Embedded - 499: This Is Your Problem

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

We spoke with Janet Hansen about the world of professional costumery (with electronics) and becoming an artist. Janet’s business is Enlighted where you can find custom illuminated clothing as well as Janet’s ready-made art. Janet’s personal site is janethansen.com which is more focused on her artistic pursuits. Janet mentioned Seeed’s MSGEQ7. We talked about Janet’s light up pillow with Debra Ansell on 494: All Tech Is Wearable — Embedded. Transcript If you’re interested in the intersection of neuroscience and engineering, you might want to check out what Mouser Electronics is doing with Brain-Computer Interfaces. It’s all about how you can control machines with your mind, and it’s one of the coolest areas of innovation right now. Mouser’s Empowering Innovation Together site has great content on BCIs, from videos to in-depth articles and podcasts that break down the tech. If this piques your curiosity, head over to Mouser.com/empowering-innovation and explore what’s happening with BCI and other exciting developments in the world of design and engineering.

Elisa White Welcome to Embedded. I am Elisa White alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Janet Hanson and we're going to talk about Daft Punk, Madame Tussauds, and what a true glow up means. Hi Janet, welcome. Hi, great to be here. Thank you for joining us. Could you tell us about yourself as if we met, I don't know, one of the Supercon events? Sure. I'm an LED artist and I specialize in mounting lights in fabrics. And I program them to display different kinds of color-changing effects. And the animation is part of the art. I use these techniques to make light-up clothing and costumes, mostly for the entertainment

industry. And I also make some light-up art that is non-wearable. And we have a lot of makers who do similar things. But this is your profession. Yeah. I've been doing this full-time for about 25 years now. Okay. And we have a lot of questions. Including what does Daft Punk actually look like? Well, I think they've made their faces public and visible since the band retired.

But yeah, that was really fun to get to meet with them at rehearsals and planning meetings and yeah, and get to know what they're just two regular guys. Except one of them is also the Stig. The Stig? Oh my god. Okay. Lightning round. We're going to ask you short questions and if we're behaving ourselves, we won't ask

why and how and exactly what year that happened in. Are you ready? Yes. Northeast,, or Atwood? Oh, two years in north, two years in Atwood. But I like them all. Concentration? Um, art. What was your favorite engineering class? Um, probably shop.

Yes. What's the best? Do you know what Harvey Mudd's mascot is? Is it Rusto? Or is it changed? No. I mean, that's a valid answer. I don't remember what it is. What is it? It's a mud wasp. I thought it was the warts. Oh yeah. I also have one of the warts. I would also have accepted Rhino.

Okay. So there was no mascot is what you're telling me. No, no, it didn't. It's fine. The mud wasp? You know, okay. I was there for the same four years you were and I don't remember any wasps. Yeah, I've never heard of that one. Oh, is that a joke?

No. Oh my God. I'm a little out of it today. What is your favorite fictional robot? Let's get away from the WASP. I'd say Lieutenant Commander Data. I'm kind of a Star Trek nerd. Cool.

What is the cleverest trick you've ever used for hiding a battery in a wearable? Oh, that's a good question. I don't know if I would call any of them clever especially. The most clever I'm aware of is someone gave me a little prop they made that needed no battery that just by spinning around it generated enough electricity to make a few lights blink. I was impressed by that, but that wasn't my work. Cool idea. Hot glue or stitches?

Mostly stitches, but hot glue definitely has its place as part of the process. Conductive thread or wires? Always wires, always wires. You need that insulation. If you make something with conductive thread, it might be sexy that you can crumple it up like fabric, but good luck shorting things out that you don't want to and debugging that. Do you have a tip everyone should know?

Strain relief is important. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, lightning round is over and now we are moving on to the bigger questions. Okay. Twenty-five years. You've been doing this for 25 years. Twenty-five years full-time.

I had a few years part-time even before that. How did you get into making LED wearables and art for a living? Well, it started as a hobby. I was doing lots of art for fun on the side. It usually had some kind of technical component, you know, painting abstract geometric things and meshes related to my finite element modeling work, you know, and you have LEDs around, you put them in costumes. And a friend of a friend invited me to participate in a wearable tech fashion show, which gave me a little bit of budget and an opportunity to put something on a runway. And that was really exciting.

