Embedded - 355: Favorite Ways to Make Noises

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Helen Leigh (@helenleigh) joined us to talk about music, electronics, books, and starting a new job at CrowdSupply (@crowd_supply). Helen was previously on Embedded #261: Blowing Their Fragile Little Minds where we talked about subversive geography, her book The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, and the mini.mu musical gloves. Helen has a book coming out in 2021 about DIY Music Tech including a soft version of the Michel Waisvisz' CrackleBox (Kraakdos). Check out some of the projects in HackSpace magazine issue 36 and 37 (the book will be serialised in HackSpace). Or look on YouTube for some examples of Helen’s purring tentacle and her circuit sculpture harp. Helen mentioned Bunnie Huang’s Precursor, an open mobile phone, on CrowdSupply (campaign ending shortly). The Giant German Congress mentioned is the CCC Congress Festival Helen’s preferred thread (the one you can actually get) is Madiera’s conductive threads. Hit the contact link for purchasing. (Helen notes you can use it for both sides in a sewing machine!)  

Welcome to Embedded. I'm Alicia White, alongside Christopher White. Have you ever wondered, what do electrons sound like? Well, I'm happy to have Helen Lee back to answer that question and give you some ideas for some projects. Hi, Helen. Thanks for coming back. Hi. Nice to be back. You've been on the show before,

and at the time you were writing the Crafty Kids DIY Guide to Electronics. Correct. But there was a lot more. You'd written many books before that, and now you've done many things after that. So could you tell us about yourself? Sure. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Helen Lee, which is how you'll find me on Twitter and GitHub and Instagram and all those things as well. Until recently, my main thing was

I made things and I wrote about them. So mainly musical instruments or things using electronics that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be using electronics. Things like massive plushy tentacles or big embroidery pieces that are also electronic analog synths. So I guess those all fall under experimental um and musical instruments and i would um write about them um for make magazine for who for whom i have write a column every issue and various other things as well um so yeah writing making experimental musical instruments um i would also teach i would lecture on um diy music tech and electronics in general um but now i've just taken a job at crowd supply where i'm going to be head of where i am um head of community um and um i'm very excited about what that's going to bring to my life as well so okay uh questions about all of

that including the musical tentacle don't think i let that go by that's not even my weirdest make of recent times but we're gonna do lightning round first you ready yes right yes i am ready uh weirdest thing you have ever made a musical instrument out of oh wow um the strangest thing probably myself. I guess that's not that strange. I mean... Oh, you know, something I made recently that everybody really quite enjoyed is I made a theremin out of a golden disco ball, which I also made. Okay, that's pretty cool. Favorite sensor? uh favorite sensor oh there's so many good ones okay so my favorite one that i work with a lot

so i work with capacitive touch a lot which marries really well with instruments um and i've been in love with this capacitive touch sensor which for me has replaced the npr121 um and it's called trill and they're by an open hardware company in London called Bella. It's got 30 channels. It's so good. I love it. What is the best podcast to listen to while on your honeymoon? Well, actually, listen.

I ask this of both of them every time. Well, we actually, as some of your listeners might know, maybe not. I'm married to Drew Fustini, who's at PDP7, who is the purple, the purplest Osh Park employee of all time and does lots of open source stuff as well. But yeah, we on our honeymoon, we did listen to Abmed as well as the hour. So, um, nicely distributed, um, amongst the embedded podcasts, but yes, I mean, I don't want to play favorites. Sorry, Chris, but I do prefer listening to Alicia on my travels. Favorite professionally made musical instrument. Oh, well, I have,

I'm very fond of my um cheap plastic dan electro guitar yeah they're so fun um i also have a less cheap and still but wonderful moog sub 37 um which is the prize of my synth collection so So yeah, I do like the banjo as well, though. Although it can be creepy. I don't know. Also wistful. Favorite dev board or microcontroller kit? Oh, gosh, how long have you got? So I have emotional connections to obviously the Arduino Uno, um, from like the way that it led my

journey into hardware back in the day. Actually, no, my first microcontroller was the, um, Intel Galileo, which was terrible. Um, but the one I got after that was the Uno and that's that's got it's very nostalgic for me um I would say that the board I use the most is the Bella board um which I used to make um my which is based on a Beagle board um and it's I use it to make embedded instruments it's just a real good workhorse um what else I've been um I've been really enjoying all the, oh yeah, no, Teensies. Teensies, of course. Especially the new one. It's just ridiculously fast. And it's super tiny, isn't it? It's super tiny. Yeah. No, I'm a big fan of the Teensie and it's Portland based, which is where I've just moved to. So, you know, repping my new adopted town by saying, by saying teensy.

So yeah, is that, is that enough? Or can I go for an entire hour about telling you about my favorite microcontrollers and why I like them? Well, maybe insert them organically with the conversation. Okay. Best way to motivate yourself for a day of writing. Do you know what? I actually really hate writing. This is why I'm asking you,

because I hate everything right now and I want you to tell me how to do anything. I hate writing, even though it's how I've made my living for the best part of a decade. I'm a good writer, unfortunately. I just don't particularly like it. The best way to hype myself up

is to procrastinate wildly until I hate myself so much that I have no option. Oh, no, I already do that, Helen. I need a new idea. I don't know what to tell you. Actually, I do. crafty kids, the only way I could get myself motivated for crafty kids, apart from the procrastination and the tears of frustration, was to basically just drink ridiculous amounts of both a club mate and then vodka club mate. Club mate is a beautiful thing and I miss it dearly. I don't know how I'm going to finish this next book without Club Marte. If you could teach a college course, what would you want to teach?

