Projects
99 postsMixxtape - the first boards, and what went wrong
The first 20 Mixxtape boards arrived from JLCPCB. One boots, the voltage regulator overheats, and there is a list of changes for version two.
Read postTokyo Metro PCB - 248 stations, work in progress
A 320 × 280 mm PCB map of the Tokyo subway with one RGB LED for each of its 248 stations, part way through routing
Read postMontréal Métro PCB - porting the SkyTrain board to a new city
A 160 mm square PCB map of the Montréal Métro with one RGB LED for each of its 73 stations
Read postVancouver SkyTrain PCB v3 - generated from real geography
The third redesign of the Vancouver SkyTrain PCB, built from real map data instead of hand-drawn artwork
Read postMixxtape - a cassette you can actually record on
A cassette-shaped PCB, sized to fit a real Norelco case, that actually records
Read postGlitch in the CounterProductive Button – June 28 to July 4
The CounterProductive button went offline June 28 to July 4, 2025 after a WiFi and MQTT failure, and version 5 adds a backup server.
Read postOngoing Project status updates 2025 June 10th
Status update on the Counter Productive button, which hit 1000 presses in 71 days, and the Sky Pixels project.
Read postPCB Tips and Tricks
A few tools I keep coming back to when making PCBs: EasyEDA2Kicad, Gingerbread, and KiKit.
Read postTetragonal Trapezohedron Retrospective
Retrospective of a Tetragonal Trapezohedron lamp built from eight kite-shaped LED PCBs welded together.
Read postSeeed Xiao ESP32-C6 using Adafruit CircuitPython 9.1.1 blink sketch
How to get a Seeed Xiao ESP32-C6 board up and running with Adafruit CircuitPython 9.1.1 and blink an LED.
Read postPCB Metro maps retrospective
Retrospective of the Vancouver SkyTrain and Washington DC Metro PCB maps with LEDs that light up as trains arrive.
Read postDodecahedron PCB Retrospective
What went right and wrong building a dodecahedron lamp from twelve LED pentagon PCBs, about $60 USD from JLCPCB for 25 panels.
Read postDodecahedron PCB Design
Design notes for a pentagon PCB panel with addressable LEDs, twelve of which weld together into a dodecahedron lamp.
Read postPanels - Stained glass windows project
Walkthrough of every panel in the digital stained glass window series: beehive, mountains, stars, hexagon weave, heart, sun, and more.
Read postDigital stained glass workshop - Post mortem
Post mortem from the September 2019 digital stained glass workshop at Maker Labs: what worked, what broke, and what six attendees built.
Read postDigital stained glass workshop
A workshop at MakerLabs Vancouver where attendees design a 9x9 inch illuminated stained glass window with WS2811 LEDs and CNC-cut foam.
Read postCosts - Stained glass windows project
Bill of materials for one stained glass panel: pixels, acrylic, plywood, and laser time totalling about $156 CAD.
Read postWood frames - Stained glass windows project
Building hexagonal baltic birch frames for the stained glass panels on the table saw, with a grooved channel holding the acrylic.
Read postProgramming - Stained glass windows project
Writing the firmware for the stained glass panels with FastLED on an ESP8266, using LED offset sets to drive randomised patterns.
Read postHardware - Stained glass windows project
Parts list for the stained glass windows: white acrylic, square WS2812B LEDs, a Wemos D1 mini, and a 5V 5A supply.
Read postDesigning panels - Stained glass windows project
How the stained glass panel patterns are designed in Fusion 360 and Inkscape, then exported as SVGs for the laser cutter.
Read postTech Demo - Stained glass windows project
Tech demo notes for the stained glass windows: gluing acrylic, building cardstock dividers, and killing LED hotspots.
Read postInspiration - Stained glass windows project
Inspiration for the stained glass windows project, from Lumina Lab's Stoicheia dodecahedron to mandala work on Instagram.