And the thing I discovered from that was it was a bunch of teams of art students and tech students. I wasn't affiliated with either school, but I was the only person that did both sides of the project, the art was the only person that did both sides of the project, the art and the tech. And I realized, wow, this really gives me an advantage compared to people that need to communicate across disciplines. And you have a PhD in bioengineering. Yes.

How did you decide that this was the full-time career instead of the possibly more lucrative professor or engineer? Yeah. Well, I studied engineering at Mudd because bioengineering was not offered as an undergrad major anywhere. So I knew to get into bioengineering back then I really had to go to grad school. So that was always part of the plan. And I had funding from NSF and the American Heart Association that kept me there longer than I had originally thought I would be. And towards the end of that,

I realized I didn't want to follow the academic track and be a professor. So I had to change gears and figure out what can I get an industry job in using the work I've been doing. And the finite element modeling actually carried over really naturally to aerospace. So I'd already made a big career leap once. I worked there for a couple of years, and it was a few years into that that I did this fashion show

and really discovered my passion for wearable tech. LESLIE KENDRICK Have there been any in particular projects you've worked on that have led to really good stories you can tell us without, you know, six beers first? KATE BOWEN Gee, I don't know. I mean, there are fun details about all of them. The Daft Punk project, it was great to be able to see the rehearsals, you know, to be an audience of one in front of the pyramid while they worked on the lighting for that show. And then to see it performed live, the part where my light-up thing was revealed during the encore to hear the crowd reaction was just really amazing. After the Brooklyn show, I got to do tequila shots with the band

backstage afterwards. That was fun. I don't know. I have too many stories. It's hard to narrow it down. Okay, we'll have to cue a few as we go on. But you mentioned the art versus tech, I'm going to call it divide. Working with artists who aren't technical, how do you make them costumes and devices they can use that are easy for them to use and don't break? Yeah, that's a big part of what I do, I think, is acting as an interpreter that often I'll get a description in artistic terms

of we want this feeling, we want this mood. These are our practical things we need to deal with, like a quick change or it has to fit in this type of garment. And yeah, and make something and, you know, speak to them in terms they understand, try to meet the artistic needs. And at the same time, I'm often talking to technical people on the crew and I need to speak their language and talk about, you know, we're using wireless DMX or other stuff to control it. They want to be reassured that everything is safe. So, yeah, I'm talking to both sides and I'm often a go-between there.

DMX is the, what I think of as a MIDI for lighting. It's the control mechanism for doing light-up things on – and I usually think about stage lighting, but clothing lighting also? LSF Yeah. Well, I do a lot of work for Broadway where there's stage lighting and they want to have a certain costume effect happen on cue. So the same console that's controlling all the other lights in the show can trigger effects in the costumes that I make. Okay, could you drop some names now?

Because I want to know which Broadway – I don't think it's Alexander or Hamilton. No, I don't think there are a lot of lights in the show. That might mean beyond stage lights. One of the first big Broadway shows I worked on was the revival of Cats. I think that was in 2016. So Mr. Mostofoli's has a light-up coat, and I think Cassandra is the other cat. There's a gimmick where he touches her chest and then her whole bodysuit lights up. So that one has been on tour in North America for a long time. I'm not sure

if it is right now, but having costumes lasting over a period of years was a big challenge with that one. I mean, everything I make that has light up in it has an innate fragility. How do you, maybe it's tips and tricks, how do you make something that can last years and still be occasionally cleaned? Yeah, I think part of the key is if you break something enough times, you understand what the limits are. Strain relief. Yeah. So, you know, lessons learned, the next time I won't do something that way.

