudes will become less like that of the Military Police and more like that of the Air Corps, leading to more disappointment.

For those of you who are like "this is sketch", I apologize for not being transparent.

I do work for Microsoft, and we're trying to do a really big launch in a few weeks. I wanted to find some students to try this out with and make sure it was appropriate.

Verification: Here's a picture of my MS Badge photo, which matches my blog http://aka.ms/Christine and the email.

Album: click me
 
Our team was a little triggered that half our team was gone building legos instead of cheering our team on but turns out they were watching the livestream (still salt tho).
 
Our team got interviewed by Deejay Knight (stream here), and it was pretty cool!
 
Unfortunately we didnt win the Lego #INTOORBIT challenge, but our team had a lot of fun building it!

It is not a problem with WPILib, it is a problem with your JAVA_HOME value. Even though you have JDK installed, your JAVA_HOME (an enviroment variable that contains the location of your java installation), is set to a JRE installation. Because you are on Windows, this can be done like this, except you will need to change the value of your JAVA_HOME to the directory where your JDK is installed, instead of making a new variable.

Yeah, you're probably going to have a hard time getting your school to port forward for you, as well as making sure your classmate never has downtime. You should probably just go for the hosting company. Github Pages is a pretty cool service, too.

As long as I'm in this thread, though, I'd like to point out that python3 -m http.server and python2 -m SimpleHTTPServer are both things that exist. Saved my butt a few times when I need a temporary http server for moving files around.

Honestly, just googling '<language> UDP server' usually works. Here's our java RIO-side UDP server, and here's our python coprocessor one. Java one uses our async looping code that we totally didn't rip off of 254, but it should be mostly self-explanatory (the LoopTemplate interface). I'm not 100% sure either is fully working (just grabbed the first bit of code on my HDD I could find on it) but they /should/ be. We also did a camera server using the same concept, so I could share camera streams with both vision tasks and webstreams (this was before I knew of robotpy-cscore, haha).

Everything you can, really. How commits work (as well as good committing practice + messages), branching, what a branch actually is as a data structure, and how the networking side of git works (fetch, pull, etc), and so on are good basics to learn. There's loads more to Git that could be of use to an FRC team though - my personal favorite is git bisect, which is amazingly useful when it comes to finding bugs because it helps you figure out exactly when a bug was introduced. If you want a good resource to start with, Pro Git is a great free book that covers pretty much everything in an easy-to-understand way.

Ok, really quick hack, but this should work:

• Move image inside the <p> tag
• float:left; margin: 5px 25px 5px 5px; on the image.

Seems to be working OK for me (div still resizes correctly to handle text, etc.). Here's a screencap of my devtools / browser with it working.

As for color schemes, I'm probably not the best for that- I just write the code and do what my designers tell me to do. I know Paletton is supposed to be GREAT for this though! Try clicking on Presets on the left side, and then going to Examples on the right side and you can see how the colors would look on a page design.

Let me know if you have any other questions/issues and I'll do my best! Also, check out /r/web_design/, they're great for design / color inspiration and feedback.

You can apply here. The first link leads to a survey form, and after filling it out Dassault should get back to you in a few business days. The links further down the page will be updated soon with CAD files of various field and game elements. I know season starts tomorrow (get hyped!) but I hope that in a few days it can be helpful.

It's a simple form you need to fill out, and they will send you the installer and a multi activation product code via email. https://www.solidworks.com/sw/education/robotic-design-resources-students.htm

Continuous Rigging. Basically a 2 stage telescoping arm.

Here are two good resources explaining the concept:

https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/oregonfirst/firstfare-2012-manipulators

http://youtu.be/wZ6a6dc4BGg

We use amazon fire tablets with the FRC Krawler app which uses Bluetooth to transfer the data from the scouter\ tablets to the server tablet. Then we download the data to an excel spreadsheet.

Here is the FRC Krawler app in the Google Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.team2052.frckrawler&amp;hl=en_US

Here is the source code: https://github.com/frc2052/FRC-Krawler

If you click on release you can download the apk and side load the app on to amazon fire tablets, which is what we did.

We use 6061-T6 aluminum bellypans, typically .090" thick and lightened on a CNC router. We've standardized on using adhesive backed 3M Self-Mating Fastener to attach our electronics instead of screws. It simplifies design and assembly, and makes it REALLY fast to swap out components.

