construction steps
* Table saw to cut two panels to size. I chose 10 1/4″ square. No particular reason other than that seemed to be the right size and spacing for the components I was going to use. This is 1/8″ plywood from Michael’s.
Now that the matching top and bottom panels are cut, time to use the spray adhesive to stick the cutting diagram down to the top panel. 3M (slight less super than 77) 45 spray adhesive used. Worked great. Feels bad on yer arm hairs from overspray.
Cutting diagram ready to go. Notice the rounded corners and corner holes for stand-off supports. Didn’t end up using those. Whooopsie. Sure am glad I cut one of the columns for the digital I/O before I drilled those corner holes. The 2 terminal headers totally interfered with that plan and I had to change my design on the fly. I even debated whether or not to adjust the printout and start over, then I realized I’d already cut my panels to size. That’s what version 2.0 is for!
Anyway, not bad lookin’. This will go so much faster on the laser cutter and acrylic… again, 2.0…
here’s a short timelapse video of me cutting, drilling, tapping, and populating the panel with the components. Things went fairly quickly towards the end of the major work portion of the project, so I ended up not taking any timelapse of the finishing and soldering parts. Next time. 
arduino project box construction timelapse from stevecooley on Vimeo.
I was really worried about how well the components would fit, so I cut one column and tried them out. They fit really well! Woot. Continue…
Here are some shots of the panel populated with all of the components… lookin’ good.
Here are some shots of the other side of the panel, pre-soldering. Check out the details on how the sliders were mounted. I have no idea if that’s how you supposed to do it. But it worked.
originally I had LED panel mounting holders… but they ended up not working for predictable reasons… so I ended up filling the holes I’d drilled for the LEDs with epoxy and embedding the LEDs into the epoxy.
Here’s my fix to my Stupid. Rookie. Mistake. So. Dumb. Gah. Oh well, slice the copper… moving along… hey, why aren’t these pins working?
Here’s a shot of the near-final wiring with the arduino attached. I still have a few things left to do, but the majority of stuff is done.
