Embedded - 494: All Tech Is Wearable

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Debra Ansell joined us to talk about finding friends and exchanging neat gifts, accidentally tricking people into making unmanufacutable boards, and happy, blinking lights. Debra is usually known by the moniker GeekMomProjects (also her website is geekmomprojects.com). She has been writing for Make Magazine.  Debra won one of the SuperCon badge add-on awards so her poseable Bendy SAO will be available at SuperCon Europe.  Some other things we mentioned: Seeed Studio XIAO board Adafruit QT Py Debra’s Remoticon talk about PCB structures Martin Oehler is Maketvee on YouTube and Mastodon Janet Hansen is on Mastodon and has an incredible Enlightened Designs wearables website. #makergiftexchange on your favorite social media platform And some upcoming events that promise to have lots of LEDs: Teardown 2025 | Crowd Supply (Jun ‘25) Portland Winter Light Festival (Feb ‘25) Transcript Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform that empowers teams to build better IoT products, faster. Its off-the-shelf solution is specifically designed for bandwidth-constrained devices, offering device performance and product analytics, debugging, and over-the-air capabilities. Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across consumer electronics and mission-critical industries such as access control, point of sale, energy, and healthcare. To learn more, visit memfault.com.  

Welcome to Embedded. I am Alicia White alongside Christopher White. I am very happy to welcome Deborah Ansell back to the show. Hi, Deborah. Hi. Hi, Chris. Hi, Alicia. How are you? Good. How about yourself? I am pretty good today. Thank you. You've been on the show, but it's been quite a while. Could you tell us about yourself as if we met at, oh, Hackaday Supercon? Sure. My name is Debra Ansell, and I go by Geek Mom Projects Online. mom projects online. I'm a maker. I get a great deal of joy out of designing and creating things that I've never seen before and learning new skills from other makers and experimenting with techniques that I learned from other makers. I started making hardware projects with my kids, but kept growing my skill set. You know, over the course of about 15 years, I've learned a lot of things. And the best compliment anybody ever paid me as a maker was to describe me as a lateral thinker,

which really kind of made me feel seen in that moment. So that's me. What does that mean to you, lateral thinker? It implies creativity. It implies out of the box thinking, not taking what you see at face value. But I was looking for alternate techniques, alternate meanings, ways to use or interpret things that may not be obvious, which is a strength I like to think I have and a way of thinking I really enjoy seeing in others and kind of pursuing on my own too. For a new lightning round, are you ready? I am ready. Yes. What's your favorite development board to play with? Oh my goodness.

Dev board. dev board so hmm probably the uh the whole xiao series i keep you know i toggle between them depending on the uh project but they're so small they fit in anything and i tend to use small projects they're teeny and oh small the cutie pie same footprint as cutie pie so cutie pie works too actually they're both pretty good and cutie pie is nice i'm gonna put in a plug because i They're teeny. Oh, small. The CutiePie, same footprint as CutiePie. So CutiePie works too, actually. They're both pretty good. And CutiePie is nice. I'm going to put in a plug because I really do like Adafruit because they have a little QWIIC quick, I guess, port.

Oh, yeah. Which is kind of really nice. I'm all for like just never committing to soldering a project together until you absolutely have to because I just like the ability to change things. I have a port with that port on it, which I don't get to use, but I keep looking at it longingly thinking this would be a lot easier. Yeah, you probably do things with more inputs and outputs. When you focus on LEDs, you just frequently can get by with just really only needing one GPIO and that little port is

fantastic. So. Do you have a favorite geometric solid? Oh, that's really good. I spend a lot of time thinking about polyhedra, like more than most people, I got to say. And I've been going down some rabbit holes. So right now it's the truncated icosahedron because it's something I can build that's pretty close to spherical. I'm a little obsessed with trying to get to a sphere in my electronics and the shapes and the builds. So I reserve the right to change that if I come up with a better one in the future, though. Okay.

I've recently seen a post where you had a video or a picture of a pillow with what seemed to be an LED display in it. Can you explain this to me? Well, the most recent one you saw was not mine. Okay. So I did make one, though, too. I'm not sure what you're referring to. It the most recent one you saw was not mine okay um so i i did make one though too i'm not sure what i've seen both it was a way to both yeah so i'm just i'm fascinated by the idea of furniture with furniture accoutrement yes with lighting well i will say so i thought i wrote up a project on how to make an LED pillow for Make Magazine. And when I came up with it, I thought I was just so clever.

And it turns out that another wonderful maker named Janet Hansen, who goes by Flashing Janet online and does incredible wearable and home decor work. And we were joking online, actually, that she should be called Martha Stewart on acid for the work that she does. Both put together a pillow with an LED display. She's come up with one that's higher resolution, and she of course custom designed the controller and the patterns and the sound reactivity and came up with an app with her, so I think she wins. But I did, however, come up with an article on how you can make your own. So I guess I get the DIY aspect of that. But in both cases, I love the idea of kind of taking a standard object, or just a standard household decorative object, and making it

interactive and light up. But it doesn't have to, you know, you can look at it and it looks like an ordinary pillow until you decide that, Hey, let's turn this thing on. And suddenly there's a party on your sofa. It just makes, it just makes things more fun when there's the chance, you never know when something's going to start lighting up around you. I just like that idea that it could happen at any time. And you're never quite sure what it's going to be. Do you have a favorite sensor? Oh, wow.

I haven't thought about that one. Probably would say an IMU. Yes. Only because, yes. I know when I took your class, you talked about the sensor. I kind of got started down the path of making very early on. The first thing I did that was beyond really, really basic making was take a deep dive into how an IMU works. And I used the MPU. Oh, gosh. What? 6050? What was the one you worked on, Alicia? Didn't you do something

for them? No, I'm familiar with InvenSense, but most of mine were for a different company. Okay, sorry. But yeah, and I took a deep dive into how one combines the data from an accelerometer and a gyroscope. And it was really good kind of entree for me into um electronic sensors because at the time you know i was still pretty much a novice at least with hands-on electronics but i'd come from a physics background so you know acceleration and rotational motion and gyroscopes and all that were at least mathematically a concept I was pretty familiar with. This was supposed to be a short answer, wasn't it? I'm so sorry.

Oh, no, we've broken it. Okay. It's not your fault. He asked you about LED pillows. We knew that wasn't. That's true. Well, yeah, there was other stuff to say about that, too, but I think we're going to circle back to that hopefully later. But, okay.