If you haven' t already, pick up a copy of the book &quot;The New Cool&quot; by Neal Bascomb. It follows 1717, among a few other teams, through their 2009 season and does a wonderful job of explaining their program.

YES! We play Minecraft on pretty much every bus ride, and play Age of Empires II in the hotel rooms. In the past we've also played Civ IV on bus rides as well. Several of our students and mentors have also played Spaceteam together.

In general, we tend to play a lot of games in which we can do local multiplayer.

In that case, maybe you get some JST-PH 6-pin connectors and make a little circuit board that taps into the three encoder output lines. They should just be 5V digital signals that you can just feed right into the digital pins of the Arduino.

Is there still progress being made? Any estimate of when the packet info will be released? EDIT: I see where everything is. Thanks.

We use limelight actively when intaking the cube during competition (it auto aligns). I don't have a video during competition but here's a shaky video of it in a dark warehouse lol. (Also that robot isn't our competition robot and is just an andymark drivetrain I found lying around.) - https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipP0-N1wGyMESu94P3bniTuSixTB31IFBf3_PPNF7mfzX3Ws2jtnlPe0Xod0W9Es4Q?key=blRyLWxERXRrN0NhdmxWSDVLTXh0dlRlUThXVXVR

PS - The green LED was switched off later on because we realized it was literally making tracking harder. Oh well, who cares if it doesn't look cool anymore. Am I right?

Edit: If you guys want to use the photos I took, go here
&nbsp;
Feel free to use them but please give credit to 2976 (my team) for taking them :D - thanks!

If you multiply by some constant you won't be able get full power out of your motors. What my team uses is a curve, in the low end it is not sensitive but as you approach to the sides you can get maximum output.

Hi there Thomas, there are two options with Assembly from scratch and MINIMAL assembly Ill start with the option where you make it from scratch in order to get a "meter" of sorts, the only solution I could think of is some sort of slot solution where you would have to put the battery in and plug it into an anderson connector on the cart that leads to the "meter" I can make you a schematic for the circuit if you like But for that solution to be possible you would need a few things, some proto-PCB board OR a custom PCB that you make or give to a fabrication site. But here's a list of SOME things you might need for this Segment display(OR LCD character display your choice) PCB, or proto board for assembly IF you want to measure the battery current, a shunt An IC or Microcontroller(IC's from analog are pretty good BUT arduino is the best budget option) The shunt has to work with the microcontroller for current read out. This is just some of the stuff you will need, Now for the option where you just buy the stuff pre made You could always use one of these https://www.banggood.com/3_7V7_4V-11_1V14_8V-Li-po-Battery-Indicator-Display-Board-Power-Storage-Monitor-p-1096280.html?gmcCountry=US&amp;currency=USD&amp;createTmp=1&amp;utm_source=googleshopping&amp;utm_medium=cpc_ods&amp;utm_content=heath&amp;u...

Or you could go buy an arduino and some shields, and something like these https://www.adafruit.com/product/460?gclid=CjwKCAjwhqXbBRAREiwAucoo-4iBIn1s13R2Akler5T5Uy9q8_PFmrt1GGxkaR0JFO05C4QOsgGwChoCKq0QAvD_BwE Your call, there's a LOT more stuff you'll need for the from scratch option and If you need help let me know! This is just to give you some ideas, but keep looking Battery hawks from andy marks like others have mentioned are also good

Were you the photographer? I'm curious what lens + settings you used. There's a lot of chromatic aberration and fish eye distortion, but it seems like you fit everyone on the field and took it near one of the truss posts.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/122681157@N06/13769586215/in/photolist-mYLDLT-mYLF1M-mYLG8B-mYLGY4-mYLJfT-mYLKga-mYLLA4-mYLM7H-mYLRzF-mYNGPm/

I shot that for the Chesapeake regional, but I was shooting with a 24-70mm f/2.8 L on an APS-C body. I was standing at least 100 ft away to fit them all in.