Read postKangaroo words
A python script that hunts kangaroo words, smaller words hidden inside larger ones, across the 20,000 most common English words.
Read postESP8266 bitcoin tracker
A Wemos D1 and OLED shield that polls the Coindesk API every five minutes and shows the current BTC price and running profit.
Read post3D printing in vancouver
A guide to 3D printing in Vancouver: where to get prints done, what printer to buy, where to find models, and which shop to avoid.
Read postHalloween LED Fox Mask
A coroplast low-poly fox mask wired with NeoPixels and a WeMos D1 mini, with a brightness dial added after it proved too bright at a Halloween party.
Read postAlternatives to the Vancouver Hackspace.
A list of alternatives to Vancouver Hackspace after its community turned toxic, with makerspaces, meetups, and tool libraries.
Read postCNC Zen Garden - Vancouver Maker Faire 2016 Post Mortem
Post mortem of the CNC zen garden at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2016: a RAMPS short, skipped steps, and the fixes that worked.
Read postFixing a broken particle photon firmware in windows for the L3D Cube
How to recover an L3D Cube Particle Photon from the red SOS blink by reflashing firmware on Windows.
Read postLayered paper cut with spacers between each layer
An old layered red paper-cut design reworked with coroplast spacers between each layer, after seeing Charles Clary's work.
Read postPaper bookshelf from DIY Furniture book
A paper prototype of the slot-together bookshelf from the DIY Furniture book, built before cutting it in real wood.
Read postLaser cut, layered circles
A 5-layer laser-cut paper circle design with a quick Inkscape tutorial on offsetting strokes with Stroke to Path.
Read postA blue star sign
A glowing backlit star sign cut from coroplast with 12 RGB LEDs behind it.
Read postMore laser cut Guilloches
More guilloche patterns generated with an Inkscape macro and cut on the VHS laser cutter, with source files on GitHub.
Read postLaser cut spray paint stencils
Spray paint stencils cut on the VHS laser cutter in 15 minutes instead of 2-3 hours by hand, including Cthulhu and Hypnotoad.
Read postPaper cut furniture using SketchChair
Using the open-source SketchChair app to resize chair designs and test-cut them in paper before committing to wood or CNC.
Read postChinese paper cutting done with a laser cutter
Converting Chinese paper-cut silhouettes into vectors and cutting them on the laser cutter, with a branches design as the favourite.
Read postLaser cut 4 pack beer carrier
Three laser-cut 4-pack beer carriers in 6mm birch ply, cut at VHS, with finger grooves that bite when the bottles are full.
Read postLaser cut wooden TRex
A giant laser-cut wooden T-Rex built as an xmas gift, with a wooden base added to keep the 3.5-foot version from tipping.
Read postLife tracking Dec 2013
December 2013 life-tracking dump: app usage, Vancouver movement map, steps, sleep, house temperature, and BC Hydro use.
Read postLaser cut Mario coin boxes
Thirty laser-cut Mario Mystery Box piggy banks for my nephew's birthday party, made on the VHS laser cutter.
Read postIntroduction to Home automation with the Raspberry Pi - Sunday November 24th 2013
VHS workshop on Raspberry Pi home automation: read temperature, motion, and door sensors, log them, and switch relays.
Read postStar-wars engraving with a laser cutter
Star Wars scenes etched into wood on the VHS laser cutter as a birthday gift for a friend.
Read postGetting started with your Raspberry PI
Step-by-step Raspberry Pi starter notes: NOOBS, SSH, AdaFruit WebIDE, and a Python blink script on the GPIO pins.
Read postQuick and easy word clock with a spare monitor and JavaScript
A word clock made by laser-cutting a wood mask of words and placing it over a monitor driven by JavaScript.