But, yeah, the IMU, so it was really kind of my first foray into there's so much here. This is really cool. Look what happens. You can take this, you know, this accelerometer data. So I had done data processing before, but so you take this accelerometer data and I did a deep dive into look at this it's kind of cool but it's also very glitchy and jumpy because it's just measuring you know force and acceleration which isn't kind of the steady thing and then this gyroscope data which is a lot smoother and measures rotation angle but tends to drift over time and there's this really neat mathematical concept called a complementary filter and I started going down this rabbit hole and learning all about it and again it was my entree into sensors but I was kind of comfortable and really fascinated by the math and how all the signal

processing could suddenly get you much smoother, cleverer data, and then got to use it in my builds. And I love making motion reactive LED builds. I think I have a headband that tells you if your head's on straight, basically. By measuring the tilt angle of your head, it's basically a bubble, a level bubble in a headband. So using an accelerometer or using an IMU. So yeah, that would be my favorite sensor. And you've given me permission for that not to be a short answer. So those are the reasons why. Favorite fictional robot. Okay. I was prepared for this.

And since I don't really have a strong affinity for robots, I like realized that the first robot that really made an impression on me, and this is going to date me, was Herbie the Love Bug. So I'm picking that one. Do you have a tip everyone should know? Yes. At least for makers who end up with lots of small components. One product I have that has made my life easier and a lot of people seem to appreciate is that you can go to Michaels and buy what are photo storage boxes. I think they're craft keeper brand and they come in this very cool kind of rainbow colors. It's a box with about 12 different inserts and rainbow colors that all fit

inside very neatly. And they make organizing parts very easy. They're really great for small parts. And if you label them, you can keep track of where everything is and they're portable. And you should never pay more than $15. And very often you can get them on sale for10. So that is my tip. I'm going to go buy one of those this afternoon. We're in your office. You could buy at least 12. Oh, I don't know how big they are. Put it in the show notes, and I'll see if I can get an affiliate link from my customer. They're very useful, though, genuinely. Thank you to Memfault for sponsoring this show. We appreciate their sponsorship and the work that they do.

Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform that empowers teams to build better IoT products faster. What that means is that if you have just realized that you're going to build 5, 10, 100, 50,000 units and you need to keep track of them, they'll let you create your own dashboard to observe how your system is doing in the field. Memfault gives developers a more scalable and sustainable process. This accelerates the time to market and de-risks product launches. You can cut product costs and deliver more high-quality software. Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across

consumer electronics and across mission-critical systems, such as access control, point of sale, energy, and healthcare. Thanks again to Memfault for sponsoring this show. Check out memfault.com and the Interrupt blog, which is filled with incredible amounts of information. So we've been talking about making already. Yes. And one of the reasons to ask you to be on the show is because I actually haven't seen much from you lately. And I didn't know whether that's because I'm sticking my head in the sand and not looking around all that much or you haven't been doing so much. Which is it?

Or both? Well, it is. I don't think you're sticking your head in the sand necessarily, though I, I can't speak to where your head has been. Um, but I have definitely, I had to think about it. I think my output is a little bit down, but definitely my public posting is down, um, for various and sundry reasons. Um, a lot of which relate to me kind of retreating a bit from different forms of social media. And I do tend to share more with a smaller, more personal group rather than kind of bigger general public, partly because of the way the different platforms work.

It's not as easy as it used to be. I think partially I have been focusing on bigger, longer projects like make magazine articles. I did get waylaid a little bit with unexpectedly turning what was a PCB kind of fun project into something that was actually going to get produced, which took a little bit of time. So I think there has been a smaller output coupled with a smaller degree of kind of social media usage. And that gives a whole big impression that I'm not doing as much. I'm thinking just as much about it. Whether or not I'm actually making as much, it's hard for me to say. Are you, you're a maker, so you're going to make things like your headband. It's for you. And I imagine you make gifts for people. And you write for Make, so you definitely have that piece of the creativity puzzle, the DIY, showing people. And so social media is pointless.

Is that the word? Is that the word? No, it's not. Maybe a little superfluous. Maybe pointless is too strong. But it's not, is the pointless. It's too strong. But it's not, is the thing. It's just changed. I will say, let me, I'm going to backtrack just a brief moment because one project that has kept me busy is just not something that actually would be as interesting to the public, but I've been working with a wonderful teacher who has been

using making in a high school classroom. And I've been helping her a little bit with her projects and her curriculum. So it's been a bit of a collaboration there and that's, that's kind of her project. So I don't do that as much in the public, but that's been taking a bit of time as well. I think maybe one of the reasons, but but and this ties into what you said about social media is I met her and I've met so many other makers and collaborators and friends and

inspirations through social media so I view it as a wonderful place to exchange ideas and a wonderful place to get inspired and a way for people to connect. Because, you know, I think I'm pretty lucky in that I get relatively high ratio of decent messages via social media platforms to kind of just spam and junk. I mean, that being the majority

of it's still spam and junk, but I actually do get contacted by interesting people who I end up meeting and, you know, and exchanging information with that can be a lot of fun. So it is actually a really important part of the process. And it has been for me. And it really got me from just somebody who was experimenting to somebody who realized that they had work that was worthwhile to show off because I got to gauge the reactions that people had to the posts I made. You know, sadly, the nature of and the influence and the whole zeitgeist, I guess, of social media has certainly changed. So, you know, I feel like I've been hopping from platform to platform, left Facebook many, many years ago, left Twitter, which was a wonderful platform for me at the time. And it was such a frictionless place to post and engage. It was really just a simple thought. I liked it back when it was 140 characters. And yeah. And you had to make a puzzle out of your message. I loved that. Yes. It forced you to be succinct. I love that. And I love

wordplay and the constraint and I love working with constraints. And yes, and fitting in wordplay with a constraint of 140 characters was really a fun, fun thing to do. So, but yeah, but, you know, then decided in good conscience you know i i still had a wonderful community there but could not contribute my content to a platform that i thought was not being used for you know and that wasn't being used in a way i could support and it was being used in a way i frankly abhor so um left that left a whole bunch of followers behind and moved to Mastodon, which has been good. You have the same tone I get. It's been good, I guess.

Well, no, I mean, ironically, I'm on Mastodon and Blue Sky now almost exclusively. You know, I've been using Instagram, but I'm going to leave that as well. So it's down to Mastodon and Blue Sky. And I like both. I get really sad when people who adopt one platform start to slag the other because they both have their uses. And you can use both. And they're both good ways to connect. And I like the people on Mastodon, the engagement on Mastodon. It is not frictionless in the way that Twitter was. So, and that may certainly be contributing to how much I post and how much I display my work. Because it takes much more work to, frankly, just even find my account or find my friends on the

platform, right? They're all on different servers. It's so hard. And if I click a link, it doesn't take me to my app. It takes me to something that I have to log in. Yeah. It's, it's not nearly as streamlined as I would like it to be, but the flip side of that is it kind of keeps the riffraff out. So I've enjoyed, I think, my interactions there and the conversations there very much. It's designed for conversation, not for monologuing, not for showing off. And I like that.

But nothing's going to go viral. Nothing is going to, you know, which is fine too. I've had something go viral. Have you? What was it? Oh, nothing. Oh. The Chevy thing. When Chris asked for the Chevy of Watsonville to create him.