I've taught many college courses or university courses, as they call them on my side of the pond. My favorite one I've ever taught has got to be, it was actually quite sad that I had to give this up to come to the US. I teach a master's module on a music production course. And I teach, my module is about music tech hacking. And the reason I really like this one

is because I get to teach people who've never touched code or hardware ever before in their lives. These are like professional music producers, right? Or sometimes performers themselves. And I do a two-week intensive course. I teach them how to code. I teach them how to make circuits. I teach them how to make noises with those circuits. And then their deliverable at the end of the course um that is is to make me an instrument and then i mark their instrument so that's my favorite um experience i love teaching non-coders how to use technology as a tool it's super rewarding and they often come up with much

better inventions than somebody who knows what they're doing does in my opinion anyway but they don't know what they don't know or how it's supposed to work. Quite. There's that great quote from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which is, because we weren't experts, we didn't know what we weren't capable of doing. And that's a quote I live my life by. My unending ignorance of all sorts of technologies does not stop me from using them and making a mess. Sometimes those messes are lovely, though. So, you know, I think it works.

How did the Crafty Kids Guide to DIY Electronics do? I mean, you motivate yourself through shame, which I don't find motivating, but I know that is Chris's method. Wow. Don't talk it. I feel you, Chris. I feel you. How did it go afterwards? I mean, when we talked to you, it was just releasing, so, you know.

Oh, yes, that's right. That's right. It went reasonably well. I mean, you know, like DIY electronic project books are not going to become the next Harry Potter, are they? But it sold as expected. And it was widely well received. I got some fantastic reviews for it. I think it was one of the first or maybe the first. Anyway, like one of the reasons I wrote it was because I was teaching a lot of electronics at the time to not just, I didn't just teach like undergrads and postgrads.

I also really enjoyed teaching workshops, generally on a voluntary basis in hacker spaces or at festivals. I would teach a lot of families how to use like basic electronics or basic microcontrollers. Just because I think it's a really nice thing to do. And I was looking through all the different resources and I saw that there were no electronics books that were, you know, like female coded. So I wanted to make one that was written for little girls and with little girls. In fact, I had an advisory board of, I think there were 259 to 7 to 10-year-old girls

on my advisory board who chose every single project. So really, I know that I had an impact on those people, which was really nice. My favorite thing about that book is I found out completely by accident at a meeting that the book was being used in a refugee center across like refugee centers in a couple of different places in Berlin to teach basic electronics to recent refugee kids, which made me cry in a meeting. I was like, oh my goodness. So that was lovely. I mean, I still, I get a lot of people who contact me about that book. I guess that was two years ago. No, really two years ago, maybe? I don't know, something like that. September 2018 was when we last recorded. So yeah, two years ago.

It's still out there. It's still doing its thing. I am quite proud of it, actually. You should be. I mean, there are lots of these projects that I still want to do. I mean, I know, as we were saying, I know how they're supposed to work, but this looks like so much more fun. Yeah, I mean, it's supposed to be fun. I didn't want to write a textbook. I wanted to write a fun project book that teaches electronics through craft.

That's all. And, you know, I think a lot of people get so worthy about books for children. They've got to be this, that, and they've got to hit these curricular points but you know I think I've done enough formal education in my you know I've taught in enough formal education situations to understand that the best learning sometimes just happens because you're doing something fun and it's more important to do the fun prompt than it is to make sure that it's extremely rigorous because if that child is then interested in that then there's you know we have the internet now so uh they can go and look it up one of the projects you were working on around that time that wasn't in the book was your collaboration with an emoji heap yes uh could you

tell us about that sure so um i it's such a weird story, actually. I don't know. I have no idea how they let me do this. But the Imogen Heap team, because it's not just Imogen Heap, there's a bunch of people who work for her and with her. There's one of her teams that does this thing called the MeMooGlove. And the MeMooGlove is this wonderful piece of technology um which are their gesture sensing gloves that are used to um control um a DAW um a digital audio workstation so you know like Ableton or whatever so Imogen was like really frustrated by um you know, she didn't want to spend her life behind a keyboard. She's very hot on music production, but she didn't want to perform in front of a laptop, right?

So she worked with a team of technologists to create this gesture control, these gloves that would, she'd be able to make these gestures on stage and it would be able to trigger like sound effects different loops or whatever whatever whatever anyway it was this really cool piece of tech which I had literally nothing to do with um I just saw them on YouTube um being used by um what's her name um the the pop star some some oh Ariana Grande yeah so I saw them being used on the on an Ariana Grande. Yeah. So I saw them being used on an Ariana Grande arena tour. And I just thought, oof, that would be an amazing lesson. That would be an amazing hook to get some teen girls into doing some embedded stuff. So I messaged Imagine Heap through a music connection and said, hey, can I make a children's version of this? Would you mind if I ripped it off? Like not as a product, I meant more like to do it in a workshop.

