Subject:
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September 18th 2004 SMART Meeting
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.us.smart
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Date:
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Tue, 31 Aug 2004 20:16:59 GMT
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Viewed:
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1744 times
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In order to allow people to participate in (or at least attend) Robothon, the
next SMART meeting will be on September 18th. This month instead of a
mini-challenge, we'll have a BrickHeap Wars. This is a time-restricted team
robot building exercise. I'll bring four identical 'heaps' of bricks, everyone
will split into four teams when they get there, and the challenge will be
announced at the beginning of the meeting. Teams will have only to the end of
the meeting to build and program their robots. Then we'll see who did best.
Those who have done this before know how much fun it is. I hope to see a lot of
new people try it out this year! The only downside is that to give time for
building, the meeting starts a little earlier, and is a little longer than
normal.
I'll post more details in the next couple of weeks. The only thing I need is to
have at least four people (since there are four teams) who will bring laptops
with Mindstorms programming software on it. Please let me know if you'll be able
to bring a laptop, so that we can make sure we have enough.
NWBrickCon is coming up soon. SMART will have room for anyone to show their
robots to the public. If you have always wanted an excuse to build that one
robot that would be super cool, here's the venue to show it! NWBrickCon will be
the last weekend of October, so start building now!
Finally, if you haven't checked out the new LEGO store in Bellevue Square, I
recommend that you go take a look. They are probably the only people in town
still selling Mindstorm sets (I might be wrong about this, but I've not seen
them elsewhere in ages) and they have a large selection of bulk brick. Buy as
much Lego as you can cram into a cup for $12.95 (+tax). When I heard the store
was opening, because of SMART, I recommended that they sell technic bricks, and
they have some! (I mentioned which bricks in this post:
http://news.lugnet.com/org/us/smart/?n=252). This is a REALLY good deal! By
sticking the bricks together I've been able to get
36 1x4 technic beams
42 1x6 technic beams
and 66 1x12 technic beams
into the same cup.
Another packing I tried was
51 1x12s
30 1x8s
21 1x6s
plus a handful of 1x2s.
To give you an idea of how good a deal this is, consider that 1x12's cost $1 a
piece from the LEGO Dacta catalog. And even if you went to Legoland and bought
bulk pieces by weight there, you'd pay close to $25 for this same amount! ($6.99
/ quarter pound)
A reason to go soon is that the store rotates their stock every three or four
months. And they might run out even before then. I don't know how much of an
experiment this is for them, stocking technic parts -- I don't think there are
many, if any other stores that have them. So let's make good use of this
resource!
While you're there, mention that you're from SMART, that you appreciate their
stocking the technic beams, and that it would be really cool if they also
stocked ... rounded technic beams, 1x16s, or whatever your favourite part is
that you would buy a bucket full or two. They have no control over what LEGO
sends them, but I'm sure that they would pass on that they've had three or four
requests a week for a certain element, or at least for more technic elements,
and who knows ... eventually we might get them!
--
David Schilling
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: September 18th 2004 SMART Meeting
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| (...) There's a bit under two weeks until the next SMART meeting. The meeting will be a BrickHeap Wars, where people get into teams to build robots to accomplish a challenge given at the start of the meeting using a heap of bricks that has been (...) (20 years ago, 8-Sep-04, to lugnet.org.us.smart)
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