Writing me a Python script to solve fluid dynamics equations. Oh. Somebody picked that up. Yes. And then they stole it and it went on Twitter. Yes. But the reporters eventually found it went on Twitter, but the reporters eventually found it back to me, which was the original post on Mastodon. And so that got, that got a lot of engagement. Yeah.

Yes. That was an awesome hack. I didn't realize you were the original perpetrator of that. Okay. No, that was really good. That should have gone viral, but yes, it doesn't. No, I agree. It's much, much, much harder. Like, so I'm on Mastodon almost exclusively. I use it like I did Twitter. I don't find it that different, but it's probably because I use it the same. My uses of Twitter was similar. Like, I just put out a sarcastic comment once every three days or a picture or a picture or something or talk to the few people I know on there back and forth or comment on stuff. So, I mean, yeah, I, and I've also narrowed my usage of it from whatever, you know, from what I was using social media for before, but yeah. Yes, it lacks that. I mean, it's good. I like, I both like and dislike the lack of algorithm there. I appreciate that, you know're nobody's pushing any information to you and i think that's ultimately good i will say that you don't get quite the dopamine hit

um that you did when things kind of like you know that jackpot of most most of these posts are crap but oh yeah that was really good i got to engage with that and you know you don't have that unpredictability and that kind of jackpot feeling of finding something new, a novel that you weren't expecting in your feed, that something pushed there. But ultimately, I think it's good. It is less addictive, which is good, but by that nature, I use it less. Yeah. But yeah, I agree. It's good for you.

It's good for you. It's a good for engagement. And it is, I very much appreciate on an instance that was blocked by a million other instances. Not because of anything they did, but because they refused to block some other instance. Yes, that drama. I mean, that's the downside of how it's distributed, right? People can make distributed decisions, and I don't know that there's a way to square that, really. No, and it makes me wonder just, you know, what's going to happen. Blue Sky is ultimately supposed to be distributed, but it is really not yet, or it's decentralized. And they haven't done that part of the algorithm yet. And the people who are on it, and I enjoy it.

It's a different kind of feed, but I do wonder what will happen to it if they ever attempt to implement that. Yeah. Off of social media. Yes, that's fine. Sorry, that's random thoughts on social media. Yes, that's fine. Sorry, that's a random thought on social media. But it relates to, I do think it's the reason I'm less, you know, discoverable and visible, which may not be the worst thing either. discord board we're both on and occasionally post to but are you on other smaller instances of what might be considered social media or might just be considered a forum chat or a forum i there are two discord servers yeah that i i pay a reasonable amount of attention to. And it would be nice, I would probably visit the embedded forum more often

if it were Discord instead of Slack. I'm sure that's been a thought process for you. But yeah, Discord feels a little bit safer somehow. And it feels more like hanging out with your friends after school and it's people you get to know and you have the in jokes and there's not the worry that of what you say being taken out of context, which was always the risk of social media is that your in jokes, which work for your followers suddenly go viral. And then all of a sudden it's taken out

of context by people without good intentions. So yeah, I'm on a cup. I'm very active on one and, you know, and sort of active on a couple of others. And that satisfies a lot of what I look for in social media as well. But yes, and they're, they're both, they're all makers. Cause makers, I find to be kind of, those are the people that are harder to actually meet up with in real life. You know, it's such a scattered group of people, but it's also a more interesting, diverse group of people than I meet in day-to-day life too. And I get a lot of enjoyment out of those forums. that I definitely don't do that much anymore. I would rather spend time on a Slack or a Discord where I read most of the messages and got to know most of the people instead of the noise

that I have to search for the signal in that can be Mastodon. And I know Mastodon is about who you follow, but I... It's not searchable. No, it's just, it's not searchable. I mean, it is, it's hard to navigate. That's correct. They're different. They have different utility. I mean, you know, I have most, many makers I know depend on outreach for sales, for, you know, for followers, for, you know, for interest, for, you know, sponsors. So, and that's it. So it's a different, it's a different thing.

You know, I'm lucky in that I like to reach people kind of to spread what I do and to, you know, to get engagement there and also to kind of learn about what other people are doing. So that's the bigger circle I want to reach out to. And then I go back to the Discord servers for kind of more in-depth conversations. What's ended up happening, at least with one of the servers I'm on, is that it started out to be a group of makers who came together over kind of a common bond of having a product, which I did and technically still do. That's phasing out. And, you know, I wanted to talk about sales and having small maker business. And it's turned into really much deeper kind of support group in a lot of ways without going into too much detail. But, you know,

it's such a diverse, interesting group of people from so many different backgrounds and many of whom are facing challenges that, you know, me and the other suburban, my background and, you know, my social group is, you know, suburban mom in day-to-day life, and I wouldn't encounter half the people I would. And it's important, I think, to connect and reach out and hear all these viewpoints from people who are not like you. We're not like you demographically. I mean, I think we all do have a lot in common, ironically, even though we're demographically very different. And again, yeah, it becomes a bit of, there's a lot, it's gone from like, hey, we're going to talk about making to like, hey, did, you know, what wins did you get today?

Like what went well for you? Or gosh, I'm really sorry. You know, I'm sorry you didn't get this job and you know, how can I support you? Or, you know, like how can we help you reach this goal? And in a much more personal way than, you know, general social media. So that's been nice. One of the things that I saw from your social media that I think is related to at least one of these Discord boards is something called Maker Gift Exchange. Yes. Oh, yeah, that was a joy. Yes. So that was something that was just honestly pure joy for me. It actually may also have been related, ironically, to tie this back to kind of a lesson to output for the last few months, at least, of 2024. So this Maker Discord group started a couple years back, and really we kind of bonded over the pandemic. We had regular Zoom meetings where we, you know,

we just kind of, again, we started off sharing kind of show-and-tell projects, but it became, you know, a lot more than that. So we decided a couple years back to do a gift exchange basically a white elephant style gift exchange around the holidays um and you know to de-stress everybody a little we ended up doing it in january rather than you know in december to give everybody kind of chance to to finish their projects and um but it was things people made but it didn't have to be some people had picked up things. And it was an absolute delight.

And if you know the kind of the style of a white elephant gift exchange is you pick a gift from one person and somebody else gets the chance to steal it. And we're all very friendly. So there's not, you know, and everybody is so creative. So just the reveal of seeing what people was working on in past years was wonderful. And I was so looking forward to it this year and honestly felt a great deal of pressure to have something that i would deem worthy of contributing to the gift exchange so um i decided in the run-up to the exchange that i was gonna tackle a project that been in back of my head for a long time and

and then a few weeks before i'm like like, I'm not going to be able to make this work. And then switched gears to something else, which ended up being, again, this ties back to a previous conversation, a PCB-based icosahedron, which had been in the back of my head for a while too. And I did manage to get that working just in time. And that was my gift. And then, so I felt a great deal of relief that i had a gift to bring and then i was very much looking forward to seeing what everybody else is going to bring because um they're such creative interesting people um and it did not disappoint in the slightest um because people were dropping hints in the run-up and um you know and as to what they were making um and it was a lot of fun to kind of, to anticipate.

