On Building a 150g Antweight Combat Robot Live on Twitch - Connecting when you are not allowed to connect.

The interesting thing about the robot community is that it is a friendly community of builders. From the moment my family went to our first event, my daughter was hooked and quiet frankly so was I. We purchased a bot for my daughter for the holidays, and planned to attend the next event. Life didn't work out and then made plans to go to the subsequent one. Then the pandemic hit and, well, the rest I would imagine everyone understands. 

Then I started building bots. I also started to learn about the frustrations of shipping. Ungh. When I built my first bot, I leaned heavily upon the Antweight Facebook community. I had already blown up a receiver, and subsequently blew up a battery. As I posted photos, people were able to guide me in the right direction and I finished my first bot. 

Fast forward to last night, and I had another bot I was working on and had been really feeling the effects of the lock down. Well, my family is in lock down as much as possible. So I got a wild idea and decided to set up a computer and stream my build time. Normally, it is just me, a soldering iron and trying to force parts into a chassis. 

Last night was certainly different, I posted (at the very last minute) a message saying I was going to be building for a while and invited people to hang out. I didn't quite know what to expect or how it would work. I turned the camera on, got to work and the most amazing thing happened, someone showed up to chat for a bit. 

I thought I would be nervous, but I have been doing so much telehealth work as of late, that it just seemed to work out. He posted questions in chat, and I was able respond and have a bit of a conversation with an adult human. 

I am grateful that this kind of technology exists and that fact that I can interact with people even when we are in lockdown. To the person who signed on to say hi, you have my thanks!! Here is the progress that was made.