It's a pretty disappointing video but it is something https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNflRFB3ud6abuyz-7ihZ08TkrTIhXWYNoYTExHet_eOZc8lC7XwycXmuHmmq0hkw?key=LW55ZF80N09aRkFUZUhnUUwtejlpTGFWdVd5M0ZR

As a side note: you can compile/deploy from the command line using ant (targets are compile and deploy). For example, I've used this to do compiles from Atom instead of Eclipse (using the <code>build</code> plugin)

You might be able to use something like joy2key to remap the controller, and then feed the input into driver station. Don't quote me on this or anything, I don't use Windows or Driver Station often.

https://pages.github.com/ would be my first choice for a free website for a tech-oriented group. If you want a little more control, https://education.github.com/pack gives you 50$ of free DigitalOcean credits, just have a member make a new account every few months as your credits run out. Or email DigitalOcean, I bet they wouldn't be opposed to sponsoring an FRC team in exchange for a small droplet or two.

GitHub is a lot more than just a file hosting service, it is a git server! This late in the season it may not be worth taking all the time to learn the git system, because it takes a while to gain an understanding of commits, branches, and how it all works, not to mention a basic understanding of terminal and command line programs... However if you are still interested, I would recommend https://git-scm.com/doc as a good site to give you an understanding of git, as well as how to integrate with github.

I've tried to do this before and found the ldraw software. It's an ongoing project with an open source format. It's not as advanced as Solidworks but with some learning it can be powerful. If your serious about putting in the time to learn it go to their website, (http://www.ldraw.org) and follow one of the recommended community tutorials. It's also free. If you really want to use Solidworks look on GrabCAD for pre-made parts, but all that importing and file converting will be a hassle. Leto Digital Designer is also good, but not as powerful as the other tools. It's also no longer in development by Lego.

You might want to try stud.io from Bricklink. https://studio.bricklink.com/v2/build/studio.page

It allows you to use the entire Lego pallet, but doesn’t have the restrictions of LDD, such as allowing brick collisions, and any color option. It’s easier to use than LDraw, and more feature rich than LDD.

Mecabricks is another option, http://www.mecabricks.com, but it’s entirely online.

Sorry for the delayed reply.

Solidworks is here. Have a mentor read through the document there, and apply on the link it gives.

Autodesk I haven't used in several years, but I believe you can sign up here with a .edu email address and then dowload software.

Best of luck! Feel free to PM me if you have questions about CAD. I can't promise quick responses but I will respond.

I know that Autodesk provides Autodesk Vault for free. Vault allows collaboration of the same project from different computers. Think of it as a repository for CAD files. Solidworks has their own data management system they call Product Data Management. I'm not sure if that is freely available.

Create a bot net of RPIs. Lord up some rando distributed computing workload and enjoy. You can even use them to solve cancer (see here)

You can also insert some pocket change and make a fleet of mini robots for your team to have fun. You’d have to get motor drivers, a power supply and motors. 3D printing and designing a chassis shouldn’t be hard. I’ve done it before, so if you need code/help feel free to send a PM.

You can also create an emulation station for multiple players.

This year in FRC you can use RPIs for Vision. That might also take up one of them.

Alternatively you can use them to host multiple Minecraft servers...

Nonetheless, have fun with the haul!

My team's main reason for switching was that it reduced the amount of boilerplate you would otherwise need with Java considerably (i.e. getters/setters in Kotlin are inferred, variable types can be inferred) There's all sorts of other useful features described on https://kotlinlang.org

Thanks, I hadn't seen that option. The warning at https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ that the service is "really slow and frequently down" gets high marks for transparency, but it gives me some pause. Has anyone tried it? Is it good enough in practice?

I personally have found that most PM software is too cumbersome for FRC purposes, you're going to spend all your time learning to use the program, and even more time updating the program to keep it accurate. Not usually worth it. Even in industry PM software creates more work for everyone, the major benefit is that it helps everyone keep track of multiple long term projects better and also generates more specific metrics for management to evaluate and optimize.

We use Xmind on our team (https://www.xmind.net/). It lets you create mind maps very quickly and easily and is extremely flexible. We use it to generate our outlines and organizations charts as well as plan our offseason training. All our timing is done manually on a "as fast as you can" basis. One thing that xmind does help us keep track of is the critical path, and basically we simply push as hard as we can on whatever happens to be holding up the critical path. We usually print out the stuff we make and post it in our build area.

Xmind basic version is free, download it and poke around. Just remember, no software is going to solve your management problems, you should probably develop a solution/system on your own, then find a program to match.