And then when we got together, you know, we all get on the Zoom and we start by holding up a bag and describing our gift. And I got to say, so again, tying this back to an earlier discussion, the gift I ended up getting my hands on worked out perfectly because it was by Janet Hansen. It was that LED pillow. And it wasn't the first gift I got because mine got swiped a couple of times. But Janet Hansen, who does amazing LED wearables for all kinds of clients, but some really impressive, interesting celebrity ones. She's done

LED costumes for Britney Spears, work for various and sundry celebrities you'll see on her blog. And I had been dying to get something by her, so I was very happy to end up with her pillow. But other makers like Ben Henke, who is a friend of yours and we all know and love from Pixel Play, my favorite LED controller, created something completely new. He made a point of view LED clock, which was just so clever. Yeah. Which he also posted to social media and is worth taking a look at. Persistence of vision. Yeah.

Did I say point of view? I meant, sorry, POV. Yeah. Sorry. I meant, yes, persistence of vision, LED clock, and using a slip ring to get the electricity to, you know, a homemade slip ring and so many clever homemade touches in the way that only he can. He put so much work into it. It was fantastic.

And a number of these makers have been on your show. Carrie Sundra, who runs Alpenglow, who does, you know, she has kind of a bifurcated kind of making profile. She does wonderful yarn tools and great electronics kits. By the way, I had this gift briefly and it was stolen from me and I still resent this, um, had knit, had crocheted, had crocheted an LED cap and it was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Um, so, you know, I love nothing more than LED wearables. Um, so she, it was a, it's a beautiful LED cap and I think she's looking into actually possibly turning this into a project, a product. Um, so that's worth looking forward to. Um, and let me think what else. And, oh yeah. And, um, last year I ended up with, um, a wonderful, um, beautiful,

unique led panel by a wonderful, um, maker who, whose handle is make TV, M-A-K-E-T-V-E-E. And his name is Martin Oler and he's German. And he did, this year did a really beautiful LED mandala panel with like, it's a nice combination of like a custom LED matrix covered by beautiful diffusers that had gorgeous, very Zen looking LED patterns. And then, yeah, everybody brought something that kind of fit with their personality so um one of my favorite people in this group um just kind of for sheer uniqueness of character and personality um is kevin capuccio who i cannot pronounce his handle it's um it means giant squid in Latin is all I'm going to say.

And like he handmade, he handmade like started together this most, it was like an LED graph with a transistor and an oscillator. And I can't even describe what it does, but I think hopefully he posted about it so people can go look at it. And yeah, and just wonderful people with wonderful like wonderful creative ideas and somebody else um a maker who goes by gc threw in a button he'd made it just called the um the effort i'm gonna i'm gonna self-censor here

so it's the effort emergency stop button um and there's like a bit of a running gag in the group for a number of us utilize profanity, maybe a little more than we should, more than we should. We enjoy it. We get a big enjoyment out of it. So it's, it's always been a, that's a fun thing to make jokes about. So yeah. Um, people brought wonderful creative projects. Oh, and then, yeah. And then, you know, somebody, um, another maker from the group had been traveling in Shenzhen recently, and they found those holographic sticker warnings that usually use for warning labels on electronics. Yes. And somehow managed to get, so found the manufacturer and got a set custom made that instead of the warning, it just simply say, do what you can.

Avoid this warranty. Which is just, yeah, avoid this warranty. Do it. Do what you can. So it was, yeah, it was all just kind of creative and wonderful

and novel and a really absolutely worth kind of the mental buildup I had had for it. And just a terrific group of people. And a good time was had all around. It is something that we've done three years running

and I'm looking forward to again next year. You described yourself as a suburban mom. And then you got into making, or are you both? Demographically, I'm a suburban mom. And I was a state, I retired from a job as a software engineer when my oldest was, you show, I think I talked about how back when I was raising the kids, you know, after I had gone through physics graduate school, I had taken electronics classes. I had done research in radio astronomy. I had programmed computers.

But, you know, and then I was staying home for years with these, you know, very small children. But so threw myself into kids' birthday parties, you know, by like create literally, I described the process, I think of making like 25 pounds of homemade Play-Doh so we could build volcano, you know, baking soda volcanoes in our backyard. So it channeled it differently. So I've in those, you know, so yes, I've always been a maker and makers are a very diverse group, but makers are also an under highly underrepresented group among suburban moms. So I didn't meet a lot of other people with my interests until I started kind of reaching

out on social media with those interests. And I still, it's still interesting. I'm still, I tend to notice very much when anybody else at another conference is a mom, because it really feels unusual. I was talking to Christina Sear, actually, at, I don't know if she's been on your show or not. She made the circle phone. She has not been on the show, but I invited her recently.

And after this show, I will ask you to forward along a message that says, please come. Oh, you should. And she should. I adore her. She's great. She gives such great, interesting talks and does such an interesting kind of diversity of tasks. But she and I, I'm sure there were other moms there, but I didn't know them. And we're looking around in this room and we're the only two moms we could identify very easily by sight.

And in another maker group that's local to Los Angeles, like another mom just joined and it made me really happy because there's certain jokes that people don't get unless you have that shared experience. So, yeah, I am both. But I also find that to be kind of unusual. It's funny that I know far more people in very niche groups in the maker community than I do moms in the maker community. And I'm not quite sure why that is. Well, you see, when you start with Bayesian analysis, you have to talk about all of the women in tech and then all of the moms who are women who are moms. And that decreases the number. And then it just goes kerplooey.

And yeah. Yeah. Which is kind of sad because like many groups that don't have as much representation in technology as they do in the world, moms have some really good ideas on how to get things done and how to do things. Absolutely. I mean, I will say this, you know, having been home to raise my kids, I did hang out with another, with a large number of moms, not from tech backgrounds, but a large number of stay-at-home moms who had been, who were lawyers and businesswomen and very, very smart, very smart, very savvy women who were, you know, choosing for whatever reason to not utilize those talents at the time. And yeah, I always thought that, you know, if I could ever recruit from that talent pool, if I were the kind of person to start a company, it's a big talent pool to recruit from. And I think there's a lot of, a lot of power there, but, but I will say this too. I'm part of it is also as I don't see most moms just don't come across

as nerds in the way I am. I'm not quite sure why. And I mean, I wouldn't. Sad disappointment. It is a sad disappointment. And I mean, nerds are my, I mean, nerd in the best possible way, nerds are my people. I identify as one, but I don't see that, you know, in that group so much. I'm, again, not quite sure why. Are your kids nerds? Yeah, my whole family. Well, yes, but in assorted and sundry ways. I wouldn't say my husband's a nerd.

