Unpublished
This wiki will not appear in search results, but can still be viewed by anyone!
Quick Links
Sample programs: here
About the Course
There are two separate strands of the course - a junior and senior version, and any steps involving the programming side of things also have two versions - a drag-and-drop version and a textual version. Many steps of lessons are shared between junior and senior courses, but any that are just for the junior versions are signified by a 'Junior' in their title and the senior ones by 'Senior'. The students should be told to just skip any of the steps that are not intended for their version of the course. We nominally do the drag-and-drop version with the preteens (9-12 years old) and the textual version with the teens (13-17 years old). However as the hardware kit is exactly the same, there is the option of moving an advanced pre-teen to the textual programming version, or a teen who is struggling to the drag-and-drop version. We'll leave it to you as a tutor to work out if there are any students in your group who should do the 'other version'.
We're trying to get the students to:
- Learn basic programming techniques in Python or MakeCode (drag and drop)
- Develop problem solving skills by working on open ended robotics problems to solve them as well as they can
- Think about integrating their programs with the mechanical designs of their robots
- Learn some basic mechanics of how to design structures and mechanisms
- Work on some challenges together in teams to solve a problem collaboratively
You will see that in most of the sessions, there is a competition or tournament at the end. This should prevent students from jumping ahead - something you want to avoid. If some students finish all of the challenges for one session early, encourage them to experiment and improve their design, rather than allowing them to go on to the next section.
Do not worry if some sessions run on longer and need you to complete in the following 'half-day'. It's better that the students take their time and understand the concepts, and also have an opportunity to complete most of the challenges. You may also find that some sessions later on go much quicker, so it will even itself out.
Note that the programming concepts introduced in this course are deliberately kept fairly simple as the focus is also on the design, creativity and physical building.
Health & Safety
Although this course involves practical projects, there is a limited amount of operations involving any tools. For example, there are no soldering irons used. As such, the risks are more limited and primarily the 'General Workshops' risk assessment applies.
Please See Also:
General Workshops Risk Assessment
The Kit List
Student consumables (to take home)
- Standard Invent! modules set – 2x switches, RG LED, 2x motors, buzzer, magnets module, main board, micro USB cable, 4 module cables, 2x motor cables
- Robowars extension set - construction kit, servo module and game controller
- Invent! micro:bit board
- 16 AAA batteries
- 2x micro:bits
- 1x Polypropylene sheet 325mm x 275mm - this might be made of several smaller pieces cut from different colour sheets, but there is only enough supplied for each camper to have 1 full sheet's worth
- 1 course badge
- 1 USB stick
Student non-consumables (per 8 students, not to take home)
- 8 large red PZ2 screwdriver
- 4 small red PZ1 screwdrivers
- 8 7mm spanners
- 4 4mm hole punch
- 4 Hammers
- 4 Wooden blocks (desk protectors for punches)
- 4 Scissors
- 4 Side cutters
- 4 Pliers
- 8 Headphones
- Set of 6 labelled obstacle course blocks
- 3 white HIPS double sided arena sheets
- 2 football goals
- 1 football
- 2 flags (for capture the flag)
- M3 Nuts for minesweeper
- 8 Pencils (for ideas sketching)
- 2 pencil sharpeners
- 4 rubbers
Other class supplies
- 1 roll black PVC
- 1 roll white PVC
- Set of dry wipe pens
- 1 knife (for cutting polypropylene sheets, tutor use only)
- Pack of Blutack (for holding down blocks if required)
- Permanent marker
- Ream of paper (for sketching)
- 1 pack blue tac
Pre-Camp Setup (By Tech Camp)
- Supply kits of all modules and parts
- Make Badges
- Create HIPS arena sheets
- Create obstacle course labelled blocks
- Create football and flag
Preparing Yourself
Like any practical course you'll find this much easier to teach if you have run through it yourself as completely as possible first. Even if you're experienced with electronics and programming this will allow you to find out which parts of the course are tricky. Also, when we're running a course for the first few times there may be the occasional mistake or parts of instructions that are not clear and this is a great way of identifying them.
As a minimum, you'll need to:
- Run through this guide completely and be comfortable with it
- Run through the student's guide completely, building and writing the programmes for as many of the activities and challenges as you can
As the start of this course is tutor-led you'll also need to run through your delivery of the course a couple of times - ideally out loud, but at least in your head. If you are working with more than one tutor, you will want to decide between yourselves how to split the tasks/explanations in this initial part of the lesson.