Try using wire loom, it’s what is used in most industries (don’t believe me check your cars wiring) it gives a professional look while protecting wire and can be found on amazon for cheep https://www.amazon.com/Flexible-Polyethylene-Wire-Diameter-Black/dp/B00DP3K8A6?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_3

Yes, Milwaukee makes a cordless one that comes with a spare battery for about $300 on Amazon. A Freshman on our team broke (and fixed) it the day we got it. Fortunately, this was the same freshman who managed to put together one of those West Coast Robotics elevators last season by himself from the CAD drawings without any other instructions and he'd almost completely fixed it before we'd even noticed it was broken.

We keep a closer eye on the holy rivet tool now.

There are such things a reusable zip ties, but they arent nearly as strong.Amazon

Hey! Former scouting lead for team 2521 here. 2020 was my last season so I haven't thought much about scouting next year. The pandemic will definitely throw "normalcy" out from most competitions and I definitely don't envy your job. I think there have been some great suggestions already and I'll try to add my own team's experience to the mix.

Our team also used tablets to scout but we had an app that synced data over wifi. The app is called Robot Scouter and it's worked really well for us in the 3 years we've used it. I'd highly recommend it if you're looking for an app that can work even when all the scouting tablets are far away from each other.

As for managing who scouts what team over the internet, maybe you could download the match schedule ahead of time into a Google Sheets? You could then assign one person to each team playing in the match.

Please feel free to lemme know if you want more info about our scouting process and/or the app we use! Hope you and your team have been staying safe and healthy. And best of luck next year!

Bring in a laptop running windows and have Betternet installed on it before you get to school. You can open up the vpn and access while at school. Don't do stupid things with the power of betternet/vpns pls

Beware of the field supervisor. He carries on his a Uno Attack Card Dispenser full of red cards for robots who send the snack cubes at him.

I bought these Crews ForcFlex glasses and these lanyards when I started FRC. So far, after 9 events, 2 build seasons, 2 off seasons of random team projects, being covered with small specks of paint once(and cleaned with isopropanol), both the glasses and the lanyard look almost new. The glasses include a small storage bag, which is large enough to contain the lanyard when wrapped around them. The glasses are very comfortable and easy to see through.

This is $50 / battery but takes 4x as long to charge a battery. This will be a problem during competition. Missing matches due to dead batteries is not fun at all.

Really, the $200 Andymark charger isn't all that expensive. Compare it to this guy at $160/battery.

What is your budget? You must be just barely on the edge of being an FRC team if you can't spend $200 on a charger that will last years.

Rookie year programmer here. I delved into Head First Java over the summer just for FRC. I'm glad that you have made this resource for rookies like me and I'm glad that you think programming should be accessible to all teams. You are wonderful for making this and helping other teams out who maybe don't know where to start. Thank you.

Flickering would certainly be an issue. The 12v2a output is also being used by the radio, which tends to be kinda important ;). I'd just get a cheap 3a buck-boost regulator like this one. Should be enough power. No code's necessary for the PDB or VRM, however on the one I linked you will have to turn the little gold screw on the blue box until the output is the voltage you want (12v).

Nice! What 3D printer do you use?

My team uses Mojo and 3D Resin Printer

Minimum bend radius of CAT-5e is ~1", In a case like this, your stressing the internal pairs since they are stretching due to the jacket. You can see the cable going flat right at the bend.

Will this work? Yes

Is there a chance they could go the full season without a problem? Yes

Is it worth the risk? I personally don't think so.

https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Gigabit-Molded-N204-010-BL-DN/dp/B005WKIQG8?th=1 Cheap insurance custom made for this application :D

At least use these if you're going to splice ethernet cables. Untwist the pairs as little as possible and don't strip them before you put them in the connector.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ENJF7I4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_FoPHyb1HZJB04

I'm guessing something along these lines might be helpful. Have the students click for every bank that goes in and write down the number at the end of each cycle. (sorry for the link not being pretty. Posting on mobile from work).

well you can chose to either use an optical filter like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Neewer-52MM-Infrared-Filter-Cameras/dp/B003TXZCYE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1460300258&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=850nm+ir+filter

or indeed as you stated cameras will see the light as white so you can use that as well although you still have to deal with background lighting in that situation.

what we did is make a ring light with 18 of these: https://www.parallax.com/product/350-00003 driving them between 50-100mA each(perhaps over kill but worked very well even from long distances and they did survive just fine)

and used a camera that was particularly sensitive to IR with that IR filter. worked absolutely fabulously and had absolutely no issue going between our home field, practice field, or competition field.

be aware some cameras have IR filters(to block ir) so those type won't work very well so you'll have to be conscious of what to use or you can attempt to remove the ir blocking filters inside those types of cameras.