And the nerdiness comes out in different ways. This is going to get pretty far-filled from tech if you let me, um, I will say that just let me conval for a moment and you can totally cut this out. But, um, we are, we are nerds and that we like to absolutely discuss the minutia of like really bizarre topics. Like linguistics, um, is big in my house. I have one science nerd, my middle son, who does combat robotics. And he and I share a lot in common. My youngest does competitive scrabble,

which let me tell you is a nerdy world all its own. Highly nerdy, highly interesting. I, yeah, and we're all nerds, but in different ways. One of the things I found, I don't really know why this is coming up, but one of the things I found doing the podcast was that I thought I had plenty of friends and I didn't really know how to meet people and I don't really like people. So it was fine not to have more friends. But then I started to meet people through the show and some have become good friends, but then there are other people who are like, yeah, I could be really good friends with this person if I made the effort and they made the effort and it would be really, really good. And I didn't know that. Yeah. You don't know, but I do. Doing the show is a way, and I guess social media and making for me is you find like-minded people. And I don't know how

to describe the commonalities that makers or tech people share that make us so compatible. But I will say that one of the reasons, yeah, I love making communities is I'm an introvert, but you can drop me in any maker group, even if I haven't met anybody. And it's so easy to find things to talk about. It's such a comfortable setting. It exhausts me much less than almost any other social group to hang out, which doesn't sound like much of a compliment that it exhausts me less. But it's significant when you're an introvert to not drain your social battery. And I get very excited to have people get excited about the same things that, like learning the same things that I do or discovering or coming up with something unusual.

The only other group I think that I get that feeling from is when I teach kids. Yeah. They share that ability to be excited by things. I remember when the Mars, again, I'm taking you down a path and you can kind of reel me back in later, but when the Mars rover landed and I discovered that there was a secret code in the parachute, and I'm telling people about this and everyone's like, oh, that's neat. And then I went to talk to a class of kids that I was working with. And they're like, yeah, that's so cool. I said, yes, you guys get it.

So I don't know. I think there's maybe a childlike excitement that makers retain, maybe, that many people lose along the path to adulthood. I don't know if that's it or not, but I do find that common element really endearing. And I feel like I can get really excited about like figuring out that I needed a pull up resistor on this thing. And now suddenly it works and tell that people never know.

It's like, Oh yeah, totally get that feeling when you figure that out. You know, it's like you discovered that. That's neat. You figured it out yourself. You did that work. Whereas anybody else, you know, who hadn't, who didn't, who didn't fit in that world wouldn't, wouldn't understand why I was so excited to just like make that work in the end. Yeah. People who hadn't banged their head. If you haven't banged your head against electronics for like two hours going, why aren't you working? Why aren't you working? Why aren't you working? And then suddenly realizing you put the right resistor in there,

suddenly it works. There's that dopamine rush that is a shared experience for a certain group of people, I guess. So electronics, I want to get back to that. Although we may wander off again because clearly the whole friend thing was not your fault. Except you have always been one of those people that was like, if we lived near each other, we would be getting coffee and then occasionally going out to get drunk. 1,000%. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah. No, no, no. You're very cool. That's it. Exactly. Like I, I feel like, right. I, I just assumed and rightly or wrongly, I assume certain things about you based on what you do, the things you like and yeah. Having hung out with you, um, at least

digitally, you know, when we took your class, yeah. You know, you, you there there's there's definitely a bond and you know you can listen we have definitely shared interests and i think yeah a shared outlook on certain things too which is kind of what's helpful but one of the things you got to do recently that i haven't done in well forever i mean i did it once oh you went to Hackaday Supercon last fall. Yeah. And they had a contest and you were one of the winners. Yes. And I was very excited because I am secretly very, very competitive. So I know it does like, so nothing like makes me happier than actually winning things,

even though it's not a really nice trait and I try to suppress it but yes it was um yeah i've been to super con i think a few years running now and i actually spoke um at the uh covid version of remoticon and in fact um i spoke on a topic that's not unrelated to um the prize that i got for this year's Supercon, because when I spoke, I gave a talk that was recorded, and you can see online, about how to use PCBs in kind of unusual projects, not just for a simple get the signals and the electricity from point A to point B, but how to use them as like a building structure and how to put them together as building blocks for larger projects and modular systems of

PCBs. And I actually ended up adapting a project I showed off in that talk into an SAO, which they called a SuperCon add-on or... Yeah, that's what that S stands for. Sure it does. That is what that is. And you, anybody, you can, yeah, I what that s stands for sure it does that is what that is it and you anybody you can yeah i'm going with that for at least this podcast um so the contest this year in the past you know they've had you know bigger grander prizes um and this year was kind of a simpler hey make an sao add-on for this year's, you know, for this year's badge, because badge hacking is, of course, a large part of Supercon. And, you know, bring it, and that's our contest. And for a couple, I was excited about that for a couple of reasons, because

one is, I've never felt like I could kind of measure up to the badge hacking. Most people did because people get way down to the nitty gritty and spend a lot of time hacking some amazing, incredibly complex things for the badges. But what comprises an SAO, an add-on for the badge, could be anything. I mean, so you can take a creative idea that may not be so complex um and you know that can be a great um s that can be a great add-on or something fun to add onto the board so i adapted this um design i'd made you know years back which was a um oh my god it was a modular system of pcbs designed basically it was an extensible system of two rows of PCBs that placed each other that could flex. Basically, you could like a snake. And I'm not going to describe it very well verbally, but hopefully you can have a link to drop in the podcast.

So people what I'm talking about. So, basically, I designed an extensible system of PCBs that could flex and used spring contacts on boards on one side of this assembly to mate with circular contacts on the PCBs on the other side of the assembly so that could pivot around a common center point and still maintain electrical and signal contact. And the thing I made at the time was this extensible board that didn't really look like much. So I thought I'd take this concept and adapt it into something that was cute to look at. And after a little bit of brainstorming, what would look good that wiggles, I came up with the idea of making an inflatable car wash balloon guy, which I have since learned, which I've since learned has an acronym. Somebody said to me, it said, oh gosh, I said W, wacky, wavy, inflatable, something tube man, from, I think some, from some family gaps. So I made a wacky, wavy tube man that could actually pivot, that has a series of LEDs running up the front that, you know, so that could light up in various patterns series of LEDs running up the front that, you know, so that could light up in various patterns and just, and yet you could,

it was almost a fidget toy and that you could bend it, you know, into various angles and have still have the signals like travel all the way up and the lights light up. So, but this is basically, I could like eight PCBs in a trench coat because it takes eight PCBs altogether to make this one add-on board. So it was a little complex, but it wasn't complex electronically because it really is just a series of addressable LEDs. complex to get the tolerances right, that everything mated correctly and pivoted correctly without too much friction or too little compression so the spring contacts didn't make contact. So it was kind of engineered to within, you know, tenths of millimeters. And I was very, very kind of proud of that mechanical structure that I got working.'m kind of amazed that it could be done

because I'm using, the whole thing is held together with plastic push rivets that work amazingly well. So electronically, it's not much to talk about, but mechanically, it was kind of a neat way to use PCBs. I basically made a series of attachable slip rings out of PCBs that connect together and can bend. I think the mechanical parts of things are often the most difficult. That's what I'm finding.