Tutor Training Day
When you arrive for the tutor training day (at Winchester this will be before the students arrive, for other camps it will be a number of weeks before the first camp), we will go through some general things (like child protection training), but the bulk of the day will be on preparing yourself for teaching the course.
What will I receive?
If you are working at a non-residential venue you will receive a full set of parts and tools, which will allow you to complete all parts of the course. You will not receive the activity mats and other pieces such as footballs and flags, but these will be available for you to try at the training day, and they are not required to construct and test the challenges and ideas in the course. Please be sure to bring all of the equipment with you to the training day - of course there will be some parts of the construction kit such as the beams and plastic sheets, which will not be reusable as you will be cutting/punching holes in them.
If you are working at a residential venue, you will not receive any parts, however you will still be able to go through the student guides and try creating all of the programs yourself. There will be ample equipment and time to try out the challenges during the first few days at camp.
How will we check that you are prepared?
We will expect you to:
- Explain to us some of the concepts in the tutor guide - i.e. you need to be able to tell us how the course is organised, what some of the important points are about safety and efficiently operating the courses, and be able to answer questions about these things intelligently!
- We'll ask you to show us some of your programs, and some of the more complex building challenges using your kit of parts. Please try and bring your final flipper robot design to the training day, as this final challenge uses all of the parts in the kit and is the hardest to get working correctly.
- We will ask you to run through the delivery of the starts of some of the lessons, as detailed at the end of this guide, as if you were delivering the course for real.
What will we show you?
- You should have been able to try out everything in the student guides - we will of course be able to answer any further questions you may have, and give you some tips and tricks to improve your delivery of the course.
- There will be an opportunity to see and try out the activity mats and footballs/flags that the campers use during the course.
Pre-course Setup
- Set out arena mats in arena mode (2 mats in a square), blue tac to floor if necessary
- Place full kit by each desk
- Write suitable scoreboard on whiteboard to track campers' scores throughout course
- Set of headphones by each desk
- Setup "tools table" of general class tools campers can use, then put back on the table afterwards
Student Logins
All students will need to login to this online system to access the course material. They can login using the following details (everyone logs into the same account):
Username: robowars@techcamp.org.uk
Password: techcamp
They can continue to login with these details to access the material at home after the course if they want to.
IT Systems Check
- USB ports are enabled and micro:bit enumerates when plugged in
- .py python files can be downloaded
- Student login works for this website
- All videos work in the student guide
- Check following websites are available:
- https://makecode.microbit.org/
- youtube.com
- courses.techcamp.org.uk
Tech Camp Work Saving Policy
To minimise the possibility of lost files and work, and reduce the impact of campers losing their memory stick after the course, please follow these guidelines:
- Campers should create a folder in 'My Documents' on the computer they are working on for the week, and rename it to their full name
- They should use this as their working directory for the week, working from it and saving all of the things they make/use in that folder
- At the end of the week they should then just copy the entire folder onto their memory stick to take home
- This folder should be left on the machine after camp (machines are either imaged specially for us or we have our own logins depending on venue)
- This way, if a camper loses a memory stick after they leave there is a chance we can get their data back by just looking on the computer they were working on.
Rules for Students
- Take your time - the more you understand, the easier you'll find it to complete subsequent challenges.
- If something doesn't work, check through the wiring and programming (twice) and then get a friend to check as well before asking your tutor!
- Don't touch the components on the tutor tables,
- Keep your desk space tidy. Parts that are not being used should be kept in their bag/box, particularly at the end of each session. If you lose something, you'll need to find it!
Guidelines for Tutors
- Encourage the students to take their time and re-watch the videos/instructions if needed - the better they understand them, the more success they will experience and the more fun they will have.
- Encourage the students to always check their wiring and programming a couple of times if it doesn't work and then get a friend to check it as well. This will make your life much easier!
- If students tell you that they have lost something, make them find it - it will probably be on the floor, under a piece of paper/keyboard, etc
- Please keep all dead batteries together so we can see how many have been used at the end of the week.
- There are some example programs here
- Strongly encourage the campers to keep track of all of their construction kit parts during the course. There are hundreds of pieces in each kit, and it is very easy for them to go all over the floor. Try and get the campers to tidy up after each challenge at least, and keep everything in their box where possible. Encourage them to do this on the grounds that it is their kit - if they loose any parts and don't keep track of them they won't be able to take home everything they should at the end of the week!