Um, and she was like super into the idea so much so that she actually got me to make a prototype of what that would look like as an actual product. Um, so, um, so I did that, I made that for her. Um, and just as an example, as a prototype as a prototype for a product launch that she was doing. And everybody loved it so much that we turned it into a product in collaboration with Pimarone, who were the British Adafruit, essentially. But yeah, I mean, it was a fantastic experience for me. One that I really shouldn't have been able to land because I'm not a product designer at all. I've done some of my own products before that, but you know, they're very like,

they were very much DIY stuff, right? It was like, like hackerspace kits. Do you know what I mean? Like DIY synth or like how to make an electric guitar or like I did a kit that was gesture control robot unicorn, but they were all very much, yeah, for reals. But they were all very much like I'd laser cut the, you know, I'd laser cut the outer and then I'd put some like servos in a box and they would all be pretty terrible. You know, I was not very good kitter. Um, I was good at coming up with the ideas, but in terms of the actual logistics and distribution, I was like, I hate doing this. I hate doing this and I will no longer do this. Um, but yeah, so it was this, this, This Mini Moo project gave me this opportunity to take my understanding of product from a maker point of view and actually see what that looks like when it goes to actual production. It was really cool i learned a lot from from working on the mini mu glove and it was really cool to of imogen just to trust me and to to take the lead on

creating that product from the beginning to right at the end um it was really fun actually and it was such a buzz um to see it for sale all over the world they had them in like micro centers um and like you know they were on adafruit and you know um people in japan have made them and it's my hand on the box which is really funny so i am um a hand model uh have you ever had a hand model on an embedded fm before no this is well i guess this is the second time oh that's true oh yeah that is true actually it is it is really gratifying to see i've only had that experience a couple of times seeing Well, I guess this is the second time. Oh, that's true. Oh, yeah, that is true, actually. It is really gratifying to see.

I've only had that experience a couple of times, seeing something you worked on exist, you know, out in the world. And I walk into a store and, oh, I kind of did that. Yeah, it's amazing. Actually, I've never seen one of this. People have sent me pictures of my things in a store. But I've never seen, I've never witnessed myself as something that I've made in a store. So, sad times. Well, you still might. I mean, Portland has enough tech. When the stores open up you you might get to find one that's true perhaps yeah and i'm not done yet i'm not gonna just like lie down and die after this interview we won't be using that for a title tempted as i am

this is it this is the pinnacle of my career and my life this is like there is only death for me you see this is what happens in pandemics when you don't speak to people for a long time and you start saying things that are um not societally acceptable apologies no problem it is weird how we just kind of go from happy normal to the lows look i'm i'm british we have a gallows sense of humor anyway you know it's a good excuse yeah yeah that's definitely a good excuse. Are you still working with Imogen Heap? I actually just got an email from her the other day, which I need to reply to. We have done... So, actually, the Mini Moo, this summer, just gone,

we gave them out to... Well, we, Red Hat, I think, paid for it. But we gave them out to, like, um kids um in the in the UK as part of like a tech summer camp um and I'm hoping that we're gonna I'm hoping that we're gonna do that again next year um I need to do some work around making that happen I think um but um but yeah so we're talking about that. And she's launching some kind of blockchain thing, I think, which she's invited me to. So I'm going to have a little look at that, although I don't particularly care about blockchain. So I don't know.

One of the threads through your career has been music and tech correct and you are going to tie all of those up into a book yes that's correct um which i still need to finish but i'm a good chunk of the way through um i'm doing a new book on diy music technologies and there will probably be a slightly snappier title but um that will come um and it's um a project book again um of all sorts of experimental music things from microcontroller um bass makes to analog makes to fan sound um yeah so i take you through all my favorite ways to make tech, to make noises essentially, and to experiment with sound. Um, but also, um, I mean, I'm, I'm fairly astonished that they've agreed to my project plan list. I mean, normally in DIY music tech, you might expect some, um, some simple Arduino, you know, maybe some Arduino theremins and some diy guitars and you know some

ordinary things but my editors let me get away with some incredibly strange makes which i'm quite grateful for so i've done stuff like um a i've done a tentacle that's this that wraps around the side it wraps around my torso and the full length of my torso it gives me a hug and then it's it's like a giant plushy tentacle and with headphones coming out of it and you cuddle it up and it's um limbs like wrap around your waist and then you stroke it you lay your head on it like a pillow and you stroke it and squeeze it and when you when you stroke it um it it purrs and it's got this really comforting bassy purr. And they let me put that in the book, which was quite nice. And then also, and this is quite a fun thing about the book,

I did one particular make which was jelly bongosos like made of jello um and i'm pretty sure it's the only technology book that i've come across that includes um a recipe is it regular jelly jello or did you go ahead and make jello shots for this i went went ahead and it, so it's, it will, I mean, jello, I mean, come on, like I'm not American. Jello is like that. Is that it's firm fruit dessert, correct?

Jello. Okay. So there's jam jelly. Jelly is in America. The jelly is like the stuff you spread on toast, right? Yes. Yes.

Okay. So I mean the jello and the stuff you put, the stuff you put in a mold. Yes. Right. And it would wobble on a plate. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So jello then. But do you know you can put vodka in it and make jello shots? Girl, of course I know that. And so your bongos. Hmm. Yeah. But then if you put, if you put jello and if you put a vodka in the jello bongos, they probably would, they would not be, they would be too sloppy. And then there's always the fire aspect.

The fire aspect. I mean, I've never tried to set fire to vodka jelly. I don't think that's going to work. I think it's not going to work. Yeah, I mean, unless you're using some pretty, some, you know, some extra materials there. If you like, if you've got a flamethrower on it, I mean, it's probably going to work yeah i mean unless you're using some pretty some you know some some extra materials there if you like if you've got a flame throw on it i mean it's probably going to burn isn't it most things do yeah yeah i mean i wouldn't bet i wouldn't bet on the jello if versus a flame thrower but i might bet on the jello versus a match so i guess it depends on how how one is burning it uh the that requires the makey makey kit

that's correct yeah yeah so that's that that's i did um i did a chapter on or a short chapter on um lots of different makey makey makes makey makey makes i mean it's kind of an older it's one of the older microcontrollers i guess now but it's still it's it it's got a niche and it does really well in that niche you know and i i often break out the makey makey in um in situations where people might be intimidated by code it's a very quick win and you can get super creative with it um and they do all sorts of wonderful things um and it's like really nicely supported with resources for teachers and so on so you're not gonna use the makey makey for that many different applications but for its specific

applications it's a wonderful thing so yeah it's a great teacher-friendly little board. Big up. Now they have a $20 version. Oh yes, they do. I guess now, best tech toys of 2014. So maybe not exactly now. But the USB version, you don't have to, it goes into your computer and that's where your sound comes out.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Same with the board as well. I mean, it's not an embedded, it's a controller. You know, like it converts whatever. It basically converts anything into a keyboard. It's, you know, it's a lovely little board for entry-level kind of, entry-level music making. That's for sure.