I have a lot of projects I've been working on for clients and I have to just, the bare minimum mechanical things. And it takes me like 18 times longer to do anything mechanically than it does in software electronics. It's hard. It's you need to ask because there's no way to absolutely know how it's going to work without physically testing it out. You just don't know you can right you can you can model it but then you don't realize like friction is something that's i'm sure somebody tolerances you know oops

it's off by a millionth of an inch well it still doesn't fit sorry yes no and the yeah no no the funny thing is too right when you're designing things in cad right actually my was, I was talking about this with my middle son too, because he does a lot of CAD design for his robots. You're like working with these parts and on your computer, these things are huge, right? Like there's this chasm between these two parts. And then you go down and you're like, no, I've left like, you know, I've left like a tenth of a millimeter, like I've left less than a tenth of a millimeter, but it looks like this big gap on my CAD screen. You you know surely that's a large enough space um i've got to

be able to fit lots of um header pins in there that's so big and then you go down and realize no no that's really not a very big space at all um when you're looking down this you know it just looks so much bigger on the screen things on your cat screen are much bigger than they appear it should be a warning it should be a warning they put on Fusion 360. So yeah, it was, I enjoyed that challenge and it was fun and it was iterative and, you know, because I'd kind of gotten the head start by doing a version of this a few years ago, I was able to do something that I was pretty proud of, you know, using the same concepts and I had a working proof of concept. So the rest was, it was adaptation at that point. I thought I could get it working. And I still was, of course,

doing it last minute. And then of course, there was the crisis when I got to Supercon to realize that I'd made everything work mechanically, but had put the design, the SAO connector backwards. And that was a bit of a crisis in and of itself. So I, which was also, it was a crisis that turned into a really bright spot. If I can just keep talking about this, if you want to, I'm not going on too long. Okay. Because I came, I had, you know, was so excited to put this together. And I got it in just, you had to document it before Supercon. So, you know, I didn't, I wasn't thinking, okay, maybe in the back of my head, because I'm a competitive person, like, yeah, this is good enough. It could win a prize. But really, I'm like, this is a ridiculous PCB because the winners were going to get manufactured.

And yeah, I joked it should win the least manufacturable prize because that was an actual category because it's eight PCBs in a trench coat with a buffer layer of acrylic in between each and crazy, ridiculous assembly process. And then I had these things that were working, at least when I tested them. But of course, I hadn't tested them with an actual SAO connector. I just kind of plugged power and ground in and got to SuperCon and realized I had put power and ground on the wrong side of the SAO connector. And I was a little bit devastated and spent kind of the first few hours of SuperCon going, you know, just kind of fixated on this. What can I do? What can I do? And realized a few hours in that it could be fixed because the PCB out of the eight that contained the SAO connector had symmetry around a vertical axis.

And if I could desolder, flip, and reattach it, it actually was fixable. But, you know, desoldering is a big pain in the butt. And I wasn't home and I didn't have my tools. And so I just, you know, I thought, you know what, I'll make a few work. I'll get it working. And I sat there and started desoldering is a big pain in the butt and I wasn't home and I didn't have my tools and so I just you know I thought you know what I'll make a few work I'll get it working and I sat there and started desoldering um and some people some other makers came over said what you doing um as they want to do it super fun and I explained yeah this you know had this thing and they're like oh we'll help and before I knew it this wonderful group of makers um sat down with me and like I'm like you know go socialize go do your thing they're

like no no we're gonna sit here and we're gonna help you and they you know everybody grabbed a few pcbs and they helped me desolder all those panels in what would have taken me days in just a few hours and it became this little you know coffee clutch of um of just you know fun you know, fun, you know, a fun activity to do together. So it was, it was honestly like a really nice experience that kind of brought like a really fun bonding experience out of what was a minor, in the scheme of things, it's not a major, but kind of a minor crisis, big disappointment for me, but it was a minor crisis. And suddenly became this like, people are really good and nice moment that everybody was just so kind to sit down and help. And it became a fun event that I believe, honestly, one of my favorite Supercon memories from this year. And you said that it's going on to be manufactured.

Oh yeah. Yes. Well, now that is a whole nother story so um yeah uh they decided that um they were going to pick boards and i think three categories um i'm forgetting the other two mine one in the artistic category um which again was very nice i do think it is as much a referendum that i was able to submit my board before the contest closed as anything else because um makers because the contest actually closed before before supercon um so you know anybody who didn't have anybody who was planning to finish you know kind of get the thing working at supercon was just out of luck um although technically mine wasn't working then but um so yes, it won. And the prize was that the winners in these three categories were going to be produced and given out as SAOs

at Hackaday Supercon Europe. And, you know, I kind of laughed because I really did think mine was in the running for least manufacturable. And then I think I spoke to somebody because this became, of course, SupplyFrame's problem. And they just shrugged and said, well, supply frame has interns. And I said, okay. Jeez. And it became more complicated than that. Because it became more complicated for me in that I really wanted it to, then if we're going to go out to other, it was a novelty and I was happy to make it work. But then if we're going to be distributed to a large group of people, I wanted it to be a real SAO.

I wanted it to use the I squared CVS. I wanted it to, you know, to be programmable. And of course, I had designed it basically that it was, it was just LEDs, you know, signal input ground, you know, through the SAO connector. So I tried to make it more complex, I spent a little bit of time. I didn't have a lot trying to upgrade that and made a lot of mistakes along the way. So I, you know, I put, I decided to put a controller on the board that could be used as an I2C peripheral and learned a lot about what can and can't be an I2C peripheral. So now there's an ATtiny3224 on the board. And I thought, oh, sure, that's great. And then realized that I thought it'd be fun to make it programmable

using the Raspberry Pi Pico, which is the basis of the badge itself, which is all neat. And a friend of mine assured me that, yeah, they could probably figure out how to get the Raspberry Pi Pico to work as a programmer. So that was very cool until then I realized that by putting one of the programming pins on the SAO header, if you plug it into the badge and that pin is pulled, I cannot remember if it's high or low now, the thing boots up in programming mode and will not launch into the LED sequence you programmed into it. So that became a thing. And then some, you know, I'm like, oh crap. So managed, I think, fix that with adding a pull-up or pull-down resistor. And then suddenly realized that I didn't, I had briefly entertained the thought that maybe I need pull-up resistors

