diff --git a/artoo/ReadMe.md b/artoo/ReadMe.md
index adff90a..054375a 100644
--- a/artoo/ReadMe.md
+++ b/artoo/ReadMe.md
@@ -29,6 +29,13 @@ To build with tup, simply invoke it at the root of the project directory:
 
     $ tup
 
+# to build inside vagrant: 
+cd OpenSolo/artoo
+vagrant up
+vagrant ssh
+cd /vagrant
+tup
+
 ### dev environment
 
 I'm primarily using Qt Creator (https://qt-project.org/downloads) for editing, which is tracked in the following project files: artoo.{config, creator, files, includes}
diff --git a/artoo/Tupfile b/artoo/Tupfile
index e108eaf..0591610 100644
--- a/artoo/Tupfile
+++ b/artoo/Tupfile
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ CPPSRCS := src/*.cpp src/stm32/*.cpp
 
 # generate version string as well via tup trickery
 # we pass source to GCC via stdin, then add the object file to our list of .o's to link
-GIT_TAG := vers=`git describe --tags`
+GIT_TAG := vers=`./git_describe_tag`
 VERSION_SRC := "#include \"src/version.h\"\nconst char* Version::str() {return \"$vers\";}"
 COMPILE_VERSION := $(GIT_TAG); echo $(VERSION_SRC) | $(CXX) $(CXXFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS) $(ARCH_FLAGS) -x c++ -c - -o $(OBJDIR)/version.o
 
diff --git a/artoo/git_describe_tag b/artoo/git_describe_tag
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..8fcc88c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/artoo/git_describe_tag
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+# this command should really execute:
+#git describe --tags
+# but we don't have any version tags in the repo yet, so lets fake it:
+echo v0.0.1
diff --git a/artoo/resources/fonts/notes.txt b/artoo/resources/fonts/notes.txt
index 1d22a5d..e1d7cfa 100644
--- a/artoo/resources/fonts/notes.txt
+++ b/artoo/resources/fonts/notes.txt
@@ -12,3 +12,14 @@ by default, PIL just uses the first, and doesn't provide a way to specify which
 http://fondu.sourceforge.net/ is a tool that extracts each of them into individual .ttf files (install on OS X via `brew install fondu`).
 
 This was used to generate HelveticaNeueMedium.ttf from HelveticaNeue.dfont
+
+Alternatively, 'Roboto' is an Apache Licensed Free Font by google that can be gotten from here:
+https://material.io/guidelines/resources/roboto-noto-fonts.html
+( wget https://storage.googleapis.com/material-design/publish/material_v_11/assets/0B0J8hsRkk91LRjU4U1NSeXdjd1U/RobotoTTF.zip 
+and we might be able to get away with using these instead of helveticaNeue?
+Roboto-Regular arrives in the zip as a .ttf, converting it to .otf is easy with any online tool for this, eg: https://everythingfonts.com/ttf-to-otf
+finally, to use Roboto where the system is expecting helvetica we'll do this: 
+cp Roboto-Regular.otf HelveticaNeueLTPro-Lt.otf
+cp Roboto-Regular.otf HelveticaNeueLTPro-Roman.otf
+cp Roboto-Regular.otf HelveticaNeueMedium.ttf
+cp Roboto-Regular.otf Copenhagen_Light.otf
diff --git a/artoo/tools/install-vagrant-deps.sh b/artoo/tools/install-vagrant-deps.sh
index 296a245..9da1013 100644
--- a/artoo/tools/install-vagrant-deps.sh
+++ b/artoo/tools/install-vagrant-deps.sh
@@ -1,11 +1,34 @@
 sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 6AF0E1940624A220
 sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 6D1D8367A3421AFB
+sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 5BB92C09DB82666C
 
-apt-add-repository 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anatol/tup/ubuntu precise main' -y
-add-apt-repository 'ppa:terry.guo/gcc-arm-embedded' -y
+# fix broken  urllib3 or some ssl stuff diesn't work
+sudo apt-get install -y --force-yes python-pip
+sudo pip install urllib3[secure]
 
-apt-get -qq --assume-yes update
-apt-get -qq --assume-yes install tup freetype* python-pip python-dev gcc-arm-none-eabi git
+# fix broken python2.7.x by moving it forward to something newer than 2.7.8:
+sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes-python2.7
+sudo apt-get -y --force-yes update
+sudo apt-get install -y --force-yes python2.7 python2.7-dev 
+
+## get deps for pillow, and note that we get Pillow from easy_install instead of 'pip' or apt-get becuase this method actually works.
+#sudo apt-get install -y python-dev python-setuptools
+sudo apt-get install -y --force-yes libtiff4-dev libjpeg8-dev zlib1g-dev libfreetype6-dev liblcms2-dev libwebp-dev tcl8.5-dev tk8.5-dev python-tk
+sudo  easy_install Pillow
+
+sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anatol/tup/ubuntu precise main' -y
+sudo add-apt-repository 'ppa:terry.guo/gcc-arm-embedded' -y
+
+sudo apt-get --assume-yes update
+sudo apt-get --assume-yes install tup freetype* python-pip python-dev gcc-arm-none-eabi git
 
 sudo pip install --upgrade pip
 sudo pip install pillow
+
+echo ""
+echo To build the artoo stm32 binary enter the VM with:
+echo vagrant ssh
+echo Then type this:
+echo cd /vagrant
+echo tup
+