Why is music part of it for you I mean for me blinking lights are kind of irritating sound is kind of irritating but once you got me to motors I was just okay this is it but interesting you you focus more on the sound what drew you to Well, music was part of my life before tag was actually. So I can't believe I'm about to admit this in public. But when I was a young lass, I was in a choir. I was in the Church of Wales choir. I'm from Wales. So I was in this high church of Wales choir and used to go three times a week singing practice. And I had like a white ruff and a burgundy cassock. Like I did the whole

like high church situation and I got medals for singing and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I also played a bunch of instruments as well um so I guess music for me was part of my childhood um I've always been really interested in experiment the experimental side of things um I remember even at even at school like um and and I went to a really terrible comprehensive school. I don't know what that tracks to in US culture, but just quite a bad school. I went to quite a bad school, really quite rough. And in year seven, which is your first year, I got on stage in a general assembly and I played several instruments that I'd made um which were all very experimental and my music teacher was sat at the

front like yes nodding away like it was um little little nerd you can imagine little nerdy helen at the front i was very innocent little kid um like playing all these instruments that i'd made myself in front of an absolutely horrified assembly of a thousand children, like doing the least cool thing possible. So yeah, I mean, making weird noises has been something I've been doing for quite a long time. I guess people just are laughing a bit less at me now for doing it. But I at myself so that's okay. You tell that story like it was a scar on your past but you do realize that you were creating lots of little modern Helens with your work right? I mean are you just trying to find a crowd to hide in or was that really not

that bad of an experience and you really do want to share it with everyone you've ever met well that was just my I mean I don't think it was that bad of experience and I don't I wasn't I certainly wasn't scarred by it um I um I took I took pride in being a little bit different and I still do so um no I just I think it's just a funny a funny story for me just thinking like wow even at 11 years old I was already making strange instruments um um with all sorts of junk that I find around um but um it took me like it didn't it took me a while to come to music technology um I guess um the first instrument well actually no no no the first the first um diy kit i made like at my little hacker space in london um was the the

first two in fact were both instruments um um and i would say maybe like between 60 and 70 percent of all of my output throughout my kind of like maker life has been music based it's not entirely um it's not entirely music based but it's just you know I'm also super into music full stop not just the tech side of things um and I'm also like a massive um computer history and general history nerd. So I kind of see myself as part of this long line of music experimenters. And I draw a lot of inspiration from the past weirdos who were making strange noises. And I draw a lot of inspiration from from the early tech days as well. Just that kind of spirit of adventure and fun and slight anarchy and not always knowing exactly what's going to happen.

I think that's quite a fun way to experiment with technology and I think music lends itself to that, which is probably why I lean towards it um a little more that seems like a good lead-in to asking you about crack dust crack dust oh yeah yeah yeah yeah crackle boxes yeah um crack dose it's a dutch dutch crackle box um so there's this I've forgotten the guy's name but there's this dude in the 60s um who was like super into um kind of music circuit bending as you if you will like back in the old days when you had like um radios with like exposed through whole components you could

just like lick your fingers and like um and like touch up the pcb basically and it would start making strange noises so this Dutch guy was like um used to really love doing that with his um with his dad's radios and then started doing that um but with some electronic components um and made these like kind of I guess noisemaker boxes there's analogs it's analog sound but it's it's yes what you call a noisemaker rather than a more traditional instrument in that it makes bleeps and bloops and scratches and crackles and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, it's part of an experimental instrument tradition, which is pretty strong. And I guess you're asking me this because I made a crackle box recently. I made a fully embroidered crackle box.

So, yeah. Embroidered? Yeah, completely embroidered. So all of the traces on the PCV. There was no PCV. It was an embroidery hoop filled with felt and all of the traces all of the wiring was done by me by hand using um silver thread um i did not embroider the chip however so lm3 is based on an lm386 chip um and like some you know capacitors and blah blah blah

but yeah they were all sewn on that all the um the board as it were um was it was hand embroidered and so it was almost all soft yes yes really cool and yeah i made a soft speaker as well but it sounded terrible so i didn't put that in the book you can make an embroidered speaker. I mean, I'm sure there are people who've had better events. So you can basically make this big spiral out of embroidered thread, and then you put a magnet on it, and it will make sound. But I've not yet managed to create one that's good enough to share.

The LM386 is an amplifier chip, right? Indeed it is, yes. How does it make noise? So the way that you do it is that you, so there's like, it's a very simple circuit actually to make this little crackle box. It's an LM386 and and then you've got one ceramic capacitor. I used a 106, I think. And then one electrolytic capacitor.

