2026–2027 season · first-year team · ~2–3 hrs/week of home practice
Our playbook, robot-design decisions, weekly plan and questions for the coach live in here — the parts that are specific to our team.
General VEX IQ know-how, the season roadmap, first-event logistics, the notebook guide and the practice log are all in the Hallway, which needs no code.
It re-locks when you close the browser. If you don’t have the code, ask whoever runs this dashboard for it.
This is a lock on a cupboard door, not a bank vault: it keeps the strategy pages out of a young engineer’s way, but anyone who knows how to view a page’s source can read past it.
Two robots, one alliance, 60 seconds, on a 6′×8′ field. Put bean bags on goals. Higher goal, more points.
Because rule <SG6> allows only one bean bag at a time, Level Up is a cycle-time game. Your score is almost entirely: points per cycle × how many cycles fit in 60 seconds.
| Target | Pts/cycle | Cycle time | 60-sec score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floor Goal | 1 | 4 s | 15 |
| L1 | 3 | 6 s | 30 |
| L2 | 6 | 8 s | 45 |
| L3 | 12 | 14 s | 51 |
| L4 (yellow) | 16 | 16 s | 60* |
*only ~5–6 yellow bags exist, so L4 has a hard ceiling. Two conclusions to let her discover, not be told: a fast L2 robot beats a slow L3 robot, and height only pays if it's fast. Put a stopwatch in her hands in week one.
You + a randomly assigned partner team. 60 s. Scores combined. Ranking is by average qualification score with your lowest scores dropped (<T10>).
Driving Skills (60 s, driver-controlled) + Autonomous Coding Skills (60 s, code only). Your skills rank = highest driving + highest autonomous, summed (<T17>).
<RSC5> lets you reset the robot as many times as you want during the run — so a short, reliable routine repeated many times beats one long fragile one. A robot that just drives forward and drops its yellow preload on an L2 goal already beats a big slice of the field, and it unlocks the Think Award.
<G2>)The robot must be designed, built, and coded by the students. Judges probe for this in interviews. A robot beyond what an 8-year-old can explain loses Design and Excellence no matter how well it scores.
You are the question-asker, the timer-holder, the logistics manager and the keeper of morale. When you feel the urge to grab the robot, convert it into a question:
| Instead of | Say |
|---|---|
| “That gear ratio is wrong.” | “It seems slow. What could we change to make it faster?” |
| (taking the controller) | “Let me time you. Ready?” |
| “Build it like this.” | “Show me two ways this could work. Which do you want to try first?” |
| “You lost because…” | “What's the one thing we'd fix before the next match?” |
Tick items as you go. Progress is shown per phase and overall for this browser session — use Print or the practice log's CSV export to keep a permanent record.
0% of the season checklist complete ·
You asked me to correct you if you're wrong about using the Low Lift design. You're not choosing a design. You're building Flop. “Low Lift” was my label for a category of robot — useful for orientation, but not a menu you pick from.
The real question is: which category does Flop fall into? And nobody has measured that yet. If its arm reaches about 8″, then yes — Flop is effectively a Low Lift and L3 is on. If it reaches about 5″, it is not, and aiming for L3 means someone has to modify the arm, which costs weeks you may not have and is the team leader's call, not yours.
For the record: aiming for L3 is a perfectly good call. 12 points versus 6 is a doubling, and the arithmetic favours height. The guardrail is below in W5 — decide by landing percentage, not by pride.
You have roughly 4 hours of robot access a week (2 × 1.5 hr midweek, 1 hr Sunday), so about 44 robot-hours total before Nov 7. That is not a lot. This schedule spends them deliberately.
Weeks are dated to Nov 7. If you also attend Oct 24, W9 becomes your first event and everything after it gets sharper — which is a good reason to go.
<R1b>.Eight-year-olds don't have three-hour attention spans. Two 60–75 minute sessions beat one long one, every time.
Build + drive · 60–75 min
| 0:00 | Warm-up drill. Drive a set course. Time it. Write the number down. |
| 0:05 | Review last session's notebook page. What did we say we'd try? |
| 0:15 | Main build work. One change at a time. Her hands only. |
| 0:45 | Timed challenge. 60-second scoring run. Record the score. |
| 1:00 | Notebook. She writes; you may ask questions, not dictate. |
Code + think · 45–60 min
| 0:00 | Watch one Level Up match video. Ask: what did they do that we don't? |
| 0:10 | VEXcode IQ. One small improvement to the autonomous routine. |
| 0:35 | Run it 5 times. Log all 5 scores — including the bad ones. |
| 0:50 | Notebook + one judge-interview question, out loud. |
Pick up one bag, score it, return to start. 10 reps, log the times. The highest-value use of practice time there is.