on the I2C lines. And then I had read somewhere that no, Raspberry Pi Pico has pull-down resistors, internals. And so I didn't put those on. And now I've realized those may not be strong enough. I may not be able to get the I2C to work in the first place. Yeah, you know that I should have consulted with you. No, it should work. It should work. Yeah, you know that. I should have consulted with you. No, it should work. It should work. Well, okay. Then I may actually be contacting you afterwards with how to get it to work

because I'm having some problems. And I'm trying to get this done in shorter. So yeah, it's been an adventure on my end, but I'm learning a lot. I'm actually kind of enjoying it. It's definitely something I don't do every day because the manufacturing, I made something that's good enough

that they want to manufacture and give it out. And that's, you know, definite ego boost. But yeah, I am going to hit you up for ice cream because I'm having some problems. And then they're having, well, this, I don't know, I'm just going to say this. I don't know if supply frame will have a problem with me saying this or not, but I don't think, I'm just going to say this. I don't know if supply frame will have a problem with me saying this or not,

but I don't think supply frame had counted on the fact that interns are no. If you're going to manufacture something and ship it to Europe, you have to be compliant with Rojas, with Rojas things. And you can't do that by manufacturing. The certification process for manufacturing here and then shipping it is um unwieldy and impossible so they know they actually have to have this thing manufactured in china so suddenly this thing that you would have to maybe explain to a bunch of interns and just have them sit in a circle like slapping these things together suddenly has to become a chinese

manufacturing process so it's a whole interesting story in of itself um we'll see how it turns out but it looks like it's gonna i hats off to to the people at Supply Frame who are going to make it work on their end. And I am now in the, it'd be so nice if I could get the iSquared C thing to work, because I really would like to have that happen. If not, it's going to be a dumb, pretty SAO. So that's the story of the Bendy SAO thus far. And it also ties into maybe why I've not been posting much online and why I have such trouble documenting my projects because there are so many blind alleys

and wrong turns they take in the process that it feels like documenting them would be a bit of a waste. I don't know. Sometimes it's nice to know not everybody gets it on the first try. Oh, I am that person. Yes.

And I do appreciate hearing that from other people. But this seems particularly farcical, I think, in certain aspects of the development. You made it horribly unmanufacturable. You made that joke before you went. Yes. And now you are reaping the whirlwind. This is all your fault. Well, no, but it's their fault for choosing it. Yeah. Say that to the competitive Deborah. I met her a few minutes ago.

Yes. No, don't. Yeah. No, I have nobody. I do have nobody to blame but myself. That is absolutely my own darn fault. And in the end of the day, yes. And it is a net positive. And it's the story I'm going to be very happy to tell later. And I'm going to be very proud of it when it comes out. No matter, even if you love all your children, this will be one of my children that I love at the end of the day. I hope, and I know this is kind of a weird thing to hope. I hope that you see this in Target stores having been ripped off by a Chinese manufacturer to make a toy out of it. I got it. But I will say this. To tie this back to social media, nothing made me happier than to have somebody tag me on social media saying, hey, look, I took your idea. It wasn't my idea. Look, I took this general social media was you take somebody else's idea and build on it and when somebody else takes my idea I don't really want to see it and you know what honestly anybody who decides to manufacture for their stores deserves what they get but um but if another maker would it take kind of this slipper and concept and do something cool with it because I have there are other I think it's not done yet i think you could do some fun things with it i would love to see it i'm i'm thinking about paper things and chibitronics and slip rings and origami and

moving and there's stuff here yes oh i was thinking about yes well yes because you, I was thinking about, yes. Well, yes. Cause you do. I was thinking about the commonality of what you do and what I do because I've been working with polyhedra and I don't know, your origami is a little bit more organic. This I'm going to take you in a slightly different direction. I'm sorry, but it had occurred to me when thinking about the show that, you know, PCB origami, I don't know if you've gone this path before. I know you've incorporated electronics into your origami, I think. A little bit, not much. A little bit. But I know definitely people have.

Yeah. Yeah. And then folding. So these, you know, this PCB design pivots along an axis that is perpendicular to the plane of the PCBs. I have a design that's kind of next, that's been waiting in the background that I'm still, that is basically a PCB with hinges that folds. I've done some bad attempts at this, but I think I do have one that will work. And I would love to do some kind of like folding flexible structure of PCBs. So I made recently for the gift exchange an icosahedron out of PCBs using

tiny little PCB connectors that helped hold the sides at just the right angles. But I would so love to be able to do kind of a flexible assembly of PCBs that you could fold into different, that you could fold or unfold into an icosahedron or into into the you know how every polyhedron has what's called a net which is the unfolded form um so i would really like to be able to do it for no other reason than it'd just be interesting and fun to see how it would look um a series of piece of piece that could be folded flat and then folded into this polyhedral shape and maybe other ones if you could come up with the right arrangement. So it just made me think of your origami.

And then in my usual typical chain of thought, also came up with the idea of, I had made, one of the projects I did for Make Magazine was a project called Bagged the future which had a polygon an illuminated polygon mesh on the front of a bag of shapes that could you know flex but were illuminated from behind with the led string but it occurred to me if i could get instead of 3d printed tiles i could use pcbs the tiles and some sort of flex connector in between and kind of recreate, I don't know if you're familiar with, I think it's Issey Miyake's Bow Bow bag. It's a famous designer bag with triangular tiles that flexes, but it has these rigid triangular tiles that kind of bend to form interesting shapes. To replace those tiles with PCBs that illuminated, but could still flex between them and some sort of mesh would be a very interesting idea. So PCB bag is also on the list of things that I want to go down this route with on PCBs. And it seemed to me,

again, somehow in your alley with origami and the way things fold together, there's probably some synergy there that I'm not thinking of. Oh, so much. I mean, I've been more thinking about flex circuits and making small holes to provide hinging for the flex circuits. But yeah, the way you've got it,'s really cool and these bow bow bags yes definitely that would i mean i can see yeah yeah uh let's see okay around here somewhere i have my outline and my notes up i know i'm so sorry i'm like good luck editing this whole thing and i apologize no this

is great. Okay, you knew what you were signing up for. I'm just going in there. Have you heard the show? Everybody sounds, I don't know, everybody sounds so, you edit beautifully, Chris. Is that all I'm going to say is your editing is top notch. I do far less than you think. All right.

Well, the goal here is to talk to people who are excited. Exactly. And I think that that's the goal for a lot of things. And so it's really nice to talk to somebody who's actually excited. No, you're really fun to talk to. But I have to say, I try to keep in mind that this is something that other people are going to, you're going to want other people to be able to listen to and follow. We do? At some point.