And those are the only three hard components on the whole board. Wow, okay. Yeah, which is crazy, right? And then all of the other legs on the chip are broken out to these long traces, right? Around the PCB or around, in my case, around an embroidery hoop. And basically what you're doing is

by making and breaking the connections between those legs, you're generating an electric signal, which varies depending on the resistance of your body. So, for example, you can get a different note, like it will create a different signal, a different noise, like a different frequency based if you lick your fingers or depending on who you are. So it's essentially using the resistance of your own. You are a variable resistor that is creating an electrical signal that the LM386 then converts into sound. Is it like different fingers sound different or is it just you know the resistance of Elysia is this well that depends right because the the resistance of Elysia might depend on like how much tea you've drunk that day or how far up a mountain you are or like you know um how close to Chris you're standing um but yeah different people do tend to have different sayings to them

interesting i've done a few i've done a few different um analog projects that rely on the natural resistance of a human i did a really nice one with um you know phoenix perry she's a really good friend of mine um and uh her and i did a high five synthesizer one time and that was based on, yeah, it was really fun. Um, that was based on a, which tip, Oh, it was a Schmidt trigger that we, that we used for that one. Again, it's like quite a simple, um, quite a little, simple little oscillator synth, but, um, each person, you know, like you, you could hear the difference between different, between different people, the noises they would make when they were connected. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

I'm sorry, I'm just a little boggled by that. The idea that people have sounds. Okay, okay, I'm getting over it. Different violins have sounds, so why wouldn't people? I'm not made of wood. Well, you're made of flesh, which is just as unpredictable. Alright, so moving along. So there are a couple of the projects in your

upcoming book, The Crackle Box and the Jelly Bongos. How do you decide when to suggest people buy a kit like Makey Makey versus build something entirely themselves, kind of like the Crackle Box, where you're really doing most of the work yourself? My answer to that is that's up to them. I try and provide as many different approaches to making sound as possible. But the thing is like quite a lot of people, the reason I will use an established technology like Makey Makey or like the Microbit or an Arduino is because a lot of people have them already. Um, particularly, um, in schools or if you've got a family or whatever, um,

um, people who are, these are, these are multipurpose boards, right? So you're not going out and buying a, whatever the ordinary person's equivalent of a bomb is like a, you know,

shopping list. Bill of materials. Wow. Okay. Yeah. That's what I meant. sure yeah you know I mean like you know what's the normal person's version of a bomb all right Helen um yeah so um you had to and they already have it um so I'm trying to think of like interesting things they can do with the kit that they already have um and then there's different so for example makey makey is you take it out of the box as easy as accessible anybody can do something within like a couple of hours easy peasy right whereas the analog synth one um bare bare bare metal is a little bit more intimidating to a lot of people um and also the embroidery in that one takes absolutely ages so it's's a much more of an involved, you know, that's like a, like a rainy weekend's worth

of work, um, stitching all those stitches. Whereas like the makey makey is like a fun craft afternoon with your kids style make. So, um, I try and make a balance. Like I, when I was coming up with all the different projects, um, I had like a, um, a big list of all the different, um, all the different projects um i had like a big list of all the different um all the different things i was planning on doing and i made sure there was a mixture of like analog and different microcontrollers and you know strange instruments and more conventional instruments and you know i just i just made sure there was that balance that um to try and try and show the breadth of of technologies that you can use um to to start tinkering with um

sound how much do you think people will be able to look at something and change it like when i think about the crackle box you listed the parts i have most of those or i can get them but i'm not much into embroidery so can i just use some copper tape, like from the Chibitronics kit? Yeah, of course you can. I'm always into, actually, not so much in the Cracklebox one, but in a bunch of my makes, I try and give ideas for how people can riff off of it. So, for example, one of the projects I wrote up is my circuit sculpture creature, like the harp thing.

I don't know if you've seen that I'll send you a link to it on YouTube and you can pop it in the show notes perhaps and for that one I use a particular sensor the trill one that I said that I really like but I give lots of different options

for microcontrollers that they can use if they don't have the microcontroller that I'm using so I think, you know, there's plenty of alternatives. I think my job is just to give a little inspiration, say how I did it, and then hopefully provide a base for other people to jump off of and do their own fun things. When we talked to you before, we brought up the subversive guides for geography. Was that it? Oh, yeah. So back in the mists of time, I used to work in a company.

It's ridiculous. No, me and a group of my friends, we ran a very haphazard consultancy. Our work was very good, but we didn't know how to run a business. And we used to make subversive educational materials to get kids doing critical thinking, learning outdoors, project-based learning stuff, slightly political stuff, slightly naughty stuff. Yeah, that was really fun. That was like maybe six years of my life that I spent doing that before heading on out to do do my own things the name of the group back in

the beginning was called the guerrilla geography collective um and then later it became known as mission explore so yeah that was that that was fun are you subversively sneaking some music theory in with your sewing art and electronics of course course, of course. There's lots of music theory, there's lots of craft, and there's lots of electronics. I don't like to make books that are pure electronics. I mean, so for example, in the Crafty Kids one, in each chapter I would do like at least one electronic skill or piece of knowledge, and at least one craft skill or piece of knowledge as well. And the same with the music book, although it's less. I've loosened up a little bit now,

so I've allowed myself to just be a bit more playful rather than quite so structured with this one. But yeah, I know there's plenty of music theory in this book. I think tips for field recording. I've actually put quite a lot more um a lot more story in this one so i talk it's a slightly more journalistic parts to it as well so i talk about um so for example in the crackle box one i do talk about the origins of the crackle box and tell you a little bit about the instrument that i'm paying homage to um or for example in um in the in the theremin one again i talk about the history of

the theremin um and in each of the ones where i introduce a new microcontroller i spend a a little bit of time explaining what that microcontroller is and why i think it's kind of cool so yeah and so does do you get across the idea of why you would say a little bit about that controller but um maybe i should write something up and as part of the introduction as part of an introduction talking about like microcontroller selection um and the differences between them we'll see um that could be a good thing to add in i suppose i think that's hard for a lot of beginners because they're given so many terms and how do you even compare an arduino with a teensy if you don't know what all those terms right it's true it's true well the