And just having a general sense of how much slack to leave on wires, what fabrics are better for supporting things, what materials to use. Oh, just the cumulative experience I have with that really comes in handy. And I really hate doing repairs, especially when something comes back gross and sweaty. Those are the things we don't want to talk about when someone's eating, especially how bad some of these pieces smell. So I motivated to to make things that don't require repairs. Okay, tactically, as somebody who who might try this, what are three things that would

improve my game for making light-up wear for myself? If you can mount the lights on parts of the garment that don't stretch, that's one key. Either if the whole thing is non-stretch fabric, like a vest or a coat is going to be easier to work with than a thin t-shirt. Think about how long the wires need to be when you're moving. Like when you bend your arm, the line along the outside edge of your arm gets longer. So you don't want to put something there that can't extend. So like LED tape obviously can't extend. So I use a lot of strings of LEDs with S-curves in the wiring in between each light,

and that gives it enough space to flex and extend. Like little springs. A little bit, yeah. Yeah, and also you don't want them to get tangled with each other, so having them stay an S-curve in the plane of the fabric. There might be a base layer that the lights are hand-sewn onto, and then another shear layer over the top. So the light gets through,

but it disguises the fact that you have some wires there. And it disguises the shearing, shirring that would be caused by the S-shape, the stitches. Yeah. I mean, if they're held down the right way, you don't see those pucker or bend at all. I mean that's a trick you can do with picking a fabric that has some texture and hides it, like sequins or some sparkly fabrics will hide the bumps

better than like a perfectly smooth satin fabric that will show every pucker and bump underneath. So it's better to avoid those. a perfectly smooth satin fabric that will show every pucker and bump underneath. So it's better to avoid those. Okay, one more. Maybe about batteries? Yeah. The first question I would ask is how long do you need these to last? There's a big difference between someone that is performing one song in this outfit versus someone that wants it to last all night as a festival.

So there are different strategies there. Oh, I didn't think about just one song. I thought everything would have like a minimum four hours or something. Okay. No, some of my clients just need 10 minutes of battery life and extra batteries to use during rehearsals or enough chargers so they can keep swapping them out Do you standardized batteries? Um, it depends. There's a type of nickel metal hydride pack that I like that's from the RC car industry But it's now that the tech of USB power banks has gotten good enough

Though you have to do a lot more work to make sure you're getting the right voltage you want out of those the tech of USB power banks has gotten good enough. Though you have to do a lot more work to make sure you're getting the right voltage you want out of those. But I use those sometimes too. And now a word from our sponsor, Mouser Electronics. If you're interested in the intersection of neuroscience and engineering, you might want to check out what Mouser Electronics is doing with brain-computer interfaces. It's all about how you can control machines with your mind, and it's one of the coolest areas of

innovation right now. Mouser's Empowering Innovation Together site has great content on brain-controlled interfaces, from videos to in-depth articles and podcasts that break down the tech. If this piques your curiosity, head over to mouser.com slash empowering innovation and explore what's happening with BCI and other exciting developments in the world of design and engineering. What is different about making a costume for someone who's paid you versus clothing for yourself? Or a costume for yourself?

A commissioned piece versus a personal piece? Yeah, well, for myself, I can make whatever I want. I don't have to worry it's going to be judged on workmanship, quality, or matching the aesthetic. I can make it up as I go along. Commission pieces, we have more of a blueprint of it needs to look like this, it needs to do this, needs to be delivered by this date. Some clients will give me some artistic license or they'll say,

do what you think looks good. But on some projects, the design is fully set in stone, you know, by the company that's paying for it and I'm more of a technician for them. What's your favorite type of commission? The ones where I have full artistic license, definitely. If you were off paid for three months, give it a decently long amount of time, and instructed to make something on your own, primarily for yourself, you might be able to give it away, but something you wanted to make, What would be on your list? Well, that almost describes my experience during the pandemic when Broadway shut down and there wasn't any live entertainment.

That was an opportunity for me to catch up with every little art project I had started and not finished and just play around with things. So yeah, now that as the cost of addressable LEDs has gotten lower, there are things that would have been impractical even five or 10 years ago, like making a coat completely solid full of LEDs. I could make something impractical and add to the things I'm decorating my living room with. I think I would like to upholster a couch completely with LEDs. The whole couch.

That's on my list, yes. That would be very cool. For doing something like that where you have a dense array of LEDs, is it still all by hand and very carefully stitching them in or are there automated things that assist you in placing them all? There are a few shortcuts. I find I'm still hand stitching the turnaround points. If I make the line go back and forth to fill in a grid, but I can use machine sewing in between the lines to sandwich the lights between two different shear layers. I've been using that construction technique a lot lately.

