Echo Dots!

Brianna and I really like our Amazon Echos. Recently a smaller, cheaper version has become widely available, called the Echo Dot. We bought three Dots for less than the cost of an original Amazon Echo.

I put one in the basement, and one in the nursery. I moved the full-sized Echo that we had in the master bedroom down to the Great Room on the first floor. I had special plans for the new Dot in the Master Bedroom.

Our home came with an old, broken security system. I have removed just about all the old security system components, but I left the control panel in the Master Bedroom since I didn't have a good idea for what to do with the hole in the wall behind it. Now, I did.

I touched up the paint:

And I used my 3D printer to print myself a copy of an Echo Dot wall mount:

It took a little fiddling, but I got the mount on the wall, and spliced a micro usb cable onto the old security system wiring:

Unsurprisingly, the 5 volt power supply that came with the Dot was not sufficient to power the Dot from down in the basement (where the security wiring re-emerges from the walls). I pulled my variable power supply off the shelf, and found that 6 volts was enough to power the Dot. I will replace the variable power supply with something more permanent in the near future.

All in all, I think it looks pretty good! And this one will never be buried under the stuff that seems to accumulate on the dresser :-)