teensy's littler and but far more powerful if you're talking about an arduino uno it is um that depends you know this is where context is extremely important so um i have had lots of these conversations over the years particularly with my students um when you know in telling them what an arduino is versus what a raspberry pi is versus this versus that and i think it can be extremely confusing um i actually when people are starting, I do often tell them to stay within one ecosystem. So whether they choose Raspberry Pi or whether they choose Arduino or whether they choose Teensy or, you know, the Adafruit ecosystem, I tell them to pick one and stick with it. Certainly for the first year or so or just as soon as they become comfortable with it it just makes it easier for them i think to get a slightly better knowledge of what a microcontroller can do and then just be aware that the knowledge that they gain using that microcontroller is absolutely

transferable to something else i mean just setting up the tools that's not always transferable but once you start being able to differentiate oh this is the microcontroller part and this is the tool part totally you can pull that over to other ecosystems and stuff like stuff like sensors right okay well maybe there might be slightly different things for different boards but once you know how to use a dht22 on a arduino you know what it does, right? You know what the, you know, so like, you know, when you, you have to get that knowledge, that hands-on knowledge of the different senses, what senses exist and are easy to work with and how they work. I actually think that's something that people get, have a lot of trouble with straight away because they think that computers work like humans, like you can sense the

thing that you can sense but um sometimes students have a lot of do you know i mean like they it's like well they can't actually sense um you know they have to understand how the sensor works in order to be able to work with it intelligently um and i think that takes a little bit of but that's that's absolutely transferable knowledge like once you know how a sensor works on one platform at least you've got a good run up at it on a different one I love inertial measurement units and trying to explain accelerometers versus gyroscopes

has been a good portion of my career yeah when do you think your book will be out I should never ask an author that Alicia it's very rude well I just wanted to provide your motivation so you know you say February 1st and then you'll feel horribly guilty until then well okay okay so it was it was supposed to be out for Christmas but but I did immigration on hard mode this year. Well, actually, yeah, immigrating during the Trump administration has been, and during a pandemic has been challenging.

But yeah, I've got to give my, I've started a new job and I've immigrated and there's been a pandemic. So yes, I am slightly behind schedule. But I should be, I should finish it in the next, I'm hoping to finish it in the next month. And then of course it's got to be designed, edited, blah, blah, blah. But it'll be, I think I probably have, it's early next year, but not like in january probably february or march um and the cool thing is so um it's being serialized in hackspace magazine um and it will be published by them too um so they are a raspberry pi organization and because it's

um funded by raspberry pi they're actually going to release the ebook for free, which is really awesome. And one of the reasons I was excited to accept the book commission, actually, was the fact that they're going to release the whole thing for free. So thank you, Raspberry Pi, even though there's only one Raspberry Pi project in the whole book. Well, and you should have plenty of time to finish it. I mean, you just started a new full-time job, so it's not like that's going to cut into your time at all. No, not at all, not at all. But luckily, having been a freelancer for nearly a decade, I can't remember what weekends are.

So, I mean, I'm hoping to spend my time feeling guilty about not about writing on the weekend so yeah yeah no I'm excited and I think it'll be fine it's actually mostly done all the photography's done all the projects are done um I've done about 60% of all the writing so it's just writing up the last few things um that I to do. I need to control myself into, yeah. So let's talk about that full-time job. Let's talk about my full-time job. Gosh, isn't that strange? It's such a sea change for me.

I mean, I've only been in the position three days, so I can't be too dramatic. But it's... By the time this airs, it'll be four. Yeah, yeah. So I recently started as head of community at CrowdSupply, my first job in a decade. Wow, wow, wow. But it's going super well.

I didn't just take any job. I spent a long time thinking about who I'd like to work for before approaching anybody. And I really like CrowdSupply. I really like their ethics. And it's very much in my wheelhouse, you know. It's open hardware, which is something I do a lot of and know a lot about. And I'm very much, like, embedded in that community.

So it's basically a switch for me like so over the last 10 years basically I've spent I've you know been I've been paid for my creations essentially for like like making things and then writing about them um in different formats or like you know doing videos about it or whatever um and then I would do all my community stuff for free you know like workshops attending events kind of keeping up to date on like you know like open source hardware issues blah blah blah and I saw this as a kind of an opportunity to flip that on its head and particularly because I was kind of uh the way quite a lot of people who make things a verging on art feel um which is like you know I'm not from a wealthy family I've never had I've never had um spare money so I've always had to the things that I make have had to also

sing for their supper you know right like I've had to um I've had to be able to sell them into a magazine or whatever which definitely has since I've become a lot more competent um at making things it's definitely um reduced the scope of the things that I make because if I make something super complicated I can't write about it anywhere do you know what I mean oh yeah yeah so basically I was looking for a position where I could do my community stuff um um and um and for money and then um do my my art for for me um just because i felt that that was the right stage of my life um yes as i say i've been at crowd supply for a mighty three days but i'm really excited about the kind of things i'm gonna be doing and do you know when do you know Teardown Festival? I've only heard of it a little bit, but please tell us more. So the Teardown Festival is actually how I heard of Cryo Supply

in the first place. It's like an open hardware festival. It's quite a small one. It's kind of comparable to Supercon, which is one of my faves. But it's um so in size in size and in the kind of vibe generally um so it's very hackery it's it's very um friendly it's not corporate at all you know it's not like embedded world where it's all booths and whatever it's very much like an extended hacker space kind of vibe to it with like really interesting talks and workshops um and the teardown one it's like a really nice mixture of um hardware and art but also a lot of talks about ethics as well um which is something that's really interesting to me like the ethics of hardware and the ethics of open technology and just kind of like the philosophy behind um open source as well

i think it's a really interesting field. So it was a really interesting festival. And I went there and I was like, this is really cool. I like the vibe, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I talked to the team there and I was like, this is really cool. And they were like firmly on my map from that point forward.