And you have your own controller, which, I mean, if you started 25 years ago, you've probably gone through a number of different controllers. Yes. Yeah. They've evolved over time. And I use it sort of as a Swiss Army knife of something I can use to customize for a client very quickly. And features have been added over the years depending on what they need.

So sound reactivity, interfacing to DMX, interfacing to a Bluetooth app, motion sensitivity, those things have gone in little by little. So for a while I was using a Teensy 3.2 and recently jumped to the Teensy 4.1. So I use that for things that have enough space for a driver that big. And the motion reactive, motion sensitive, what kind of effects have you gotten from that? Actually, just in the beginning of using that, it's a feature that's in the new controller that I haven't had time to play with very much. But I think it's called the QUIC interface, QUIC.

It supports that. So I have some of the accelerometers from that family and the effects engine in my software can respond to all kinds of input. So it's set up that I can pick values from the accelerometer and do things. I love inertial measurement units and accelerometers and gyros and magnetometers. And so I'm always curious how people are going to use them for effect. And I mean, I can imagine a lot of things like freefall, you go dark and then when you land an explosion of color and all these other things, the gyros with the ability to tell when things are moving and spinning.

If you have any, if you have, you have anybody you want to try out with those, let me know. I have all kinds of ideas. Yeah. Actually, the very first full body light-up suit I made was motion reactive, but it was using mercury tilt switches, which also tells you how long ago that was. How often do you have to go back and make something lighter? I mean less physically heavy, not brighter. Yeah, right. Right.

It's usually not that much of a problem. Some of the lights that are sealed with huge amounts of silicone like the LED imitation neon. I found that those get kind of heavy to be where, so I just don't use those. And some of the bulkier weather resistant lights made for the sign industry, those would also add a lot of weight. So by just starting with smaller types of lights to begin with, that weight is usually not the problem. The battery will be the biggest, heaviest thing. starting with smaller types of lights to begin with, that weight is usually not the problem. The battery will be the biggest, heaviest thing.

Do you generally use one battery or do you decentralize them? It depends. For people that need crazy long battery life, I've put as many as four packs in them and have a hot swap splitting circuit in there so they can plug in as many as they want. Yeah, that's been the easiest way to handle people that want multiple batteries. And then do you usually place them along the back or is there a better... batteries? Yeah, if it's a coat, most people want them in the back or kind of on the sides under the arms.

It depends on the shape of the garment. Some people don't want to add thickness. They want their waist to look small. I've put things in shoulder pads. If it's a skirt with enough volume, you can strap something to someone's thigh and hide it there. What about a giant coil and you're wirelessly transmitting the power? No, I have not gotten into that kind of thing. You mentioned wireless, the DMX, and I'm curious, wireless stuff always makes me nervous in

a professional setting. For like music applications, you know, wireless guitar interface, or not interfaces, but wireless guitar. Yeah, transmitting. For concerts and stuff, I always feel like, oh, that's just, it makes me cringe because like, there's so much that can go wrong with RF. Oh, yes, yes, definitely. Do you have problems with that? Or is that mostly kind of all settled down and the technology is pretty stable and figured out? I mean, if anything, it's gotten harder.

I work with a professional DMX vendor, RC4. They worked with me a lot when I did a project for the Rockettes where we needed to control up to 36 dancers separately. Each of them also had a wireless thing in each tap shoe for microphones. Oh my. And the RF situation in Radio City music halls, you know, it was pretty intense.

So we had to do a lot of on-stage testing and range testing. That was a multi-year project to do that, but it led to a custom device, a small pixel driver, basically, that they still sell. And you can hook it up to RGB LEDs yourself, or I use the I squared C interface to talk to my controller.

And we see the whole DMX feed, and we can decide what channels we want to respond to, and use those to trigger parameters in the software for different effects. So we can minimize the number of channels we're using, and that helps with signal strength if you're not, you know, using the entire DMX universe all at once. There is an application for motion sensitive lighting. The Rockettes. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Can you tell us about something that didn't work? Yeah, well continuing with the DMX,

back then, well, as more and more people have cell phones and there's Wi-Fi everywhere, the 2.4 gigahertz band is just almost unusable. So in North America and a few other places, you can use 900 megahertz. So sometimes that works, but for a world tour, that's going to be a problem. So last year I did some work with Coldplay, and they have a lot of experience navigating these kinds of technical concerns. So it was a fast turnaround for their initial order, and that was for outfits for a music video. So they were confident that

