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While we were creating our project prototype out of LEGOs, we found awesome aftermarket equipment from a company called Mindsensors that allows an EV3 to be able to talk to a Power Functions IR Receiver, enabling an EV3 to control LEGO Power Functions! Power Functions is a sub-section of LEGO that is mostly used in older motorized LEGO Technic sets, LEGO train sets, and the original WeDo. LEGO Power Functions included motors of different sizes, as well as lights. The Mindsensors’ PFMate controller can hook up to an EV3 with just a regular EV3 wire! Mindsensors also has a downloadable EV3 block already available! These Mindsensors after-market components are not made by LEGO, though, so they cannot be used as part of the FIRST LEGO League robot game (actually, even the Power Functions elements are excluded from the robot game). However, they might help you with developing a project prototype (how we discovered them) or you may just want to use them for fun with your EV3! In this article, we will show you how this interesting after-market component is used.

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2019 Moment Maker Tip #7

Image November 28, 2019November 25, 2019amomentmaker

When practicing your robot rounds, make another check to be sure that your robot and equipment fits entirely in the launch area for each of your launches (less than 12 inches tall and not hanging over board walls, too!)

2019 Moment Maker Tip #6

Image November 27, 2019November 25, 2019amomentmaker

Another big change is the introduction of the terms “Home” and “Launch Area”. Your robot must start each launch from the Launch area. If you want to adjust the robot before launching it again, the robot must return to Home. Your robot can access Home from anywhere. Then, you can relaunch you robot from the Launch Area.

2019 Moment Maker Tip #5

Image November 26, 2019November 25, 2019amomentmaker

2019 Moment Maker Tip #4

November 25, 2019amomentmaker

Re-read carefully through this year’s Challenge Guide and Challenge Updates. This year had a lot of changes, even experienced teams might miss something. It is super important to understand all the rules and requirements, so that you aren’t surprised at competition.

City Shaper Challenge Guide

City Shaper Challenge Updates

2019 Moment Maker Tip #3

Image November 24, 2019amomentmaker

Remember to share your project solution with your professional resource(s) and anyone else who helped you along the way.

2019 Moment Maker Tip #2

November 23, 2019November 22, 2019amomentmaker

Read over all judging rubrics and ask yourselves "Do we meet each requirement? Are we showing this to the judges?" The rubrics have several changes this year. Make sure that yours are up-to-date.

City Shaper Judging Rubrics

2019 Moment Maker Tip #1

November 22, 2019amomentmaker

We are two weeks away from our own qualifier competition. Our team wants to take this time to share our “Moment Maker” tips for this year with other teams to help them prepare for their own competitions. We will be sharing multiple tips throughout the next two weeks. During this time, we will take a break from our normal blog posts, so that our team can focus on preparing ourselves for our own competition. Good luck to all the teams! We will still be reading our “contact us” page, if you have any questions or comments for us.

The best part of tournaments is being able to share all of your hard work with other teams and the community! Remember to have fun sharing all you've learned! Take the time to talk to other teams to learn about their accomplishments, too!

#FIRSTLikeAGirl Women in STEM Build Event

September 28, 2019January 3, 2020amomentmaker

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Some of our team had the awesome opportunity to attend the Houston area #FIRSTLikeAGirl Women in STEM Build Event at Space Center Houston today. We had some great talks about what it means to be allies for each other in STEM. We also had fun helping to encourage all the rookie FIRST girls as they start their own great robotics journeys with their teams. It was also great to be inspired by FIRST teams older than us, as well as females in engineering.

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