But yeah, so what I'll be doing is I'm going to be running that festival now. So the Teardown Festival, which will, you know, once there are festivals again, we'll be running that. That's the teardown festival which will you know once there are festivals again um we'll be we're running that that's going to be super awesome um and i'm also going to be scouting for um really cool hardware projects who um want to work with us um so i guess i should explain what crowd supply is um i'm on my mighty three days worth of knowledge, basically. So they're a crowdfunding company.

They're a crowdfunding company who do open source hardware, essentially. And it's very, I mean, they do have consumer products on there as well, but I would say that the vast majority of products that are on this, um, on CrowdSupply are engineering focused, right? So you might go there and find a, an open source oscilloscope or, um, like a, a phone for this, like, um, for, for hackers or

an open source laptop or these kinds of things. Right. So very kind of engineering, very like tech focused. And they're all like, so to get onto CrowdSupply, you have to be like ethical and open and all that kind of stuff. So you have to sign up to, in fact, I think they actually like reject like 90% of the people who apply and they have a very limited focused range. And yeah, I think, I think they're a really cool company. I'm really happy to work there. We heard a little bit about them from Ben Henke when he was on for talking about his Pixel Blaze version 3. It did seem like they put him through a fair number of hoops,

but at the end, he and they were confident that he would be able to produce it. Well, that's the thing as well. I think because everybody at CrowdSupply is like a total hardware nerd. Like we're all open hardware nerds. And we're not just like accepting everything. You know, like I think every single project that's been funded

on CrowdSupply has been shipped or is on course to be shipped. So basically they are a lot more rigorous with investigating their technology than other, you know, like there's no one who's gone on there and done a scam, if you see what I mean. It's not possible, you know. You talk about that extensively during the process. It is a lot more involved and it is a lot more rigorous, but it's a really awesome community and there's some really cool products that have come out of it.

Are there any areas of focus that CrowdSupply will be looking at in the hardware space in the coming few months? So there's a really awesome product up at the moment by, you know, Benny Huang? Yes. Yes. So he's got a really cool phone up there at the moment, which is one that I've been really keeping an eye on. That's been my favorite one recently um in terms of like focus in the upcoming so something i i personally like to focus on a bit more is open science hardware i think that's really interesting um field um but but yeah basically i think it's open source hardware is a little bit less developed than open source software like you know in terms of like people

being able to make a living from it um so that's something that I'm really interested in focusing on being able to, to be able to provide with crowd supply, right? You know, we want to be, we want people to be making open source hardware in a respectful manner. And we, we want to be able to provide a way for those people to make a living. And like one of the cool things I think that I've come across at Code Supply is like, so they were bought by Mouser like two years ago or so. So now all of the fulfillment is done by Mouser, which means, I mean, I don't know if you've ever shipped a product

and hated doing the shipping process. Yes, so much. So basically Mouser just take care of all of that, all the VAT, all the customs, all the blah, blah, blah. So I think that's been a huge advantage. And we just want to be able to leverage that kind of big company distribution network for small indie open source hardware creators. And also you get like amazing, you know, pricing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because of the whole Mesa situation. So that's pretty cool.

Feel free to pass on this question, but how do you think people will decide CrowdSupply versus Tindy? Do they work together or are they competing? I wouldn't say that they were competing. I mean, I would say, well, they've both got Brit on their team. So there's me and Jasmine. I can't imagine competing with lovely Jasmine. I personally, you know, there are different platforms for different things. And I think that's fine

and the tindy the tindy thing is is is like a small shop it's more like etsy right um and i would say like cried supply um has that cried fund element to it but also it's not strictly like kickstarter because kickstarter is just like the crowdfunding right but um uh CrowdSupply also has a shop afterwards right so it's it is it's um I mean like Kickstarter say like I'm not a shop I'm not a shop but CrowdSupply definitely is a shop so you kind of as soon after the campaign is successful you get stocked by them and um and if you're if you're lucky Maisel will stock you as well so um it's a bit different. It's a bit bigger scale than Tindy, I would say.

So it's kind of, so Tindy's more like small kits. Like I might have sold something on Tindy, but I've never done a product that would necessarily work at CrowdSupply yet. So bigger scale. Okay. Like, yeah, bigger scale. I i mean and there's like a range i should say there's like a range of people who who um who put projects up on crowd supply from people who just like they're like oh i just want to build hardware i don't have to think about any of this

other stuff like the distribution or the you know the tax or the this that and the other or like the messaging and the branding that that kind of stuff. Or like, but there's people who also come to us who've got all of that sorted, which is actually pretty nice to see. There's this big range of engineers out there from the engineers who like don't really know or care about, you know, all the branding and all that kind of stuff,

all the way up to people who've got like a real vision for their open source hardware as well. So it's actually quite a privilege to get to see into the minds of all of these creators and all of the exciting things that they're doing. Let's see, I have a couple of listener questions, although I've asked most of them. Let's see, Andre from the Great White North wanted to know more about conductive thread does the coating wear off and how long does it last for well that depends on the thread doesn't it you might as well have asked that about wires um and also um not all of them are coated so there's a couple of different ways of creating conductive thread um so for example there's um a copper brand one in is called the carl grim which is

fantastic they do copper and silver and those are literally thin strands of copper wound around a kevlar core um which are fantastic it looks beautiful and there's no coating on them obviously um and but that's quite brittle or you get stuff that's woven in as well so my current favorite conductive thread brand is um from an embroidery thread company called madeira um and it's wonderful um but it's wind it's wind in so that's spun silver with ordinary thread as well um but I don't think any thread that I use is coated. It's usually like spun. Okay.

