I volunteer with our local FTC group - FTC is grades 7-12, FRC is 9-12. FIRST has really made our lives more difficult, paving the road to hell with good inten

I volunteer with our local FTC group - FTC is grades 7-12, FRC is 9-12. FIRST has really made our lives more difficult, paving the road to hell with good intentions by using android phones instead of microcontrollers, which required all new hardware of pretty poor quality and a Java software stack that some teams are finding difficult. Our local group has been farmed out around the state to provide support much more often than in years past. That said, FIRST is probably still the best organization for these kids to learn robotics, and I don't know whether FRC is going to suffer the same hardware and software hurdles as FTC.