Neanderthal Robot Food Forager Arena

[1] The 102 cms x 76 cms x 2 mm (40 ins x 30 ins x 1/16 in) straw board was obtained from an Art supplies Store; (in my case “Artery”, Collins Street, Hobart, Tasmania $4.95).

[2] The matt white spray can paint was obtained from a "remainder" store; (in my case Chickenfeed, Hobart, Tasmania, $3:00; enough for treating two strawboard sides). Revision: In 2010, Chickenfeed stopped selling spray cans of paint. However these are still available from hardware stores for prices in the range of $AU3:50 to $AU7:00.

[3] The 48 mm. wide (approx. 2 inches) self-adhesive black cloth tape was obtained from a hardware store, (in my case Kemp & Denning, Hobart, Tasmania, $2.16 for a 4.5 metre (approximately 5 yards) roll).

[4] The light blue cardboard sheet can be obtained from an Office Supplies shop or an Art Goods supplier; (in my case Officeworks had a limited selection of colours and sizes at $1:38 each, Artery had a much more extensive selection of colours and sizes, at prices ranging from $2.10 to $2.56). It may be worth getting several sheets of varying tones of blue, as (if you are like me) I find it difficult to predict the likely light sensor reading by just looking at the colour - blues give a lower reading than I would normally expect, and reds a much higher reading. The NXT Kit 1.0 light sensors respond most strongly in the infra-red region, which is fine for rattlesnakes, but doesn't help me much when I'm at a shop trying to predict the colour's response to a light sensor.

[5] The medium blue cardboard sheet can be obtained from an Office Supplies shop or an Art Goods supplier; (in my case Officeworks had a limited selection of colours and sizes at $1:38 each, Artery had a much more extensive selection of colours and sizes, at prices ranging from $2.10 to $2.56). As already commented under [4], it may be worth getting several sheets of varying tones of blue, as (if you are like me) it is difficult to predict the likely light sensor reading by just looking at the colour - again as previously commented, blues give a lower reading than I would normally expect, and reds a much higher reading.

[6] I was not at all impressed by the UHU Stic glue. You may be better at using this than I was, but in my case it needed to be applied thickly to cause any adhesion. When applied thickly it came out in lumps that were not easy to flatten. It also seemed to be more difficult to get it to adhere in the blue sheet corners than other methods I have used. I also had to use a complete 21 g tube on this one arena. I won't use it again. Next time I will go back to using double-sided transparent plastic tape - which I found much easier and cheaper to use, and which was very easy to handle when sticking down corners.

[7] These small plastic cups (approximately 40mm by 40 mm, 1½ inches by 1½ inches) were obtained from the local "remainders" store (in my case, Chickenfeed, Hobart, Tasmania, $2:00 for 40 cups). In practice, these were too small to be easily handled by the NXT robots, bigger cups would have been better.

[8] Plaster of Paris was obtained from a hardware store; (in my case Kemp & Denning, Hobart, Tasmania, $4.49 for 1 kilogram (2 ¼ pounds), which was about 4 or 5 times more than I needed).

[9] The 3 mm MDF white backing sheet mentioned above can probably be obtained from a hardware store; (in my case I saw it in stock at Kemp & Denning, Hobart, Tasmania, for $19).