they could handle the 2.4 gigahertz version of wireless DMX for purposes of shooting the video. But then they wanted to also use the costumes on tour. So that became a question of... Oops, we picked the wrong thing. Well, no. We'd have to develop something custom. And yeah, we actually did. We went back to kind of a much simpler control where there's already audio analysis happening

in my controller. It's the MSGQ7, I think. Anyway, we basically turned it into a tone analyzer, and using an in-ear mic system, we could send different combinations of audio tones to trigger, like play pattern one, play pattern two, stuff like that. So that was also some quick development work. For that, I worked with my friend Kent Suzuki, also a mutter, of Right Brain Electronics. He collaborates with me on a lot of stuff. He's especially an audio person, so we were happy to make that happen.

So that's an alternative to work in different frequencies, because with the in-ear mic systems, you can customize what you're broadcasting on. But basically this was a modem. I guess so yeah. Okay. Well this this chip you mentioned the MSG EQ7 is really interesting I didn't realize these existed they're basically like really small sort of like a really crude FFT chip with eight pins. Yeah, yeah. And it outputs a couple of bands and gives you how much power is in each one, I guess.

I mean, is it DTMF? No. Okay. No, it's for making graphic equalizer things for audio, but you can get the output and use it for whatever you want. Yeah, it does the processing for you so your microprocessor doesn't have to carry that load. I mean you have a Teensy, you have a lot of that. Right, yes.

So we used it in the old version and yes, converting to doing more complicated spectral analysis with the Teensy. It's on the wish list but that's not implemented yet. So for the time being I'm still using that external chip to do that part of the work. Cost is important, but it's not the final driver for you, is it? Not from Coldplay.

Oh, sorry. No, I mean, the entertainment industry, they do care about their budgets. It's not unlimited, unlike what some people imagine. But yeah, so it's, I think it's more important that it's good than that it's cheap. But they, you know, it's still not, you know, open checkbook for all this. Yeah. Especially for a show or something where you're replicating maybe a lot of costumes and have backup costumes, I assume? Yeah, yeah. Most professional shows, if they're going to be touring for a while or they do

a lot of shows per week, that's built into the budget is you have a certain number of backup costumes or a plan for how you're going to repair things. And I guess I didn't talk about washability before. A lot of these things are going to be spot clean only. Some, I didn't talk about washability before. A lot of these things are going to be spot clean only. Some fancy fabrics are that way. Anyway, if it is something that you need to wash, we figure out a way to make the electronics removable or maybe there's a lining that gets unzipped and you wash that part. For the Rockettes project, all the electronics were removable

because the lights had kind of like a button stud on top, like you would see in cufflinks, and the strings of lights could be fully removed from the garment so they could dry clean them. But it took more than an hour per coat to take them out or put them in, you know, times 36 coats. So they ended up not dry cleaning them as often as they thought they would, but it was good to have that option. Yeah, I think about some of the concerts I've seen that performers are basically running for four hours at a time. Yeah, well, we hope that they're only wearing the light-up thing for the song where they're

using it and not for the whole show, just getting it sweaty. I had one client where it was agreed that they were just going to wear it for one song, but the stylist says, well, he liked it so much he was keeping it on for the whole concert and it got so sweaty that the lights were getting corroded and falling off. This was back when these were the single color through hole LEDs. You could pierce them through leather and mount them on the inside and it made a nice little stud effect. But if you get that leather hot and sweaty and wet, it's like dipping the whole thing in a jacuzzi,

basically. So when they told me the lights were falling off, I got a little worried, and they said they would FedEx it to me. So I opened up a FedEx box. Oh, no. The coat was still wet. Oh, no. So like, yeah, this is your problem. And they'd been setting it up with fans blowing on it, and that still was a problem. So. At what point does it short and cause even more special effects?

If it got to the battery, that would have been bad, or to the power input to the controller. But the current running through the LEDs themselves wasn't bad enough to hurt you really. I have done photo shoots at the beach here near my house with some things plugged into batteries and the wave came in a little farther. And I have it on video of exactly when the thing went off, when the salt water got to the battery. So, yeah, I know, don't do that. I mean, you've got to do it once or twice just to make sure you understand the ramifications.

