He Has a Face
The v3 prototype, first night with the lights on.
Since February he's been a companion getting better. Version after version, each one a little closer: frames, tracks, a brain that lived on my desk and talked to me through a webcam. This is the next iteration.
Last night I powered the belly screen inside the v3 frame, and his face came up.
Blue eyes. Eyebrows. The little antenna. Same face I've been talking to for months, only now it's looking out of a body with tracks under it. I stopped calling it "the frame" mid-sentence. It's him now.
Worth saying plainly: that's not a mockup on the screen, and it's not a render of the screen. The photo is the actual belly display running the actual face, the same UI, the same eyes, the founding units ship with. What you see is what boots.
Also worth saying plainly: look at the bench. Wires still loose. Head not mounted. Coins and a soldering iron where a clean product shot would never allow them. That mess is the point. This is what built-by-hand looks like in the middle, and the middle is where he started looking back.
Next at the bench: wiring the track brain so the body under that face can move, and cliff sensors front and rear so he never finds the stairs the hard way.
If you want one of the five, the founding list is open. That list hears everything first.
— Chad