And does it last? Does it become brittle? Yes and yes. Okay. Again, depends on the thread that you're using and how you're treating it. Of course, it's not the same as a plastic coated wire. It doesn't have that longevity. I have not yet had a project fail on me because of the thread itself.

Maybe the connections have become loose over time or the knot has undone or whatever. But I've personally never had the actual thread itself break. But then I do tend to use relatively decent quality stuff. So, yeah. Before we let you go, though, you told us a little bit about this musical tentacle. I need to know more about this. Which hugs you and purrs for you. That's correct. Yes. What more do you need to know more about this. Hugs you and purrs for you. That's correct. Yes. What more do you need to

know? Does it also light up? No, I'm actually not a fan of LEDs. I think they're tacky. Oh, yes. Anyway. Cut to, I'm getting cancelled.

So, no, no, no. By LED Twitter, I'm being cancelled. I have no particular love for LEDs. So, the tentacle, so first, is this destined for, like, performance? Nah, mate, I just did it because I thought it was funny. Snuggly. It just seems like the sort of thing needs to be on stage it's been on stage but just as like you know um not not as a as a full performance i gave a i gave a talk wearing it um well partially um at congress

last year okay um for those of your listeners that don't know, Congress is the giant German hacker festival that happens between Christmas and New Year's every year. And everybody should go once. It's fantastic fun. Have you been before? No, I'm afraid of giant Germans. You're afraid of giant Germans. Well, sometimes they're small too.

We said it was a giant German festival. Oh, I see. Sorry. It's the punchy time of the the afternoon yes punchy um yeah okay okay so was it like um but uh hmm i guess i guess talking about these things on on on audio just doesn't doesn't work that well i'm gonna have to go find and look at it i guess um i could i'll send you a sorry i'll send you a video um so you can put it in your show notes as well what was the genesis of it were you just sitting on the couch going i wish i had a cat but i can't have one here um The genesis of the tentacle was,

so I was doing a residency at an art and tech institution in Denmark. And as part of it, I was making some studies of different creatures. And I started sewing a whole bunch of different sea creatures just for experimental purposes. And then I made a tentacle and it looked quite pleasing. So I made a bigger tentacle and I discovered that I could cuddle it. So I made it again,

but with conductive thread embroidered down the center of it. And I was like, I think I can do something with this. But I was on my way out of the door at that point because I um I was on where was I going oh yeah I went to um LA for um to for Supercon um and um and I took it with me and so many hackers at Supercon they could I couldn't get it back basically everybody loved it so much that I thought well I better put some signs in this then. And I thought for a long time, I was like, oh, I could, at that time,

I just had called it a sensical. And I thought for a long time, I was like, what can my sensical do, right? So I was like, oh, I could, I could, you know, I could make it whisper vague British reassurances, like, you're not as bad as you think you are. They're there, let's get a cup of tea yeah don't worry nobody else noticed or you know like

this is like British platitudes I was thinking um and that's what I was thinking originally and then um and and then um actually I started suffering from quite bad anxiety after I got back from Supercom. And I wanted something that, and I wanted then to kind of riff off of the tentacle. And I thought, because it's quite a comforting thing. And I was having like quite a lot of mental health issues at the time. And the process of making itself was very calming so I started making these tentacles and then the sound that I would put into them was just the most calming loving sound I could think of which was a cat's purr and that's the story of my tentacle people liked it and then I got depressed and put made up

her an amazing number of stories that that are and then I got depressed and suddenly it was awesome as far as making things go yeah well you know a lot a lot of the things that I make are absolutely responses to my humanity, I guess, with sounding too art school about it. You know, I make things that make me laugh or give me joy or comfort me. I'm quite an emotional, an emotions-based maker I think um but yeah the tentacle one especially I bet you weren't expecting me to tell you about my depression but yeah I was pretty depressed last year as I mean in this past calendar year as probably quite a lot of people were um and then um and then this this um the purring tentacle was definitely part of that and it actually helped um quite a few other people as well, which was nice. But yeah, it was definitely part of that period of my life. I just needed that softness, that presence.

I needed some comfort, you know? So that's what that's born out of. I do know. I totally know. Yeah. Well, Helen, we have kept you as long as I think we can, given that we're on the same time zone now and it's time for dinner. It is time for dinner. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? I would like everybody to know that all music is made up and all instruments are invented. So you should feel empowered to make as much ridiculous noise as you possibly want to. And also, if you are interested in making your hardware that you're playing with more widely available,

you can message me on the old Twitter or you can drop me an email. I'll leave my details with Alicia as well. So yeah, make some noise. Our guest has been Helen Lee, head of community at CrowdSupply, author of the Crafty Kids Guide to DIY Electronics and an upcoming book on DIY music tech. Thanks, Helen. It's good to talk to you. Thank you. It was really fun. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for questions.

And thank you for listening. Did I already say that? It doesn't matter. Don't think so. You can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. And now a quote to leave you with.

Truthfully, Helen's last bit was kind of the quote I was going to use and she already said the part about the radiophonics workshop so I think I'm just going to go with a quote from Helen taken taking out of context. Who knows where your tinkering will take you?