Yes. Okay, I want to go back all the way back to the beginning. You have a PhD in bioengineering, you're working in aerospace, finite element analysis, which is still one of those things that's kind of magic today, even though it's a lot more prevalent. You do the wearable art show, and then you start to pick this up as more than a hobby. Yeah. When was the, what did you introduce yourself as when you worked in aerospace? Engineer, aerospace engineer? Yeah, I was, I said project engineer on my business card. Do you remember the first time you introduced yourself as an artist?

It happened gradually over time. When I first started doing the light-up clothes, my business card said fashion engineer. So it was a progression from that. I guess I'd always considered myself an artist in the sense it was what I did as my main hobby, going back to childhood. But I didn't feel like I was allowed to call myself that professionally. And as I started to make a pivot towards doing more non-wearable things that could be marketed more as art, I had to reframe things and realize, well, I'm already doing art. It's just, I mean, yes, some of it's more commercial, but I just go all in.

And yeah, I'm an artist and some of the stuff I make is wearable things for commercial clients. And some of it's just art for art's sake. So let's talk a little bit about the art for art's sake. Do you count the pillows in there or not? They're kind of in a middle ground, I guess. Do you count the pillows in there or not? They're kind of in a middle ground, I guess. How much of your art is custom versus prefabricated? In terms of one-offs or versus multiple copies of things?

Because it's all made by me. In terms of where the impetus comes from, kind of the commission problem. You sell pillows that are already fabricated or maybe you get an order and suddenly fabricate it, but you also sell art pieces that are not listed on your website ahead of time? Yeah, for the most part, the art is all me. I'm happy to do commissions, but most of that is just I made what I wanted to make and then tried to sell it afterwards. And it's the opposite of the business model with the costumes where I sell it first and then I make it, which is a relatively safe

business model. And I'm thankful for that, that pays my bills and allow me to build up the portfolio and all that. But the other things, that's my chance to just make what I want to make. LESLIE KENDRICK For me as a consultant, I only really get to do those what I want to make when I don't have a paying client waiting for me to make what they want to make. Is it the same for you or do you set aside time to follow your own ideas? Yeah, for a long time I was so busy with the costumes that I had no time to do the just-for-fun hobby things,

unless it was the time I would take off to prepare and go to Burning Man. For a long time, that was my big creative outlet outside of the costumes. COLLEEN Wait, wait. Was it a creative outlet or was it the best networking opportunity? I didn't see Burning Man as a networking thing. I know there are people that treat it differently, but yeah. A lot of my clients would buy things that they could wear at Burning Man, but that was all sold off Playa in the months before that. So yeah, as I decided to make the pivot that I wanted to do more art that I instigated, I guess, I would make time for it. And part of the way of building up your portfolio as an artist is to do juried shows.

So you have to have a body of work that you can submit to things. You can't just keep submitting the same pieces over and over again. They want to see new stuff and development and evolution. So I've been working pretty hard on that over the past five or six years. So I have deadlines on that side too. So it's not just costumes. I switch back and forth between those kinds of projects. One of those is kaleidoscopic comfort. Let me try that again. Kaleidoscopic comfort. Yes.

And that's in the San Diego International Airport. Yeah, I'm really excited about that. They do an annual temporary art installation with the theme changes every year. And this year's theme is Mirror Mirror. It's inspired by the Southern California light and space art movement of the 1960s. And the idea is how that legacy is reflected in what art is being made today. So a lot of it was about light and color and materials and borrowing materials from the industries of the region. So my stuff fit in pretty well that I'm using

electronics and my background in tech and maybe a little bit of the entertainment industry flair. And the pieces I made, I call it kaleidoscopic comfort because it looks a little bit of the entertainment industry flair. And the pieces I made, I call it kaleidoscopic comfort because it looks a little bit like a kaleidoscope with the six-way mirroring, but it's also made out of padded fluffy fabric. So it's soft and comforting to look at and comfort in literally being soft. Do people get to touch it?