One of our mentors lent us this tool that we call 'nippers', and they make our life about 200x easier with cutting Alupanel or Lexan. Very similar to this.

I suppose something like this would be useful for carrying one battery at a time. However, my team (and I think most teams) have a cart that we use to carry all of our batteries around. They're rarely being carried on their own.

Yep many machinists wear a shop coat, which is basically a lab coat, except dark colored (usually blue) to hide stains from oil and stuff a bit better.

You need to check the wiring and that the batteries are fully charged. Check connections on all the battery connectors and everything on the robot side of things. Things may appear to work normally, but if a screw on a connector is loose or there is some debris between contact faces this can drastically effect your performance. Under load the voltage can drop a lot and this is normal behavior. dropping to 10V under heavy load is an expected behavior though so just keep that in mind. We only start noticing brownout issues when voltage starts dropping to about 9 volts. Keep in mind with as much current as the robot can draw, don't expect a battery to last more than a few minutes. Also, if the batteries are older than two years you may have capacity issues as well. We simply don't use batteries older than that. It's probably also worth trying another charger if you have more than one. Pay attention if any fuses are tripping, if they are you have a major issue somewhere that needs to be addressed, either mechanically or electrically.

we use these chargers: http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-BC1509-Automatic-Battery-Charger/dp/B001U04MSU and they work amazingly well. While you can't use them for main charging at the events(since frc doesn't want you to charge them at a higher C rate than they recommend over safety concerns) you can use them to float charge batteries after another charger does the main charging. However when we aren't at an frc event we just use these for a complete charge and never had any issues. On a battery fresh off the charger, you should get a reading of about 13.5V

Weighing the robot is always hard for a small team without a big scale. I have made supports to hold the robot on top of a bathroom scale before and then weighing the supports to find approximately the right weight. My high school team ended up getting a grant my sophomore year to buy a scale similar to this one. I personally would recommend getting one if you have room for it. You will use it every year. Obviously do some research about which one you should get I just did a quick google search.

We use USB OTG flash drives like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Stellar-Ruggedized-Storage-Android-Tablets/dp/B00L6M1H1C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1420997192&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=usb+otg+flash+drive

My team uses 3 of These. They work great, and have a deep cycle function to extend the life of batteries. They also charge batteries a lot faster than the stock battery chargers that everyone else has. They can also display the voltage of the battery, and keep up a small current so that the battery doesn't drain, making them super usefull at com[petition

Use a shipping scale like this. We use a similar one and for <$50 it's a good investment. Works a lot better than trying to use bathroom scales.

I'm a first time FLL coach this year as well. I'd never even heard of FLL until just a few weeks ago when a mom from our school sent out an email looking for kids to sign up and potential coaches. However, I am a programmer and I've used both the RCX and NXT before, so I should be ok there. The best thing you could do, if you can swing it is to buy yourself an NXT retail set and build the basic robot and start playing with the coding yourself. I realize that's a pretty hefty personal expense, I got lucky and had a birthday a couple weeks ago and that's how I got mine.

The other thing I'd suggest is to look online. I've found a couple good books in pdf format. One is something like "Winning Robot Design with Mindstorms NXT" and the other is a &quot;The Art of Lego Mindstorms NXT-G Programming&quot; Both were PDF's that I found online and even though I wasn't specifically looking for pirate copies, I'm not sure they were meant to be free either. The second book however is probably a good one for you to start with. It's very detailed. I skimmed through a good portion of it vs reading it. If you have a good understanding of the process and the blocks used in NXT-G, this is a good refresher and you will still learn some things.

If all goes well, we're going to be writing our first program next week and I can't wait! Good luck, Coach!

I disagree. I've built Robot Scouter which is year independent for the 2016 season. Seems like I was first! �� Also, it's open source and free: https://github.com/SUPERCILEX/Robot-Scouter.

Hello! My team, 2729, also uses android devices. We have about 7 or 8 tablets that we give to the scouters. They use our own, in house app, for a very easy and efficient scouting experience. It creates a QR code for each round of scouting (so no internet connection is required), which is then scanned by the scoutmaster using the master app.

Here is the User app

And the Master app

Please, feel free to download and try this out! It is a proud accomplishment of our programming team, and if you have any question, I would be more than happy to either answer them myself, or I can ask the scoutmaster himself!