- Sometimes at Winchester, you need to plug the headphones into the computers before booting up, otherwise the sound won't work at all (will have a red cross in taskbar and not output until you reboot with headphones plugged in).
Below is a rough schedule for the course. If the activities for a given day run over/under it is not a problem, but try and keep to the schedule as much as possible. If you need to skip out one or more the challenges so they have time to do the more exciting ones (e.g. making the flipper robots) then please do. It is important to make sure they have enough time to make and battle the flipper robots before the end of the course!
Each challenge (denoted by a guide in the student instructions) is designed to take around 1/2 day to complete - this includes time for the campers to work through the student guide, produce their physical robot design and code for the challenge, test and experiment with it (in pairs in required for the challenge), and then for each person/group to complete the challenge with the rest of the class watching and waiting for their turn. Please do not run the challenges such that campers are coming up at random to try the challenge and get a time/score, whilst the others are still working on their designs. This will be very chaotic, and very hard work for you - hopefully campers will also learn something by seeing how others have approached the challenge in different ways. At the start of each challenge (i.e. each half day - first thing in the morning and first thing after lunch), you should stop the whole group, explain the challenge (ideally with a demo robot), and tell them how long they have to experiment and when the challenge/testing will be. For example, if lunch is at 1:00, tell them that the challenge will start at 12:30 and they must be finished building by that time. When the build time is over, again stop the whole group and re-run over the details of the challenge - then run each challenge as appropriate for the remaining session time. See the session schedule below for more information on the suggested timings.
If you need to skip challenges so you have enough time to complete the flipper showdown and laser tag, we would suggest skipping the sumo challenge, as it can take a long time to build the body shells for the sumo robots.
If you have a particularly fast group, there is the extra Tag Rugby activity that you can complete as well - if you are going to do this, make sure there is enough time for them to build, test and run the challenge properly. If not, it is often easier to extend the other challenges, for example a 4v4 large game of football if you need to fill some time.
In summary - the scheduling of this course is complex, and you will need to keep a close eye on what is going on. Feel free to move/extend/shorten activities as appropriate, but the most important thing is that everyone has enough time to complete the 2 headline activities - the Laser Tag and Flipper Showdown.
Be sure to test the remote control functionality in advance - it is possible in areas with very strong WiFi that interference can occur which will make the remote control not work properly. If this is the case, use radio channels of 80 and above which should be outside the range of the WiFi signals.
Scoring
The whole idea that should be present and clear to the campers throughout the week is the concept that the whole course is a Robowars Challenge - they are all competing against each other in each of the competitions to create the best robot, and get the most points over the course of the week.
This should be made clear when you are explaining each of the challenges to them, and you will also need to come up with a way of keeping track of how many points each camper has - it can be beneficial to split them into Juniors and Seniors for scoring purposes, depending on the age spread of your particular group. Exactly how you keep track is up to you - a simple grid on the whiteboard with all of the challenges marked, or a spreadsheet on the project with everyone's names also works well.
Hyping up the scoring element and making a big deal of it will likely make your task easier as well - (most) kids love a competition, so it will motivate them to work hard on their designs and spend lots of time tweaking, testing and improving their robots to the best of their abilities.
The Help Grid
This course can get quite busy as there are parts where the campers might all need help at the same time. A good technique for not forgetting the quiet child in the corner/having your brain explode from 8 children asking for help simultaneously is the help grid. Use some of the PVC tape to make a grid on the whiteboard, with at least the same number of cells as campers in the group. If they need help, get them to write their name in the first available box and then help them in order. Once they have been helped, rub off their name and then help the next person. This frees you up more, let's them know when they will be receiving help, and often makes them think about their problem whilst they wait instead of following you around the room, and they will sometimes fix it themselves before you get there.
Day 1 - Minesweeper Challenge and Obstacle Course
- Tutors introduce themselves / kids introduce themselves
- Optional welcome activity/icebreaker (for you to come up with)
- Explain what they will cover in Robowars - they will learn about:
- How to program in drag and drop or Python
- How to create autonomous and remote control robots
- How to control motors, inputs, outputs and servos to make their robots
- How to make complex mechanisms with a customisable construction kit
- Give them a demo of the final flipper robot and show them how cool it is
- Explain the minesweeper challenge and how we are going to use it to learn how to control the robot and how to write basic programs, and show a working example on the mat
- Tell them they have until half an hour before lunch to create their minesweeper robots - and what time everyone will have to stop for testing to begin.