Driver 1 drives 30 s, hands over, driver 2 finishes. Target: under 2 seconds of dead time.
Autonomous: run, grab, replace on the start tile, restart. Target: under 4 seconds.
Battery charged · firmware current · screws tight · license plates on · controller paired. More matches are lost to flat batteries than to bad design.
The coach handles registration and picks the event. This is everything you control: the runway to get there, what to pack, how the day actually runs, and what "a good day" honestly looks like for a first-year 8-year-old.
Four things from the rulebook that should drive every decision you make on the day:
| At least 6 teamwork matches rule <T9a> | A local qualifying event must schedule a minimum of six qualification matches per team (championships: eight). Ranking is the average, with your lowest scores dropped — so one disaster match won't sink you. |
| Exactly 3 + 3 skills runs rule <T15> | You get three Driving Skills and three Autonomous Coding Skills matches, first-come first-served. If the skills area closes before you've used them, you forfeit them. This is the single most actionable fact on this page — see the runsheet below. |
| Inspection gates everything rule <R2> | The robot cannot play a single match until it passes inspection. Do it first, before the queue builds. |
| Judges come to your pit | Unannounced, during the day. Parents step away and do not film it. Only the kids talk. |
Pack it the night before, not the morning of. Label everything with the team number.
Times are relative to doors opening — a typical local event runs roughly 8am to 4pm. Check the actual agenda on the event page.
Deliberately not point thresholds. For a first-year 8-year-old these are the things worth measuring — and every one of them is inside your control.
What is not a target: winning, ranking high, or beating a specific score. Teams at their first event are usually competing against clubs in year four with a full field at home. Comparing to them is how a kid quits in December.
Do this the same evening, in the notebook, dated. It is worth more than the next three practice sessions combined, and it is exactly the "iteration" evidence the judging rubric is looking for.
| 1. What broke? | Physically. Which part, which match, what were we doing when it happened. |
| 2. What surprised us? | Something you didn't expect from the field, other robots, the rules, or the noise. |
| 3. What did other teams do that we don't? | Let her answer this one. Take a photo of any robot that impressed her. |
| 4. What one thing do we change first? | One. Not five. Write it down and start there next session. |
| 5. What went well? | Ask it last and don't skip it. Name something real. |
Let's learn robots together. Tap a button to start!
Watch the robot pick up a bean bag. What does it do first?
Every trip is the same four steps: drive to the bag · pick it up · drive to the goal · let go. Watch it again and count the seconds for one whole trip — that number is what the rest of these lessons are about.
Put bean bags on the steps. Higher step = more points!
The gold tower only takes YELLOW bags. Those are worth the most.
There are only 6 yellow bags. They score on every goal.
Grab yellow first when you can!
Your robot can only carry one bean bag. That is the rule!
More trips = more points. Being quick is the secret!
60 seconds. You drive 30. Then swap controllers!
Your robot starts inside a box. Once the match begins it can grow as tall as you want!
A big gear turning a small one makes it spin fast but weak. The other way round makes it slow but strong.
Your robot's arm probably uses slow-and-strong — so it can lift a bean bag without dropping it. Try the toy below!
Pick two gears and see what happens.
When the arm reaches way out front, the robot's weight goes out front too — and over it goes.
Try it with a ruler on the edge of a table. Push it out slowly. Where does it tip?
Four things make it go. If you can name them, you can explain your robot to a judge.
Grippy wheels stop where you stop them. Slidey ones turn easily but keep going.
Go look at your robot's wheels. Do they have little rollers around the edge? Those are the slidey ones!
A robot doesn't stop the second you let go. It slides a little bit more.
So aim early. This is the number one trick for driving well — try the game below!
Tap GO, then tap STOP so the robot lands on the red line. Remember — it slides!
In a match you get a partner team you have never met. Your points and their points add up into one score.
So you don't beat them — you beat the clock together. Say hello before the match and pick who takes which side of the field.
Every match starts with one yellow bag already on your robot. It's called the preload.
It's the most valuable bag on the field and you get it for free. Decide where it goes before the buzzer — not while you're driving.
Points are counted where the bags are when time runs out — not when you let go of them.
A bag still in your robot's hands at the buzzer is worth nothing. So in the last few seconds, finish what you're holding. Don't start a new trip.
15 seconds. Each trip takes 3 seconds. Tap SCORE for 6 points — but if the buzzer goes while a bag is in the air, you get nothing for it.
When your robot drives back towards you, pushing left sends it to your right. Almost everybody gets this wrong at first.
The fix isn't to think harder — it's to move your feet so you're standing behind the robot again. Try the game below.
Get the robot to the cone. Watch which way it's pointing first!
