LEGO Palooza, Day 1.

Simply put, it was a lot of fun!

The oepning of the room was set for noon, and I was running behind schedule, so I made it to the Planetarium at around 11:30. I brought some spaceships and teh NXT stuff and came in straight into last minute building (and stringing) and pulling out the robots.

I had the NXT joystick, the spybot (without camera), and a sound bot (that used a sound avoidance program tat was simply the ultrasound avoidance program with sensor changed from ultrasonic to sound) - three NXT models! And I had two tables to play with them - with obstacles built by Carin and Jane.

And setup was quick, and before I knew it, the door had opend...and atfirst it was quiet. Then the place got filled with people.

And the NXT joystick and rover worked, then went down. I learned about the shutdown time on a brick  - apparently to keep them from running forever. Problem was that everytime the remote or the joystick went down, the bluetooh would have to be reconnected. On top of that the sound bot was set to sensitive - it used the ultrasound settings (which I figured out muchlater) and so it went crazy wi thteh ambient sound of the place.

So I switched the rover to its automode- which uses is ultrasound sensor to avoid obstacles, and let it go on the table - and that was all I needed to do - Kids loved watching it change direction and wavng it way with their hands. And I converted the sound botto another reomote, and set that to go automatically. And for 4 hours, everyone was completely entertained by them.

And there was moore stuff going on, but it was really fun to watch everyone light up when the bots truned and went to another part of the table. And there were many questions from adults and kids alike.  My laptop was on, so people could see the program behind the rovers too.

And except for the few times the rovers fell off the table, it was a pretty esay area to manage.

Great event - and this is only the first day!