Read postGeoGramOne - GPS tracker to Google maps
Reflashed a GeoGramOne GPS tracker board to POST coordinates to a web server and plot them on a Google Map.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Post Mortem
Post mortem on the Giant Claw Game: the claw broke on kid one, so I swapped it for a magnet on a string.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Pictures
Build photos and notes on the Giant Claw Game cart, its drill-motor spindle, and cable tensioning.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Problems
Status check on the Giant Claw one week before Maker Faire: claw and joystick done, gantry pulleys still slipping.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Relay H-Bridge and Circuit Design
Building a relay H-bridge for the Giant Claw gantry motors after the L298 driver could not handle the current.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - The Controls System
Fighting mismatched salvaged drill motors, undersized L298 drivers, and slippery pulleys to get the claw gantry moving.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - The Gantry System
Switching the Giant Claw from a four-motor skycam to a two-motor CoreXY gantry with eight pulleys on top of the cube.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - The Claw, Prototype 3
Claw prototype three adds a geared motor, longer prongs, limit switches, and the wooden frame cube it lives inside.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - The Claw, Prototype 2
Second claw prototype built in wood with brass hinges that actually grips play balls and holds them while swinging.
Read postUsing a Raspberry PI with a webcam to make time lapse videos.
Bash script for a Raspberry Pi and a cheap USB webcam that grabs a timestamped JPEG every ten seconds for time lapse.
Read postReporting the system stats of a Raspberry PI to COSM with python
Python script that pushes Raspberry Pi CPU, RAM and disk stats plus an Arduino light reading up to COSM.
Read postRaspberry PI as a FM transmitter
Turning a Raspberry Pi into an FM transmitter by abusing the spread-spectrum clock on GPIO pin 4.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Controller
Laser-cut controller box for the Giant Claw Game with an arcade joystick, a fire button, and an RJ45 pigtail.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Vancouver Maker Faire 2013 project
Kicking off a giant claw crane game for Vancouver Maker Faire 2013, with research notes on cable rigs and XY tables.
Read postSpace ship mobile
A laser-cut spaceship mobile made at VHS as a baby gift, with painted rings and pre-cut string holes.
Read postRaspberry PI and the GPIO pins
Setting up a Raspberry Pi headless, wiring the GPIO pins to an LED and a magnetic door switch, and pushing readings to COSM.
Read postThe Noun Project - Laser cutter Tips, tricks and resources
Using Noun Project icons as a source for laser-cut pendants, engravings, and geocoin designs.
Read postLasers and Vancouver OpenData
A laser-cut wooden map of Vancouver's roads and parks made from TileMill and city open data.
Read postDrawbot results
Prints from the Marginally Clever drawbot, made as a birthday gift for a nephew.
Read postReddit Holiday Greeting Card Exchange
A holiday card drawn on a Marginally Clever drawbot for the Reddit Gifts greeting card exchange.
Read postLaser cut layered Crystal skull
A clear acrylic crystal skull built from stacked laser-cut slices, threaded together with fishing line.
Read postWooden laser cut pendants
Wooden laser-cut pendants using Noun Project icons and Raphael-generated sacred geometry circles.
Read postAcrylic Ornaments Batch 2
Batch two of acrylic snowflake ornaments, including 3D slot-together designs and Koch snowflake variants.
Read postDesigning Acrylic Christmas Ornaments
Designing acrylic Christmas ornaments in red, white, and black to cut on the VHS laser cutter.
Read postUpdated versions of VHS Lighting Talk Challenge coins
A revised VHS lightning-talk challenge coin design, with 30 cut for the next Super Happy Hacker House.
Read postVHS Lighting Talk Challenge coins - Super Happy Hacker House
Laser-cut acrylic challenge coins for VHS members who give a lightning talk at Super Happy Hacker House.
Read postMaking of Timelapes - Tender Threads €” Bloodshots Canada 2012
Timelapse of building the puppets and sets for the Tender Threads entry in Bloodshots Canada 2012.
Read postVHS raven cache
A first geocache, a magnetic waterproof box hidden in a crow-mural alley near the Vancouver Hackspace.