Somebody has to feed bags into the load zone by hand. That person is doing a real job, not watching.
One bag, flat, let go, hands away — and never touch a bag the robot is touching. It's the best first job on the team if driving feels scary.
A match is 60 seconds. That is shorter than it sounds — and halfway through, the controller changes hands.
Practise the swap itself. Teams lose whole trips fumbling it. And in the last ten seconds: finish, don't start.
Tap start and just watch. This is exactly how long you get.
Most of a competition day is waiting. You play a match, then wait a long time, then play another one.
Two things to know: bring a book for the waiting — and the skills field is open the whole day. That's the one you can go and use whenever you want.
In a match you get one go. In skills, you can run it over and over — and only your best score counts.
A bad run costs you nothing. So a short program you can run twenty times beats a long clever one you can run twice.
More matches are lost to a flat battery than to a bad robot. Really.
Do this same list before every single match, even when you're sure. This can be your job — and it's one nobody else on the team will remember to do.
You do not have to have the highest score to go home with a trophy.
These three are won by trying the autonomous, by not giving up, and by helping the team next to you. All three are available to you this year.
You write a list of moves. Then the robot does them all by itself while you stand back.
This is your job on the team. Most kids never try it — which is exactly why it's worth doing.
Instead of holding a stick and guessing, one button can send the arm to exactly the right height.
You can write that! Then the arm is perfect every single match, even when you're nervous.
One for when you drive. One for when nobody drives.
The driver program runs in every single match. That one helps your whole team.
“Drive forward 3 seconds” is a guess — the wheels slip a little differently every time. “Drive until you touch the wall” is a fact.
That's why the same program doesn't do the same thing twice. Sensors are how you fix it, and it's the coolest thing you can show a judge.
One repeat block does the job of copying the same blocks over and over.
Shorter programs have fewer places to go wrong — and when you want to change something, you only have to change it in one place.
This circle is the whole job. Round and round, all season.
The judges want to see you go round it lots of times — especially the times it went wrong.
When you want to change something, bring a number. Nobody argues with a stopwatch.
“I timed it ten times” makes you the helper. “That's wrong” makes you the arguer.
Your robot will break, drop a bag, or stop moving. It happens to everybody.
Decide these now, so you already know what to do when it happens.
One page every time you practise. Three boxes. You can draw them instead of writing them.
Put the date and your name at the top. Every single time. That part matters more than the handwriting.
Write down the things that broke. Those are the pages judges like best.
A notebook where everything worked looks made up. A notebook full of “we tried it, it failed, here's what we did next” looks like real engineering — because it is.
The Timer tab and the My Scores tab in this app do steps 1 and 4 for you — then copy the numbers into the paper notebook.
You do not have to write neatly, or a lot. A drawing with an arrow saying “this bit kept falling off” is a perfect entry.
Tape photos in. Sticky-tape a broken part to the page. It all counts.
Grab one bag, score it, come back. Tap to start, tap to stop. Do it 10 times!
Tap a sticker when you do it! Ask a grown-up to bookmark this page to keep your stickers.
Judges will visit you and ask questions. Tap a card to see a good answer!
This is the young engineer's first year. We are optimising for confidence, not for ceiling. The season is a success if she finishes it understanding how the game works, having contributed something real, and wanting to do it again.
| Optimise the floor, not the ceiling | Ask “what do we score on our worst match?” — not “what's our best?” A score she hits every single match is worth more than a bigger one she hits once. |
| When two options are close, take the steadier one | Even when the arithmetic slightly favours the riskier option. Variance costs a first-year 8-year-old more than it costs the scoreboard. |
| The ranking rules agree with you | Teamwork ranking is your average qualification score with the lowest dropped (<T10>). Consistency is literally what gets scored. |
| Add capability only when the current one is boring | Don't raise the arm until the current arm is dull and automatic. Boredom is the signal that it's time. |
The 24″ issue is a legality gate, not a design decision — binary, about an hour to fix, and it has no bearing on strategy. What gates your strategy is that nobody yet knows what Flop can do.
Three numbers decide everything, and you can have all three inside two practices:
| # | Measure | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | How high does the arm reach? | Your points per trip. <5″ = L1 (3) · ~5″ = L2 (6) · ~8″ = L3 (12) |
| 2 | How long is one pickup-and-score? | How many trips fit in 60 seconds |
| 3 | How often does it work? | Whether you get your best score or your average — the one that actually ranks you |
Until you have those, any strategy conversation is guessing. Once you have them, the scenarios below tell you what to do.