I think so. I don't know. We've done 400 do? At some point. I think so. We've done 400 and something at this point. There can't be anybody left to listen. We've whittled it down to the core that enjoys our stuff. They just use us to fall asleep. All right. You're not looking to grow your user base. You're looking to find the diehards, I guess.

I will help. Yes. You're welcome. One of the other reasons you are not going to be posting a lot of making things is because you are going to be wandering around experiencing things. Yes. The Portland winter lights and then teardown. Yes. Yes. my um resolutions for 2025 um was to get out go hang out with the people i enjoy and see the places i enjoy um and you know and i don't they're not a lot of makers there are some but there's not

a lot of makers in los angeles so traveling to different maker events or Portland Winter Lights Festival is kind of a maker adjacent event in my head, um, is one of my goals for 2025. So yeah, the Portland Winter Lights Festival starts next weekend and it's a wonderful, um, event that I can't believe I didn't hear about until basically last year. Uh, Portland's a great city for artists, um, and it's got a very large led community it's really a wonderland for led enthusiasts um at this time so it is in the winter so you um and they put these wonderful centralized exhibits of led art out in like three main central locations in the city of portland which is a really accessible city and easy to walk around and see things. And then they also have additional events that people can

go to. Last year I went and there was a silent disco in which people were wearing headphones and rollerskating around, some were wearing LEDs. It's the only place I've been to wearing some of my LED outfits where I thought, wow, I could be wearing even more LEDs and still fit in. I'm underdressed. It's fantastic. Like by wearing my, my, wearing my LEDs is actually camouflage, not, you know, not the opposite. It was really fun. So, um, yeah, so it's fun to see the people. It's fun to see the events. The art is fantastic. I think a lot of things are, you know, went to Burning Man and came back. And for those of us who are maybe not big on tents and dirt, it's a great way to of them. It was really fun last year to walk around the exhibits at Teardown, sorry, not Teardown, at the Portland Winter Lights Festival.

And we'd be walking by a storefront. He'd look and say, oh, that's a Pixel Blaze. And he'd call out the pattern it was running. And a surprisingly large number of them were doing that. That was a blast with him. It was very funny. I was recognized on the basis of one of the projects I was carrying, you know, somebody like it was really kind of neat. Um, and I,

you know, got to talk to a lot of people. I met led artists who did really cool things that I hadn't seen. Um, so it's just a lot of fun and it takes place, um, over it's, it's over nine days, but most of the activity is over, uh, two weekends, the first of which is going to be the February 6th and 7th of this year and then the following weekend. And it's just, you know, it's a visual, you know, it's a visual delight. And it's, again, for LED nerds, it's really, it's a place I get to wear all my wearables. It's a place I get to, you know, hang out with other people who are wearing more LEDs than I am at the same time. Yeah. So it was, it was a real blast. And also Portland's just a great city to hang out in, you know, great food. One of the events for the Winter Light Festival last

year was like, it was a, it was a drag show, you know, enhanced by LEDs, which is just, you know, which was really great because you're not going to see that just anywhere is just, you know, which was really great because you're not going to see that just anywhere. And, you know, it's, it's a, it's a city that has, I think on the regular, even without this Winter Lights Festival has an illuminated bike ride, I think once a month. So, yeah, it, my kind of people basically. And it's a really kind of just fun event. And you can just wander around and just look at things. And it feels like kind of the whole, maybe not the whole city,

but the people who are wandering around looking at things with you are all in on it. It was funny because I was there so excited about it. And I would take an Uber various places and explain to people I was going to the lights festival. And they'd never heard of it. And yet I'd get there and it seemed like there were so many people walking around looking at the exhibits just like me. So it is both a well-kept secret and a popular event at the same time. I'm not sure how. And then Teardown is in June, also in Portland, again at the mall. Yes, yes. Teardown was a great, great conference. I very much enjoy Supercon. I think of, and Teardown is similar and different at the same

time. Yeah, Teardown was a great conference for connecting. And it was, yeah, and it was organized by Helen Lee. Major shout out to her for putting it all together in a way that was inclusive and comfortable and designed for communication and connection, which is one of the reasons I want to travel to go to events is to really connect with people in person that I may only have seen online. And, you know, great makers, great projects. The 80s, as a child, you know, of 80s malls, you know, who hung out in 80s malls growing up, the abandoned 80s mall vibe was just like a bonus. She somehow transformed an empty Gap store in a dying mall in the city of Portland into this event space. And it worked really well. And in particular, last year when I went, I brought a bunch of my wearables and got to set up

a display in the gap of denim jackets with LEDs on them, which was just so apropos. It was great. So they put in mannequins and I had a whole LED wearable display in the gap in an 80s mall. And other exhibits were just as much fun too. And like a lot of people I know gave great talks. I really enjoyed the talks and workshops. And they did a really nice job with the activities too in the evening i really enjoyed the way that um helen and anybody else who helped organize incorporated uh the features of the city of portland into the events like we had food from great local restaurants there was a scavenger hunt which it was was, I was on the team. I was on a team that basically, what did we call ourselves? We called ourselves the, oh, the sunk cost fallacy because we basically just,

we had no chance of winning and we were basically kept making wrong turns at every turn, but decided we were just going to keep going because at this point it was too late to quit. So it became a bonding experience that took us all over Portland. And, you know, it makes a good story at the end of the day. And, you know, we went to the Autodesk headquarters and saw the site. So it was really, like, it wasn't just hanging out in this very small place with all these same people. It was exploring this big city with these cool people who were fun to explore with. And so I can just go on and on about this,

but one thing that I thought they did very, very nicely was with the teardown schedule was building in downtime and providing spaces specifically for kind of hanging out and conversing with others and comfortable spaces because it does get to be overwhelming to be around so many people for a while. So if you want to just go and have some quiet time and talk one on one, there are spaces to do that. You could escape without leaving too far away, but you could also find a quiet spot to chat.

Or you could also take a moment during the downtime where you didn't feel like you're going to be missing something if you stepped out for a little bit. So. Sounds like it was a good time. It was a great time. And a lot of my maker friends and I, especially in the Discord, are really looking forward to going out. And again, we don't see each other in person, but we're going to we brought the party last time and we'll do it again this year it again this year too when we see each other. Deborah, it's been great talking to you. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Well, knowing I had to come up with a final thought, I will leave you with my motto, which is that all tech is wearable if you try hard enough.

That's really it. Our guest has been Deborah Ansell of Geek Mom Projects. Thanks, Deborah. Thank you so much, Alicia and Chris. Thank you so much for filling in for me. This was the last minute sort of thing. And I really appreciate your flexibility. No, my pleasure. I really appreciate you putting, again, good luck to you.

I'm sorry for the editing and I appreciate you. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for their support. And thank you for listening. 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. Deborah, do you want Jodie Foster or Taylor Swift? Jodie Foster, please. Normal is not something to aspire to. It's something to get away from.