- Show them how to login to the documentation system, how it works and how they should follow it, and tell them to get started on the first guide.
Most of the rest of the morning should then be experimentation time for the campers- be sure to stop them half an hour before lunch to run the minesweeper challenge and get everyone a time and score. Give them plenty of reminders during the sessions of how much time they have left!
Repeat this process in the afternoon session for the obstacle course challenge - you will need to setup the mat with the obstacle course as per the pictures in the student guide before the start of the afternoon sessions, so you can run a demo robot round the course at the start. Ideally this will result in all students having a score for both the minesweeper challenge and obstacle course by the end of the first day. As previously mentioned, if you have a slower group and need to slip the challenge time by 1 session or so that is fine - for example having the obstacle course challenge testing at 10:30 on Tuesday morning instead of at the end of the last session on Monday. If this happens with several challenges you will need to drop one of the challenges so you get through to making the flipper robots with enough time left.
Day 2 - Capture the Flag
By the end of day 2, the aim is to complete the capture the flag challenge. This gives a little extra time for campers to complete the remote control sections as they are quite long and there is lots of code to write. It also gives some wiggle room if the first two challenges have taken longer than expected. As a general guide, if you have completed the obstacle course at the end of day 1, aim to run the Capture the Flag challenge in the last 30 minutes of the third session on day 2. If they are still working on the obstacle course on the first session of day 2, aim to run the capture the flag challenge at the end of day 2.
Day 3 - Robot Football and Robot Sumo
These challenges are fairly similar, and begin with some more coding to expand the remote control to use proportional control so they can more easily control their robots. As a general guide, run the robot football challenge at the end of the morning before lunch, and the laser tag challenge at the end of day 3. Don't forget to clearly explain the rules and run a short demo using a robot whenever the campers start working on a new challenge.
The construction of the Sumo robots can take a while - running the challenge at the end of the first session of the next day (day 4) is fine if you need to!
Day 4 - Robot Laser Tag and Flipper Design
The laser tag especially needs careful supervision - as the laser are invisible and winning by shooting/not getting shot is much more code and luck dependent that say the obstacle course, you need to make sure that everyone's code is written properly and all robots can be hit properly before starting the match. Having one made up robot that you know shoots well and then getting everyone to demonstrate in turn in front of the whole group that their robot can be shot by it just before you start the battles is a good way of making sure things are fair. Everyone has just proved their robot can be shot so this reduces the chance or arguments and cheating accusation!
If students are running behind, you can always just load the sample program (set to the right channel of course) to their robot from the link at the top of this guide so that they can compete in the challenge.
If you need some more activities to fill the session for a fast group, a 4 on 4 match (or similar) works well.
Aiming to run the laser tag challenge at the end of session 2/3 is a good goal. This then allows them to spend the last session starting to design their flippers and get started with the servo modules before the flipper challenge on the last day.
When they start working on their flippers, keep a close watch on how they use the servo modules - as detailed in the student guides, it is really important they aren't programming the servo such that it is pushing the arm against something immovable (such as the chassis) during operation as this can cause the servo to burn out or strip the teeth on the plastic arm.
Depending on the group, it could also be a good idea to go through the servo building as a group, and carefully explain the points detailed in the student guides to minimise damage to servos before they start working.
Day 5 - Flipper Showdown
The last day should be exclusively for designing, testing and tweaking their flipper designs, in preparation for the final challenge at the end of the last session. Be sure to start the challenge in good time to make sure their is enough time to wrap up the course at the end, give out a course badge to each camper, and congratulate whichever camper has the most points and won the Robowars Championship! Leave 5-10 minutes at the end for them to do a final packup of their kits and make sure they have all their physical parts, and their programs on their memory stick. It would probably be wise to at least aim to start the battles 1 hour before the end of the final session to leave enough time for all of this.
Packing Up
Your supplies should always be packed up as neatly as they came! This means:
- Spares are in labelled bags, and grouped in bigger bags. Please collect and bag any leftover construction kit parts that the campers leave behind, especially any white brackets - these are expensive 3D printed parts that should certainly not go in the bin!
- There should be no bags of unsorted components
- Mats neatly put away and folded flat, with any excess PVC tape removed.