You have Flop twice, but never in the same room at the same time: 2 × 1.5 hrs midweek at a teammate's house, and 1 hr Sunday with the team. That rules out running them side by side — so the plan is not “A vs B”, it's a development robot and a competition robot, kept in sync.
| Robot | When | Its job |
|---|---|---|
| The dev robot teammate's house |
3 hrs/week 2 × 1.5 hr |
Where every change gets tried first. Three quarters of your robot time lives here, so this is where the learning happens. Test, measure, break things, put them back. |
| The competition robot with the team |
1 hr Sunday | Stays close to stock. Apply only changes that already proved out midweek. This is the one that goes to the event. |
<R1b> — know this before NovemberOne social note: the dev robot lives at someone else's house. Agree with that family up front what may be changed and what must go back to stock before you leave. “We took their robot apart” is a bad way to end a friendship in October.
Because you can't run both robots at once, comparing them across different days and different houses proves nothing — the field is different, and the young engineer herself is different. The fix is to test one robot against itself, inside one session.
| 1. Baseline | Five timed cycles, robot as-is. Write all five down. |
| 2. Make the change | One change. Only one. Five more timed cycles. |
| 3. Put it back | Undo the change. Five more cycles. This is the step everyone skips and it's the one that makes the test valid. |
If the middle block is faster than both outer blocks, the change is real. If the two baselines differ a lot from each other, the young engineer was warming up or getting tired — and the test can't tell you anything, so run it again next session.
Type the seconds for each run. Everything below calculates itself.
Level Up's field makes one design decision much bigger than the rest. Everything below follows from this picture — all dimensions are from Appendix A of the game manual.
Read that gap. Four of the five goals live between the floor and 8 inches. Then nothing at all for 16 inches. Then the L4 goal at 24″, which takes yellow bags only — and only six yellow bags exist in the entire match.
| 1. How high do you reach? | 8″ (L3) or 24″ (L4). There is no useful middle. See above — pick 8″. |
| 2. How tall is the robot while driving? | The wall structures put a rail roughly 6″ off the floor. A robot that stays under it can cut straight across the field; a taller one drives the long way round. Shorter path = shorter cycle = more points. This is why the official hero robot is flat and named “Flop”. A folding or tipping arm lets you have both: flat while driving, up to score. |
| 3. How do you hold a floppy bag? | Bean bags are 4″ × 3″ loose-filled fabric. They squish, sag and slip. See the intake table below. Remember rule <SG6>: you may only ever hold one. Your intake never needs capacity — only speed and reliability on a single bag. |
Rule <R9> caps you at six VEX IQ motors. A first-year build should not need all of them.
| Build | Drive | Intake | Lift | Total | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat sweeper | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 | Arm doubles as the intake |
| Low lift — recommended | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | Leaves two motors as spares — a motor that dies mid-season is a swap, not a crisis |
| Low lift, 4-motor drive | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 | More traction and steadier turns, but heavier — and no spare motors in the box |
| Tall tower | 2 | 1 | 2–3 | 5–6 | Everything is committed to the lift |
<SG6> forbids plowing, you never need pushing power in this game — which makes the usual argument for a 4-motor drivetrain weaker here than in most VEX games.
On speed: gearing the drivetrain up makes cycles shorter, and cycles are points. But speed an 8-year-old can't control is slower than speed she can. Start at the stock ratio, get her driving a clean course, and only then gear up.
Fair question. Here's the real balance, including the part that argues against me.
| For 2-motor drive | For 4-motor drive |
|---|---|
Pushing power is worthless this game. <SG6> forbids plowing — you cannot shove bean bags around even if you wanted to. The single biggest reason teams add drive motors doesn't apply here. |
Better traction, less wheel slip. And wheel slip is the number one cause of autonomous drift. Since autonomous is the young engineer's job, this argument is stronger than I gave it credit for. |
| Lighter. Flop reportedly has balance trouble at full extension; less mass helps. | More predictable for a young driver. Less slip means what she does maps more reliably to what happens. |
| Two motors left as spares. A motor dying the week before an event becomes a swap, not a crisis. | Steadier, more controlled turns — which matters more if the arm is tall and heavy. |
| Mechanism | What it is | Why it's good | What bites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scoop / tray Great first choice | Drive over the bag, it slides onto a flat tray. Tip the tray to score. | Very forgiving alignment. Almost nothing to break. Fastest pickup. | Bag can slide out on hard turns — add a lip. |
| Fork / spatula Great first choice | A thin flat plate slides under the bag, then lifts. | Simplest possible mechanism. Great for a first build. | Needs a fairly flat approach; struggles with bags against a wall. |
| Roller / flap intake Doable | A spinning rubber flap drags the bag in and holds it. | Very consistent, grabs on the move, no aiming. | Costs a motor, and needs decent build skill to get the spacing right. |
| Claw / gripper Doable | Two arms pinch the bag. | Precise placement — nice for stacking on L3. | Squishy bags deform and squirt out. Common first-year frustration. |
| Launcher Avoid | Fling the bag at a goal. | — | Bean bags don't fly repeatably. Skip it. |
A low tray or scoop that tilts up to tip the bag onto a step. The whole robot stays under ~6″, so it uses the shortcuts all match.
