Robots have been built; disasters have been research; presentations practiced; t-shirts designed; programs programmed; and now it is time to bring it all together for the 2013 Maine FIRST LEGO League Championship.
Join us on Saturday, December 14th at the Augusta Civic Center for the 9:30 opening ceremonies with Senator Angus King and Acting Commissioner of Education Jim Rier.  Then watch as 600 students take to the floor and show us what they have learned!  The Maine FLL is brought to you by Time Warner Cable and their Connect a Million Minds program and by support from the Robotics Institute of Maine, the University of Maine College of Engineering and the University of Southern Maine.
You can also check out the Central Maine VEX Championship also going that day in the North Wing of the Augusta Civic Center.  For more info, Click the image or go to the Nature's Fury webpage.

The Pars Robot from Iran has been designed to serve as an at-sea rescuer.  Able to use GPS to find a general area, it can then use infra-red detection to find someone in the water and deliver a life preserver and notify the location of the survivor.  Able to travel up to 4.5 kilometers from it's base (I'm assuming 1/2 of that if you want it back again, it can arrive much faster than a human lifeguard, reaching speeds of 10 meters a second (about 22 mph).  Click on the image to watch it's test flight off a beach.
See their homepage at http://www.rtsideas.com

The FRC team 2648, Infinite Loop, is holding an FLL practice day Saturday, November 23 at the Messalonskee Middle School. This is a great chance to show your teams robot to other teams,attend training sessions, practice missions on the competition field, and get feedback about projects, programming, and mechanical design.

The event is free to attend, but if you could buy some items from their concession stand it would help support their team.

To register or to get more information please go to: 
 http://www.team2648.com/fll-practice-event-registration.html 
Please register by Wednesday, November 20 so they know how many people are coming.

FLL registration has closed 10 days early and Maine now sits with 74 teams for the FIRST Lego League. Up from last year,but not as much as we were expecting. We were originally expecting 80+ teams for this year. If registration had stayed open for another week we probably would met that number, but alas we did not. 

Since we do not have the number of teams we originally expected, our planning committee discussed the issue and decided that we do not have enough to run regionals this year. What that means is that all teams will be going directly to the Maine FIRST LEGO League Championship on December 14th, 2013 at the Augusta Civic Center.

Cost for the Championship is still $150/team
Registration should be up on our web by the end of next week. 

Good luck to Maine teams and we will see you in three months.

Just a reminder that the National Registration (required) to participate in the FIRST LEGO League program is likely to end sometime in the next 6-10 days.  FIRST has been watching enrollment and has 14,000 slots reserved for teams in the United States and Canada and it is currently showing 12,692 teams!  

So if you are planning on doing this, you need to register as soon as possible.  Visit the FLL registration page at http://gofll.usfirst.org or visit the Maine FLL Page

Next Tuesday we will be having the Maine FLL Kickoff.  We will have a free, no registration required webcast of the event. This is an excellent opportunity for new teams and interested folks to learn about this year's challenge "Natures Fury".

The webcast will be Tuesday, 3:00 PM on September 10th and can be accessed by clicking on the button bellow

As of 9/2/2013 we have 25 teams registered in Maine and we know of many more that will be coming on soon.  DON"T WAIT!  Remember the season closes as soon as the National Registration slots are all taken.

We've also posted 6 new videos on the FLL web page that talk about starting up a FIRST LEGO League team, we recommend you take the time to watch these as they answer many of the questions we hear from new coaches and parents.