Officially you're not supposed to. There are little suggested ropes to keep you away, but it can handle people touching it. I'm used to things being abused much, much more. So yeah, it's been up for a few months and they look fine. I was just there the other day. Do you have advice for people considering getting into art as a career? Well, I will say it will be harder than you imagine and you will make a lot less money than you will imagine, at least initially. So it's good if you have a day job that you

can use to fund it, even a part-time job. I feel fortunate that my day job is also an artistic thing. But yeah, I'm not sure what other advice I'd have because I feel like I have not figured out how to support myself from strictly making art I want to make versus doing commissions. It's difficult for me when I think about making art because if I use my engineering or consulting hourly rate on the art, it becomes unconsciously expensive for what it is. How do you value your time when you're making art, or do you just not factor that? It's tricky. I had to decide pretty early on that I was not going to compete with the cheapest possible mass-produced stuff.

I sought out clients that needed something handmade and custom and with tech support that wasn't on the other side of the world. So I've tried to stay in the realm of working with clients that can afford something a little on the pricier side. But yeah, I would be making much more money pricing myself as an engineer. So I'm trying to find the happy medium of making things accessible sometimes. I know the pillow seems expensive if it's compared to the super cheap things out there, but hopefully there are people that recognize the artistic value, and those are the people that

I'm looking for as customers. Is your time the most expensive thing in most of your artwork? It varies. There is a period in time where you had to make your own pixels before the individually addressable LEDs that we use now came out. Weren't NeoPixels the best thing ever? Yeah. It used to cost close to $50 each per pixel, just in hardware costs.

So yeah, to have that down to pennies now is amazing. So now it's probably back up to my labor and design time being the more expensive part. So much has changed in this industry. I mean, I remember using three LEDs and wanting to make Christmas lights that you could change the colors of. And it was some 1990s something. And it was, I mean, I really thought about it.

I made it a business plan to really like think about it all. And then I realized I didn't want to deal with the cable harness and I just couldn't. And then NeoPixels came out and I was like, okay, this is the right way to do it. Yes. Have there been other technologies like that that you're just like, oh, thank you for finally fixing this? been other technologies like that that you're just like, oh, thank you for finally fixing this? The NeoPixels is the main one.

Because yeah, I spent many years making things with single color LEDs, all wired in parallel. So there's just a huge nest of wires inside those things. You were stuck with whatever color the LEDs were. You couldn't change them later, despite what some of my clients asked for. So now, you know, it's great you can build something without caring what color you're going to light it up. You can do all the programming afterwards and figure that out. So just being able to buy spools of pre-wired addressable LEDs,

that's the game changer for me. Do you do most of the programming or do you end up handing it off to the tech folk on the artists, the musicians, the shows, tech folk? Yeah, for some projects they want to program it themselves, and with the Rockettes it was possible because we used a system where they visualized it in a simulator and the content was put on SD cards that then went into each of the costumes. Since then I've migrated to a controller where the effects engine is running on parameters that I dictate. So the software is really only intended to be used by

me and not the end user. So I will prepare a menu of effects that the client will approve from video previews. And most people only want to get into that much. For people that want more control, I'll teach them what all the parameters do, and through DMX, they'll assign each slider to affect percent of lights twinkling or adjust the background color and things like that. But the learning curve on that adds a lot of time to the project. So for the most part, I'm designing effects to meet their requests. Have you looked at any of the off-the-shelf controllers now? Like, I mean, Pixel Blaze?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've used Pixel Blaze for some things. The style of programming is a lot different for me. I realized the system that I've developed over the years is designed more for visual thinking. I defined a background color where I can draw a literal bitmap that is tiled and moved in space behind the pixels that I have mapped out and then I apply effects on that like a wipe or a twinkle. So I feel like I can be in, you know, I guess art brain mode while art brain mode and design something very quickly.

When I look at the way pixel blaze programs are generated, I feel like the type of thought that goes into it is to generate certain kinds of patterns. Some things just get really, really hard to do. With my approach, even though some things are clunky, like if a client wants a very specific path of LEDs to light up, like this light at the shoulder and then follow a path spiraling around and down the leg, it's yellow and then this, I can do all of that with my effects generator without having to make it completely formulaic, if that makes sense. It's funny.