| Motors | 2 drive + 1 arm |
| Goals it can reach | Floor, L1, L2 |
| Why it works | Fewest parts, fastest to build, hardest to break, shortest routes. |
| What it costs you | Caps out at 6 points a trip. You will be out-scored by L3 robots at a big event. |
A scoop on a short arm that reaches 8″. Covers four of the five goals. Arm folds down flat to duck under the rail; up to score.
| Motors | 2 drive + 1 intake + 1 lift |
| Goals it can reach | Floor, L1, L2, L3 |
| Why it works | Best points-per-complexity in the game. 12-point trips with a mechanism an 8-year-old can actually build and explain. |
| What it costs you | Needs a real (if short) lift and some driving precision to line up on L3. |
A double-reverse-4-bar, scissor, or chain lift reaching past 24″ for the L4 goal.
| Motors | 2 drive + 2-3 for the lift |
| Goals it can reach | L3 + L4 |
| Why it works | The only way to touch 16-point scoring, and it looks spectacular. |
| What it costs you | You are building 24″ of lift to chase at most 5–6 yellow bags in the whole match. Slow cycles, tippy, hard to inspect, and a year-one team will usually score less than a clean Low Lift. |
Catapults, flywheels, launchers.
| What it costs you | Bean bags are loose-filled fabric — the filling shifts in flight, so they do not fly the same way twice. Experienced teams on the VEX Forum have repeatedly warned this is a dead end this season. |
<SG2>. Full detail and the fix are in the first card at the top of this tab. Failing inspection on day one is a miserable way for a first season to start.
Your hardest limit is robot access — 4 hours a week, at other people's houses, none at home. VEX publishes a Level Up Playground in VEXcode VR: a simulation of this season's actual field, with Flop as the robot.
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| What it simulates | The VEX IQ Level Up (2026–2027) field, with Flop — “the Hero Bot for the game” — including its controls, sensors and features. |
| What she can do | Configurable starting positions, multiple camera angles, example projects, and testing of scoring strategies. Blocks or Python. |
| Access | Registered VEX IQ teams for 2026–27 get in via team registration (a “Virtual Skills Key”). Non-registered users need a paid VR Premium licence. Ask the coach for the team's key. |
| Not browser-based | Runs in the VEXcode VR application, so it needs installing. (Virtual driving skills additionally wants Google Chrome.) |
| Virtual Skills | There is a VEX IQ Virtual Skills programme for 2026–27, and a “VEXcode VR Autonomous Skills Global STEM Challenge” that VEX says could earn a Worlds spot — details listed as coming soon. Confirm the current state with the coach before promising the young engineer anything. |
Caveat: I could not confirm from VEX's public pages whether the Virtual Skills leaderboard and the Global STEM Challenge are live yet, or exactly what your registration includes. Treat the access question as one for the coach, not as settled.
I couldn't get the build instructions — the PDF is over 30 MB and the 3D version is a JavaScript viewer that returns an empty shell. But the VEX IQ (2nd gen) Competition Kit contents are published, and Flop can only be built from parts in that box. That bounds the answer usefully.
| Smart Motors | 6 — which is also the legal maximum under <R9>. Whatever Flop doesn't use is free for something else. |
| Gears | 12T ×16 · 24T ×8 · 36T ×6 · 48T ×4 · 60T ×2 · worm gear ×2 · hybrid 12/24/36T |
| Sprockets & chain | 8T ×8 · 16T ×6 · 24T ×6 · 161 chain links |
| Wheels | 4 omni wheels + 2 travel tires (200mm) |
| Gear pair | Ratio | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 12T → 60T | 1:5 reduction | Very slow, very strong. Typical of a lifting arm. |
| 12T → 48T | 1:4 reduction | Slow and strong. |
| 12T → 36T | 1:3 reduction | Moderate. |
| 12T → 24T | 1:2 reduction | Mild. |
| 24T → 12T | 2:1 speed-up | This is the “1 rev in, 2 revs out” gearing the forum says newer hero bots use for roughly double drivetrain speed. |
| Worm gear | huge reduction | Self-locking — it cannot be back-driven, so an arm holds its position with no motor power. |
Page 2 of the instructions shows a large blue gear being pinned to a beam. The kit's biggest is the 60 tooth, and there are only two of them. If that's what it is, and it's driven by a 12T, the arm is running a 1:5 reduction — deliberately slow and strong. That would fit a robot named “Flop”: an arm built to heave a bean bag reliably rather than quickly.
