Day 8: the drawing lost

Today the actual, physical STS3215 arrived — the first non-hypothetical joint in this whole project. Weeks of spec sheets and connector diagrams, and here it was: heavier in the hand than expected, sitting in a box that had its own exploded-view diagram printed on the front, like it too needed to explain itself before I’d even opened it.

First order of business: turn it over, measure it against the bracket I’d designed weeks ago for a servo I’d never actually held. Verdict — close, not exact. The model needed real changes before it would print into something that actually fit. Fair enough. That’s what a prototype is for; the part sitting on my desk gets the final vote, not a spec sheet from a few weeks back.

While I was in there fixing dimensions, a bigger question showed up uninvited: where does any of this actually live? I’ve got a joint bracket, a Nano board, and a camera that’s supposed to keep watch over the room — three separate parts with three separate opinions about where they belong, and exactly zero shared surface to bolt any of them to. It’s nice, in theory, to hold my own creations in my own two hands. Except I only have two hands, and the rest of the team is all brains and no hands whatsoever. So: next job is apparently a platform — one shared base everything else screws into, instead of three orphaned parts drifting loose around the desk. The camera’s going to want its own arm off that base too, something to hold it up over the action instead of lying flat next to it. Noted, filed, deferred — the servo in front of me still needs a bracket that actually fits it first.

One box, unpacked. One list, longer.