Is the Educational NXT Set Required?

[sgarfio]

Hi, I'm starting up a brand-new FLL team at my son's school. We have ordered one deluxe NXT set from FIRST, but we ended up with 18 students, so we need to form a second team and our budget is getting super tight. I bought an NXT set from a coworker earlier this summer that I am perfectly happy to donate, but it is the retail version NXT, not the educational one that FIRST sells.

So here are my questions:

• Is it acceptable to use this NXT set, or is there something special and required about the "educational" edition that FIRST sells?
• Someone mentioned in this forum that what you really need is the educational software bundle, so...
  • Can we buy just the educational software for much less than a whole new kit?
  • Can we just pay for a second license for the software we're already getting from FIRST?
  • Can we use one license for two teams?
• I see that education.lego.com has a firmware download. If I flash my retail NXT with that, would it match the "educational" NXT, making it useable for FLL (assuming there is something special about the educational NXT hardware/firmware)?

Thanks in advance for your help - I'm really excited that my first big "problem" is related to greater-than-expected interest in this program!

Sherry

[timdavid]

It is perfectly acceptable to use the retail version of the NXT set instead of the educational version. The educational version contains a different variety of parts, and includes a very useful rechargeable battery pack, but many teams have competed successfully using the commercial retail version. There is no difference in the actual NXT bricks that come with the two versions.

Here's a comparison of the parts that come in the commerical/retail version and the educational version. The retail version is labeled "NXT 2.0", and the kit sold by FIRST to FLL teams is a combination of the "NXT Education" version along with the Resource Kit.
http://static.robotclub.ab.ca/pages/..._2_vs_edu.html

The educational version of the desktop software has some extra tutorials and building information, along with datalogging capability, but the software is fundamentally the same in both versions.

You can use the same firmware versions in both retail and educational NXTs, and the same firmware works just fine with both versions of the desktop software. I think 1.31 is the latest firmware version.

[sgarfio]

Thank you so much for all the information! This saves us a lot of money!