With VEXcode VR above, “no robot at home” is much less of a problem than it was. Everything below still holds — almost none of the design work needs the robot in your hands.
Teams who actually built this season's hero bot report it exceeds the 24″ horizontal limit in rule <SG2> when the arm swings fully back. One team worked it out hole-by-hole as 9 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ~0.75 = 24.75″, including a chain flap sticking out. Another simply confirmed: “I built the hero bot, and yes, it does expand past 24″.”
The forum's read: “every team running the hero bot will need to create a limiter to prevent the arm going back that far.” These are user reports, not an official notice — which is exactly why the job is to measure your own robot rather than trust anybody's number, mine included.
The blue box under <SG2> says a team must be able to demonstrate the robot stays inside 11″ × 24″ “due to either physical or programmed limitations.” The manual explicitly accepts code as a legal way to enforce the size rule. That puts the fix squarely in the one area where she already has an edge — and it needs zero build seniority.
<SG2>.
That is problem → data → solution → test → result, done by an 8-year-old in about a week, needing nothing but a tape measure and VEXcode. It will be the best notebook entry she gets all season, and it is a ready-made answer to “what problem did you solve?” in the judge interview.
Do not rebuild it. The forum's own advice to new teams is: build the hero bot, find its strengths and weaknesses, then improve it — and that process is the season. Each item below is one notebook cycle.
| Weak point | What to test at practice | The likely fix |
|---|---|---|
| Over the size limit Do first |
Measure front-to-back with the arm all the way back. | Hard stop + coded arm limit. See above. |
| Balance | Extend the arm fully and push gently on the robot. Does it want to tip? | Forum users report poor balance at full extension. Move weight rearward, or limit how far the arm reaches out. |
| Speed | Time ten pickup-and-score cycles. Write down all ten. | Newer hero-bot drivetrains use roughly 1:2 gearing for about double the speed. Only gear up once she can drive a clean course — speed she can't control is slower. |
| Chain slack | Change direction hard and watch the chain. | Chain drives skip or derail when slack isn't managed. Tension it, or check whether a gear drive suits your build better. |
| How high does it actually reach? | Raise the arm fully and measure the scoring height. | Under 5″ means you are an L1 robot. Around 5″ means L2 (6 pts). Around 8″ means L3 (12 pts). This single measurement tells you what your realistic score ceiling is. |
You're on Flop this season and that's a perfectly good place to be — but it helps to know it is one option out of about eighteen official VEX IQ (2nd gen) builds. Nothing in the rules requires the season hero robot, only legal VEX IQ parts built by the students. Worth knowing for mid-season, or for year two.
| Family | Builds | Why it matters for Level Up |
|---|---|---|
| Season hero bots | Flop (26–27) · Huey (25–26) · Swish (24–25) · Byte (23–24) · Snapshot (22–23) | Older hero bots are perfectly legal to build and cannibalise. Huey's claw comes up constantly on the forum as a Level Up starting point. |
| Passive manipulators the hidden gem |
Fork · Spatula · Fork + Spatula · Plow · Wheel Grabber · M.A.D. Box | These are exactly the mechanisms this game wants, as free step-by-step instructions. “BaseBot + Spatula” is essentially the Flat Sweeper archetype with no design work required. Most first-year teams never find this page. |
| Education kit builds | BaseBot · BaseBot with Sensors · Simple Clawbot · Clawbot · Clawbot with Sensors · Speed Build 2.0 | BaseBot is the standard chassis nearly everything else bolts onto. Speed Build 2.0 is a fast minimal-parts drivetrain. |
All builds: vexrobotics.com/iq/downloads/build-instructions — the Fork, Spatula and Plow instructions live under “passive manipulators”.
One older, more advanced teammate is designing and leading the build of the competition robot (the midweek robot). The Sunday hour is the younger members — the young engineer included — building the second Flop from the instructions. She is in the room for both.
That is a common structure and it is not a bad one. It has one known failure mode: one child learns everything and the rest fetch parts. That failure shows up in exactly two places — the judge interview, and next season when the leader moves up.