Ben, who is the creator, Ben Hunke of Pixel Blades, came to our 200th episode party. That was so long ago. We were such children. This is going to be $4.99 just so you're aware that there is some distance. I'm just missing the big one, huh? But Ben came with, I think, what was one of the very first pixel blazes, and he had a hat that had the LEDs, and everything was based on functions, usually trigonomic functions, like the sine function. And I was like, how am I supposed to visualize

what this means? Well, that would be the way I would start with that though, the way I think, you know? I know, and it was really cool, but I see where you might say Les formulaic, because he does tend to like formulas. Although he's had so much progress. Way beyond that now.

It's so far beyond. That was cats or hats, wasn't it? I don't remember. Yeah, okay. Well, we're not having a party for 500, we're sorry. Well, we are, but nobody else is coming. Cupcakes for all who are in this room. Do you have anything you can envision that you want from a future controller?

If you could just wave your wand and someone gave you the perfect thing, do you know what that would be? I don't know. It's always nice as they get smaller, they're easier to hide. LL – Lower power because batteries are – AMT – Yeah, they become less expensive. I guess that aside from my labor, that's still one of the more expensive parts of the system. I don't know. I think my wishlist is more about the LEDs and the fabric side of things

at this point. Okay. What do you have? Oh. More LEDs, smaller LEDs, giant chains of tiny LEDs? Well the strings of the popular, I guess, pebble pixels or seed pixels, a lot of people call them. Those are great for doing high-density thing, but you need to put a sheer layer of fabric on them. You can't really mount that kind of light in a hole or a grommet. So there are other pixels that I make by hand with lenses on them so that I can mount them in holes,

you know, have them protrude through an opaque fabric instead of having a sheer layer covering everything. So if there were some off-the-shelf options for that of strings of lights with little protruding lenses that would make some things easier. I'm working on my own prototypes of them, but I don't really have a way to manufacture them on a big scale. And what about the fabric? Oh, a big exciting thing has been the whole print on demand revolution for fabric,

where you can upload your own graphics and get it printed on lots of different things. I would like that for fake fur. Because the light diffuses. Well, to do a pattern, basically. Light will diffuse really nicely through white or light color faux fur, but not through black. So years ago, I had a polka dot pattern where I put a light inside each circle, and it was a neat effect. And I'd like to do more geometric patterns where the black and white is embedded in the fur.

And there are things you can buy commercially, but I'd love to design my own. Have you looked at any of the 3D prints on what's usually mesh? Yes, yes. I'm just getting into that. I bought a 3D printer a couple months ago and I have not had time to do very much on it yet. But that, yeah, definitely on the top of my list of things I want to get into. I have seen some people make what looks like armor or scales or claws.

And I've wondered if you could get some sort of light effect behind those to leak out. Yeah, definitely. I do a lot of work with stencils. Like if someone wants their name in lights, I'll make something that has a sheer part and an opaque part and then backlight it. So 3D printing things will, you know, is another good way to do that. Yeah. You have a blog that's part of your website. Yes. And it talks about some of the things you've discovered with lighting. Do you have any favorite posts or things we should look at?

Um, gee, I'm trying to remember. Are you talking about my art website or my clothing website? So I have blogs on both. I tend to use the blog entries to talk about shows or time sensitive things or topics that don't fit into like the gallery page. Which one did I read? I guess I read the one that talked about the kaleidoscope comforts show. So that must have been your art site. Yeah, that's on the Janet Hansen art site. Yeah. And your costuming site, what is that one? Enlighted.com.

And that's without the final E, right? E-N-L-I-G-H-T-E-D.com. Spelled correctly. Excellent. Much easier to remember than the ones that aren't. Some autocorrects change it to enlightened. That's the problem with having a name like that. And there are so many companies working with light that have variations on it.

As a joke, I bought in brighted.com. Yeah, it's an ongoing thing. Well, Janet, do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Yeah, I guess I'd like to share the message that art is good for you and encourage people to find time in your life to experience it or make it. And yeah, I guess that's it. Thank you very much. Our guest has been Janet Hansen, LED artist, lighted clothing designer, and founder of Enlighted Designs.

Thanks, Janet. Yeah, thank you so much. This has been great. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you for Deborah for introducing me to Janet. Thank you to Mouser for sponsoring the show. And thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show.embedded.fm or at the contact link on embedded.fm. And now a quote to leave you with from Rene Descartes.

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?