The first DingBot unit is now finished and in use!

The boards soldered great, and I finished milling the first enclosure. That worked fine, but I think I’m going to have to get a cross slide vise for my drill stand if I want to keep my sanity while building the next ones.

And everything fits inside, and everything works! So it’s now in place downstairs. I’ll make more finished units for the rest of the house once we’ve used this one for a little while.

Construction pictures and larger beauty shots are up on the gallery.

The funny thing

I’ve been working on this for about three months, and had the overall box layout in mind for at least half of that. And it was only after it was all put together that I realized it looks like a face. I’ve been calling it “DingBot” all this time, even though it’s not really what anyone would call a robot per se, and it only now dawned on me that it looks like a robot!

Don’t know whether we’ll hang it on the wall in an orientation to emphasize its facey look yet, but it’s an option under consideration. That’s partly why I haven’t added any labels to the box yet.