We are working hard to put the robot back together again. It had to be torn apart to implement parts of the original Solidworks model that where missing and required to stiffen the chassis.

I was in desperate need of a slip roll for a few minutes today to roll the cover piece so I stopped by the Tech Shop to see if a member could help me out. Jim Newton was kind enough to assist me in rolling my cover piece. TechShop is a great place to build robots if you don't have your own equipment, if only they had a place to sleep and where open 24/7!

This is going to be a very late night to get everything together just for the technical inspection on Thursday....

RoboGames is coming June 12 - 14th at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The Beta version of Counter Revolution will be competing. We do not have enough time to make all the changes we would like after Battlebots but there will be modifications and improvements.

Most of the changes will be internal, trying to get if hardened for battle.

You better come and watch the "Revolution"!

Well, there is only one day left before Thursday check-in and guess what....the robot isn't finished yet. No surprise, I have been working on it day and night for the past month. It is difficult to build an entire quality Battlebot robot from scratch in one months time but I am close.

The team has been pitching in near the end. Dallas is bringing the battery system from Indiana. Derek has built an interface between an RC receiver and the Sevcon. Melonee and I have been slaving away on the hardware.

It was over 90 degrees F the past few days, makes it very difficult to work in the garage.

Will post photos when it I have time.

CNC Mill in our garage

Curt Needs to add description here

Curt needs to add the description here:

Posted by Curt's girlfriend: Libo


So Curt will be at battlebot on April 24th and 25th. From the moment I know he is going to attend this one too -- since he has been attending ALL the past battlebot contest -- I know the house will be a mess for a while.


Curt is a hard worker, but he forgets his age from time to time :P Making robots is not an easy job, but thanks to his CNC Mills, this is all possible. He designed "counter revolution" within a few weeks, and finished all the manufacturing in our garage within a month. I am proud and admiring him everyday :)


We sacrificed going out events, TV watching, etc. and he starts to go to bed ranging from 2-6am everyday. There are little metal chips around the house everywhere, even though he was told to shake himself really well before entering into the house from the garage. I stopped walking around the house bare foot and give up cleaning.


If you see the gallery for counter revolution, you will know what I mean.

Posted by Curt's girlfriend - Libo


About a month ago, Curt start bugging me making him a new website -- my mistake of mentioning that I start using Ruby on Rails on an automation site I am trying to build for work. So I started to work on it a few weeks ago, and spend about 8-10 hours each week on this.


I spent >4 hours trying to figure out how to make a rails website with hostmonster, apparently there are rules for what you can and cannot do when you are hosting the website with a third-party. Lessons learned:
1) Check the forum before start, learn from other people's mistakes
2) Read all ruby on rails related problems on the forum before scratching your head -- for example you cannot freeze rails version, or upgrade rails version on the site, since several people share same host.
3) Cpanel lies about the status of rails app, the running is via a link and re-direct.


Then I spent about 10 hours trying to setup a good gallery and a good blog plugin for the site. I did not find anything better than lightbox for gallery, and nothing really good on blog at all. So lightbox was used and modified to get the album running. I ended up writing the blog application myself.


I am glad all needed functionalities are currently working, and I am putting the first blog on the site. After this I will upload pictures and finish all the static pages I have to do. Thanks to rails, this whole process is very RESTFUL.


During the process, I run into San Jose meetup for Ruby club, and joined the club. Will attend my first meeting after the battlebot contest.