Fall Chibotica 2007 at iHobby Expo is finished!

Well Fall Chibotica 2007 is finally over. Months of effort culminated in a pretty great show. I hope we get invited back. The combat side went the worst in the planning stages and yet they got invited back immediately. Go figure.

Things went wrong during the show to be sure. Chibotica definitely had creeping contestitis. We were so far behind our schedule it wasn't funny. Its a good thing three contests were canceled due to lack of participants. Next year we'll spread it out over both days and maybe even run some some loser brackets during the trade only days.

Scotty and Mike Overstreet have some good footage of the show.

I'll be glad to get back to some regular robot time for a little while. At least until Spring Chibotica starts getting hot. The bi-annual schedule kills me. Calkins wants to do RoboGames once a quarter. I can't even imagine.

Anyway, I want to revive my Robomagellan dreams, do some good humanoid balance and gait work and make a decent Mini-Sumo with my secret weapon. I'll consider myself lucky if I get one of the three done in '08.

RoboGames

Has it been so long since I've posted? Amazing.

I'm back from RoboGames (long since, actually). It was a blast! So many pictures. I've been so busy with work and trying to organized my own little robot competition that I have neglected my duties here. I won two bronzes at RoboGames 2007. One for Robo-One Wrestling and one for Robo-One demonstration.

I had the opportunity to give Dave Calkins one of our medals in thanks for his inspiration to build our medals in the first place. I hung out with the Robo-One guys quite a bit and even convinced Matt Bauer, a particularly good Robo-One Builder, to come to Fall Chibotica. I'm really going to enjoy going back in 2008! We had four Chibots members there this time! My hope is to go as Team Chibots in 2008. That would be the bomb!

Laboratory Night

I've decided that my robot building sessions need to be scheduled if I'm to make any progress at all. Usually I just do fits and starts of intense robot building that result in poor robots. I had my first official laboratory night tonight. However, I need to move it to Tues. to align with my gf's late work night.

It should be noted that it is "La Bore A Tory" and not "Lab Ra Tory". The difference is important.

It should also be noted that one can get lab coats with one's name embroidered for about $35. I'm seriously considering getting one. If the night is to be official I need official garb, naturally.

In any case above is the results of my first night. I built this step up converter out of the simple, but not widely available MAX856 and Eddy's new prototype board. Eddy's prototype board is kinda cool in that it some what mimics the layout of a regular breadboard. I wound up with about as many jumpers as one would on a breadboard, but I also didn't need to glob together pads with cold solder. It is a pretty nice board. I had just recently tried to build this circuit with a traditional isolated pad prototype board and, not unexpectedly, it did not work. Who knows where a glob went wrong? This board worked perfectly on the first try.

I'm going to see what else I can cram on the board. I'd like to use it on my upcoming mini-sumo.

Spring Chibotica 2007 a Success!

Hassenplug brandishes his array of medals, per usual. He actually traded in a first place medal for a third place medal so he could have every color!

Tom W. sports a nice second place medal for his mini-sumo robot, Shadow!

Ryan Myrda sport a second place medal as well.

Mel's granddaughter get interviewed on TV! Mel is hiding behind the purple column to her right.

The pits! Yay! We finally had pits at one of our contests!

Mini-Sumo in action! My evil twin thought it was a good time to take a photo as well, apparently.

Tom G. tries to interview a robot. This went on for several minutes before we finally wrestled the microphone from him.

More Sponsored Material

The PCBs from Advanced Circuits came in and they look great! Thanks a bunch, Advanced Circuits!

With all the sponsorship so far, the cost of the medal has fallen to $7.81!

I'd also like to thank our other sponsors Rick Buesing, Tom Gralewicz, Terry Surma, Wright Hobbies, Merkursets, Robots Dreams, and once again Atmel.

Sponsored Material

I got the first of the sponsored material in! 100 ATtiny45's! Thanks, Atmel!

Chibots Digital Medal

The design is a success! All five prototype medals worked perfectly on the first try. They look great! With sponsorships and donations the cost is at $12.10 per a medal and is falling as more donations come in. I'm really excited to be able to deploy this medal to the club! I can't wait to award the first one!