Every part on the board has a place now, and a printed test plate proves the board goes into the shell. Nothing is routed yet, meaning the copper paths between the parts still have to be drawn, and the order slips past two weeks back east to see family.
I’m behind this week, and I feel it. The only working Robi stopped working after my youngest dropped it. The coding agent’s work is waiting on me to review. We fly to Boston on Sunday for a family trip, and the board has to be ordered so there’s something new to build when we’re back.
The board is the part I’ve been putting off. It’s the hardest part for me, so for months I worked on what was easy, the app. I wish I’d started this months ago. Weeks ago, at least.
A charging port in its cutout in the shell wall.
Monday the placement check came back with nine problems and a clear call: don’t route yet. None needed a redesign. I spent the next three days fixing them, and some of that time going back and forth with Claude about how the board sits in the shell, when I could have checked it faster myself. Today I turned on a connection that lets Claude read the board in Fusion directly, instead of working from my descriptions of it.
Wednesday night the front of the shell and a test plate came off the printer, and the board fit, nearly perfectly. One small tweak and a reprint. The Raspberry Pi, the knob, the buttons and the charging port all sit where the real parts need them, checked against the real ones on the bench. The first charging port I picked pointed the wrong way and would never have reached the outside of the case. Today, the go-ahead to route.
The printer camera, Wednesday, August 12, 2026: the front shell at 17:40, the test plate at 20:59, and the plate again on Thursday morning.
The test plate seated in the front shell, August 13, 2026.
Then the calendar. We’re gone for two weeks. Routing, the final checks and the order happen in the first week of September, the boards land around the end of the month, and testing the first ones runs into early October. The roadmap still says September 11th, held as a stretch. The realistic path says early October, and both are written down.
Time is the other problem. Childcare for our little one on Tuesdays and Thursdays fell through, so until we find someone, I get two work days a week, a day apart. And I need focus time that I haven’t done a good enough job carving out. Also parked until we’re back: the Kickstarter pre-launch page, which still needs its continuous demo video and real photographs before it can be resubmitted.