That is not a parent asking for a turn for their kid. It is the competition organisation telling teams they lose points when one member does all the talking. The young engineer having a real domain is in the team's competitive interest — which is a very different conversation to have with a coach.
| Role | Whose is it now? | Why it fits her |
|---|---|---|
| Test engineer midweek, 3 hrs | Usually nobody's | Start here She is in the room while the leader builds. She doesn't design — she times, measures and reports. “I ran ten cycles, the average was 12.4” is a gift to whoever is designing, not a challenge to them. It is a real discipline on real teams and it needs no build seniority at all. |
| Autonomous coding | Usually nobody's | Claim this The leader is busy with hardware. Autonomous is half the skills ranking, the whole Think Award, an Excellence prerequisite — and with VEXcode VR she can develop it at home, unlimited, then arrive with something that already works. |
| Notebook | Usually nobody's | It's what wins the Design Award, and whoever writes it has the story judges hear. |
| Rules & inspection | Usually nobody's | Needs a tape measure and a willingness to read the manual. The 24″ check is the way in. |
| Drive team seat driver 2 or loader | Decided late | Worth asking for early, before it gets settled close to the event. |
| Designing the competition robot | The leader's | Realistically not hers this season. That's fine — it is not where most of the award points are, and first year is for confidence, not for ceiling. |
Building a whole Flop from the instructions with her own hands is exactly how she closes the knowledge gap with the leader. By November she'll have built a complete robot start to finish — which the leader may have done once. That is a legitimate, honest answer to “what did you do?”, and it's what lets her talk about the robot in an interview even though she didn't design it.
Assumed answers are working assumptions, not confirmed. Correct them when you hear back.
A team of 7–8 year olds with a ~9-year-old leading the build, 11 weeks to Nov 7, about 4 hours of robot access a week. Everything below is narrowed to a decision. The other tabs hold the reasoning.
<SG6> caps you at one bean bag. Score = points per trip × trips per 60 seconds. Everything else is a way of moving those two numbers.You are not designing a robot — you're building Flop and improving it. These are the only changes worth making before November, in order.
Forum-built Flops measure ~24.75″ fully extended, over the <SG2> limit. Add a physical stop and a coded motor limit — the manual explicitly accepts both.
Fails inspection otherwise. Non-negotiable.
Ten-minute swap, fully reversible, every part legal. Traction at the front makes the robot pivot about its front axle — the intake stays put while the tail swings, so she can aim without the scoop wandering.
Fixes overshooting, which is the number one problem for a 7–8 year old driver. Perfect A–B–A candidate.
Only if the L3 landing rate is under 70%. Buying alignment tolerance is almost always cheaper than adding mechanism height, and almost nobody tries it.
Lets her be an inch off and still score. That is worth more than an hour of driving practice.
No new lifts. No launchers. No L4 tower. No drivetrain rebuild unless a measured problem points there and wheels didn't fix it.
You have ~44 robot-hours before Nov 7. Spending them on a rebuild costs you the season.
This is the part most teams get wrong. They try to make a small child precise. Make the robot forgiving instead — it works, and it's faster.
A 7–8 year old does not have the fine motor control for precise joystick work, and no amount of practice will change that this season. Every inch of tolerance you build into the robot is worth more than an hour of drilling. Wider scoop, guide rails, preset buttons.
Holding a stick until the arm looks right is a skill. Pressing a button that sends the arm to exactly scoring height is not. Put arm presets on buttons in the driver-control program. That's a coding job, so it's the young engineer's.
One stick controlling forward and turning is usually easier at this age than two sticks doing one wheel each. It's a setting in VEXcode, not a rebuild — so it costs nothing to test, and it's another thing the young engineer owns.
An over-geared robot is unusable by a small child. Speed she cannot control is slower than speed she can, because she spends it all correcting. Start at stock gearing. Earn speed after she drives a clean course.
Kids this age remember stories better than instructions. “Corner, scoop, tower, home.” Vary nothing. Muscle memory is the entire point, and it only builds through sameness.
A competition day is six qualification matches plus up to six skills runs. That is genuinely exhausting for a seven-year-old. Run six matches in a row at practice so the fatigue isn't new on the day.
Noise, a countdown, strangers watching. The first time she drives in front of people should not be at the event. Have a sibling stand and watch. Have someone cheer. Play music loudly.
The robot dies. The bag drops. The partner robot blocks the goal. Decide in advance what she does — keep driving, don't freeze, don't cry. Practise it as a drill so the first time isn't live.
She cannot process instructions and drive at the same time, and being talked at adds pressure. Agree the plan before. Be silent during. Talk after. This is the hardest one for parents and the most important.
Rule <GG11> forces a controller swap halfway through every teamwork match. Teams routinely lose 3–5 seconds fumbling it. Practise the handover itself, separately, until it's under two seconds.
