I decided I wanted to make something a little more elegant for Halloween this year (and for future parties / Burning Man). It’s a little hard to capture on video, but it’s really quite mesmerizing: This is a tuxedo jacket that I bought at a thrift shop on Valencia St. ($17 for a Dior jacket that fit perfectly!) I ran WS2811 strips along the seams so...

I have a lot of hobbies and enjoy experimenting with electronics, food, cocktails, party concepts, chemistry and physical feats. Sometimes people tell me I should write this stuff down. I was never very good at blogging, but I’m trying again. My self-hosted WordPress installation fell into disrepair and I didn’t have the patience to fix it. I tried...

A couple of years ago, I found some posts online about hacking the protocol that controlled GE Christmas lights. Combined with an Arduino and an MSGEQ7 (along with some posterboard and a bladed tool that cuts circular holes) I made this: That was fun and people thought it was neat, but there are always more interesting things to do than just a grid....

For New Years 2013, my friend Steve Davis organized a big party in Geyserville at a very strange venue with lots of Ocelots. I had an old HL1606 light strip that I’d bought from Adafruit so I thought it might be interesting to make something for the party. Unlike newer light strips (the new WS2812 integrated strips are awesome), the HL1606 doesn’t support...

When the Arduino YÚN was announced, I was definitely curious. Many people said it was overpriced because a Raspberry Pi with all the necessary add-ons was slightly cheaper and more powerful.  Although I’ve managed to do some interesting things with my Pi (more on my home automation system to come), I’ve definitely found that it’s always been a little...

So, it’s been over a year since I last posted here. For some reason the platform never quite clicked for me. I’ve been enjoying using Google+ (disclaimer, yes I work for Google) a lot more, sharing photos, links and thoughts there. I’m not sure I’ll post here any more, but I’ll leave it up cause some of the entries are still pretty popular. Anyway,...