Today I Printed: A DingBox

Sun 12 June 2022

“What is a DingBox?” I hear you ask. Quite simply, its a box that goes “DING”!

I’m sure there are lots of designs for these already, but I wanted to make one that was as silent as possible - no servos whining in the lead up, just a nice clean bell.

With this latest iteration of annoying office doodad, we hear a beautiful “ting!” whenever anyone makes a payment using Dolla.

I feel a little ridiculous, using a Pi Zero to power this, but it makes it extremely simple to ssh in and change the criteria for dings 🤷‍♂️

I took a bit of a detour making this, where I wrapped my own electromagnet. Sadly my copper wire was too thick, meaning I couldn’t keep it to an acceptable size without the resistance being tiny (so it drew too much current). I ended up buying a cheap little 5v solenoid that does the trick, although it’s a bit noisier than my homemade one.

Almost everything you need to make your own can be found on the thingiverse page.