Read postThe 9th Annual Hot One Inch Action - Teeth
Accepted into the 9th Annual Hot One Inch Action in Vancouver with a button design called Teeth, shown at Hot Art Wet City.
Read postGeo Caching with Wooden nickles
Trying to seed laser-cut wooden nickel geocoins across New York and Toronto caches, with mixed results and a stop at Adventure Box.
Read postSimple acrylic pendants
Quick laser-cut acrylic Hibiscus and ukulele pendants as gifts for family stops on a World Maker Faire trip.
Read postThe last batch of GeoCoins
The final batch of laser-cut wooden geocoins for the New York trip, plus a printed Nautilus Gear from Thingiverse.
Read postMore GeoCoins designs
A fresh round of wooden geocoin designs with the Inkscape source files included.
Read postMore GeoCoins tests
Dialling in the laser settings on 25 test geocoins at VHS and logging them into the thing tracker.
Read postFirst test of making GeoCoins with the laser cuter
First laser-cutter tests for homemade geocoins at VHS, with acrylic QR codes failing and wooden nickels reading just fine.
Read postThing tracking system and GeoCaching
A home-built thing-tracking web app for laser-cut geocoins, made after the official GeoCaching tracking codes cost too much.
Read postLook what I made - Compass table
A Vancouver Maker Faire build using a thrift store table, two sheets of acrylic, and 1000 ten-cent compasses from Alibaba.
Read postLook what I made - Acrylic chess set
An acrylic chess set cut on the new VHS laser cutter from a Thingiverse design, the first laser cutter project.
Read postLEGO 3D Milling Machine - 3D Printer
A video of a 3D milling machine built entirely out of LEGO.
Read postMaking a Gear Heart
An eight-hour MakerBot print of a multi-gear heart for a friend's birthday, made at Vancouver Hackspace.
Read postCrowdfund the Rygo
A crowdfunding push for the Rygo, a Bathsheba Grossman sculpture aiming to be the biggest 3D print in North America.
Read postRGB LED POV Globe - Software
Software progress on the POV globe with a frame buffer class, bluetooth serial loading, and an ADXL345 accelerometer.
Read postGiant spin art - Maker Faire 2011 Vancouver
A giant spin art box built in a weekend from a junkyard washing machine motor for Maker Faire Vancouver.
Read postRGB LED POV Globe - Research
Research notes for a 64 RGB LED persistence-of-vision globe big enough to stand inside, with shift registers and motor planning.
Read postTwo layer Stencils
Cutting and spraying two-colour stencils as a step up from the single-layer ones, with a five-to-ten colour piece next.
Read postArduino Infrared, Blue Robot challenge, Burning man and superman
Working on the VHS Blue Robot IR beacon challenge with an Arduino, plus WordPress 3.0, Burning Man, and Vancouver event links.
Read postMaBeGroMo Rules
Joining MaBeGroMo, the November alternative to NaNoWriMo where you put the razor away and grow a beard until December.
Read postMy Ferrofluid Project
A failed attempt to build a Sachiko Kodama style ferrofluid sculpture with a 500lb electromagnet and a litre of fluid.
Read postMark Jenkins - Plastic babies
Mark Jenkins makes cheap plastic babies from plastic wrap and clear tape, with ideas for turning them into LED-lit sculptures.
Read postCreate an invisible book shelf
An invisible bookshelf made by hiding an L bracket behind the bottom book of a stack.
Read postA mini hydroelectric damn that runs a LED inside your shower head.
A forum project to put a tiny water-driven turbine inside a shower head so it powers an LED while you shower.
Read postUSB Powered Charger for Two AA NiMH/NiCd Cells
Plans for a USB powered fast charger for two AA NiMH or NiCd cells, based on Stefan Vorkoetter's circuit.
Read postLego Ice cube Tray
A $7.99 silicone tray from the Lego online store that freezes water into stackable Lego brick ice cubes.
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