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On Thursday 26th January the Backstreet Builders team of 9 to 12 year olds held an Open House for the Ottawa LN.


On show were their nascent efforts with the BBC micro:bit computer boards.  




This board has been a great success with the team, who expressed their thanks for the donation of a board to each of the team members.  Notice in the video the keen interaction between team members, with peer-peer teaching.  One 9-year old member demonstrated a Python program that used the magnetometer, and then a program using the BLE communications between two BBC micro:bits.  All with just one week of effort.


Next was a demonstration run of the First Lego League robot challenge.  The Backstreet builders gained first prize for the robot performance in the Ottawa qualifying tournament.  This run may be seen here:




And finally they demonstrated some prototype work on their entries for the IEEE Sumo Wrestling challenge.  Watch to see if they are working on the right lines.  Lots of work to do here on autonomous robotic software.




A comment from one of the IET Ottawa LN committee members was "this work was one of the most encouraging that the LN committee has supported in the past years."  There is no doubt that the enthusiasm and exuberance of the team was palpable, and the Ottawa LN will be preparing an edited video to show the highlights of the team's Open House.
  • This was a great evening. Watching these young men and women working with the Lego robots and demonstrating their skills in cute choreography around the FLL course was really inspiring. It is really a privilege and a great opportunity to be able to support these young people and their mentors. When I entered the room where the first young lady (9 years old) was showing how she could use the inbuilt capabilities of the micro:bit I was astonished. I want to hire her now for my software company..what a star. Even more was to come when we met the robot team that had recently outsmarted the best of the best at a First Lego League competition, wow....what a demonstration they gave (more potential employees). I want to bottle their enthusiasm and sprinkle it around my workplace!! A great technical evening and I am going to lay claim to the CPD credits for this event, I learned so much. These youngsters did teach an old dog some new tricks. Thanks to everybody who put this together.