A nine-year-old is not years ahead of an eight-year-old — the gap is one school year and some hours on the parts. This is not a situation where the young engineer has to wait her turn.
| He'll welcome data | A nine-year-old running a build is carrying a lot alone. Someone arriving with “I timed ten runs, the average was 12.4” is help, not competition. Offer numbers, never opinions about his design. |
| He can't cover everything | Nobody that age can lead a build and write autonomous and keep a notebook and track the rules. Those gaps are the roles — and they're real jobs, not consolation prizes. |
| Watch for the interview trap | RECF's guidance is blunt: “If one team member holds the ball for most of the interview, even if they're a great speaker, you'll lose.” If he answers everything, the whole team loses points. Frame it to the coach that way. |
| Next season matters | He moves up eventually. A team where only one child understands the robot has a cliff coming. Coaches feel this — it's a fair thing to raise. |
| Inspect first | Before the queue builds. Nothing plays until it passes (<R2>). Fail at 8am and you have hours; fail at 11am and you miss matches. |
| Skills: go early, go at lunch, save one | Exactly 3 driving + 3 autonomous, first-come first-served (<T15>). Unused runs are forfeited. This is the biggest free win of the day. |
| At the field two matches early | Six qualification matches minimum (<T9a>). Meet the alliance partner, agree who takes which side. |
| One fix between matches | Never two — you won't know which worked. Battery on charge every time. |
| Judges come to you | Unannounced, at your pit. Step away. Don't film it. Don't answer for her. |
| Leave the second Flop at home | Rule <R1b> — no assembled second robot at a competition, not even for parts. Loose spares are fine. |
None of these are scores, and all of them are inside your control.
Log a session's best scores and average cycle time. Nothing here is ever deleted. If an entry turns out to be wrong — a mis-typed score, a run that didn't count — mark it doesn't count and it drops out of the totals and the chart. You can put it back at any time.
Each person gets their own colour in the chart. Click a swatch to change it.
This is where most first-year teams leave points on the table. The notebook is required for the Design Award and the Excellence Award — the top award at any VEX event and a common qualification path.
Either a bound paper notebook (pages not removable, entries sequential, each signed and dated) or a digital one (timestamps and revision history replace the binding). Judges are explicitly told neither is preferred. For an 8-year-old, paper usually wins — drawings, taped-in photos and honest messy handwriting all read as authentic student work.
One page per session. Three boxes, ten minutes, every session: What we tried / What happened / What's next. Drawings count. Photos count.
| Award | Year 1? | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Think | Best first target | An autonomous coding score above zero + effective coding. Most young teams skip it entirely. |
| Judges | Yes | Perseverance, story, effort. Judges' discretion — being memorable and earnest is the criterion. |
| Sportsmanship | Yes | Courtesy, helping other teams, integrity. Costs nothing but character. |
| Design | Stretch | A fully developed notebook + a strong interview. |
| Create / Build / Innovate | Stretch | A genuinely creative or unusually well-built mechanism. |
| Excellence | Year 2–3 | All of the above plus roughly top-40% across teamwork, driving skills and autonomous skills — each above zero. Note the “above zero”: you must attempt autonomous. |
Ten minutes a week. Ask them out loud; let her answer without you finishing her sentences.
VEX publishes STEM Labs — full structured units, free, at education.vex.com/stemlabs/iq — plus 60+ shorter activities across coding, engineering, maths and science at education.vex.com/stemlabs/iq/activities. Both are free; you only need the kit. The activities are written for independent student use, so the young engineer can work through them largely on her own.
They are not ordered for your situation, though. This is the order I'd do them in, given what your team is actually wrestling with:
| STEM Lab unit | What it teaches | Why it's worth your time |
|---|---|---|
| Tug of War | Force, gears, mechanical advantage, centre of mass | Start here Do this one first. It's the textbook version of two things you already care about: why Flop's arm is geared slow-and-strong, and why it tips when the arm reaches out. |
| Cube Collector | Driver control programs, autonomous movements, path planning, multi-program usage | Then this The closest thing to the young engineer's actual job. Path planning and running more than one program is exactly what an autonomous routine needs. |
| Robot Soccer | Manipulators, intake design, motor groups, joystick configuration | Then this Intake design — i.e. how you pick a thing up and hold onto it. Directly transferable to floppy bean bags. |
| Treasure Hunt | Drivetrain coding, path planning, optical sensors, conditional logic | Where “if this, then that” shows up. Makes an autonomous routine able to react instead of just repeating. |
| Castle Crasher | Drivetrain coding, turn calculations, velocity adjustment, distance sensors, algorithms | Turn calculations are the single most useful autonomous skill — most young teams' routines fail on turns, not straights. |
| Up and Over | Claw design, arm design, motor groups | Useful background if the team ever revisits the arm. |
| Team Freeze Tag | Controller configurations, wheel types, bumper switches, touch LEDs | Covers wheel types — relevant to the omni-vs-travel-tire question on Flop. |
| Competition 101 | Game strategy, robot building, driving skills, team culture | Written for last season's game, but the structure transfers: pit setup, mock inspection, interview practice. |