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About Steven Smethurst a Vancouver based maker, hacker, and installation artist
A list of blog posts made by Steven Smethurst a Vancouver based maker, hacker, and installation artist
A list of blog posts made by Steven Smethurst a Vancouver based maker, hacker, and installation artist
Timeline of Steven Smethurst projects, workshops, exhibits, talks
AI/ML created birds for the Flocking AI project
What am I thinking now
What am I doing now
A list of project that Steven Smethurst has worked on
A list of tools that Steven Smethurst uses regularly
Projects
A deck of cards that helps inspire creative works.
Hunt and seek game for Burnaby BC
Snapshot of the sky
A big button in a park
A Metro map made with PCBs
Skull Card Game designed with PCBs
100 project ideas, a new one each day.
Generating bird images from Mid Journey
A monthly habit tracker inspired by Simone Giertz “The Every Day Calendar”
Converting a Lighthouse Redemption Machine into a liquor and glassware cabinet
A deck of playing cards featuring photos of birds from around Vancouver
Short movie about the feelings of a puppet
Visted every Vancouver city park during COVID-19 for a selfie
Illuminated Stained Glass Sixteen Segment Display
Illuminated Stained Glass Tetragonal Trapezohedron sculpture
A series of hexagon stainglass
A series of color changing clouds for Asics New York popup shop.
A custom electric bike carousel installed at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel downtown Vancouver.
Moving lasers which generate twisting fractal shapes
A game using a single strip of LEDs as a display. Made for Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2017
A interactive lamp that mimics thunderstorm cloud.
A Wooden icosahedron with LEDs used for festivals as a marker
A low polygon fox head mask with an array of LEDS create patterns on the faces.
Laser cut silhouette of branches in a tree, illuminated with color changing LEDs
A Zen garden controlled by a CNC XY platform.
Plan for hanging origami-style plastic hearts with internal LEDs from a tree in Mount Pleasant. Never built.
A constantly updated map of interesting places from around the world
Mirroed dome
A series of single day projects.
A large claw game made for Vancouver Maker Faire 2014
Laser cut map of vancouver with GPS heat map of a years worth of travel.
Flocking AI
Posts
On June 21, 2026 I switched the site from Jekyll to Astro and rebuilt the theme from scratch. Here's why.
Bookmarks from March 2026
CounterProductive downtime between June 28-July 4
A status update of the Counter productive, Sky Pixles projects
A few tools I keep coming back to when making PCBs: EasyEDA2Kicad, Gingerbread, and KiKit.
2024 year end Movies and TV Reviews
Retrospective of the Tetragonal Trapezohedron polyhedron lamp
How to get a Seeed Xiao ESP32-C6 board up and running with Adafruit CircuitPython 9.1.1 and blink an LED.
ChatGPT pretends to be a useless machine and tries to stop you from flipping the switch.
Retrospective of the Vancouver skytrain and Washinton Metro PCB maps
Retrospective of the dodecahedron polyhedron lamp
PCB design of a pentagon plate of a dodecahedron lamp
Is it cheaper to build your own solution to portable CPAP battery, or buy something off the shelf?
A tutorial on how to enable copy and paste on website that disable copy and paste. Specifically BrimFinancial
Added /now and /uses pages, moved old /about content to a /timeline page, and made /about the new home page.
Looking back at 100 days of daily project ideas in 2023, what got built, what got scrapped, and why I burned out doing it.
A 2024 snapshot of the software, hardware, camera gear, and shop tools I use day to day.
2023 year end Movies and TV Reviews
Plans for a Gulf Islands lavender farm with distillery, beehives, chickens, and a hillside field for retirement.
Patreon subscription for people receive one of Steven’s projects twice a year
GeoHashing on a pendant for exploring the world
A modern decoder ring that uses strong modern cryptography encryption methods
Top down survival game where everything can be leveled up
Cheap and easy way of projecting a message onto a building
A horizontal matrix of 16 water nozzles in a grid on bike carriage to draw with water on the sidewalk
All the rest of the ideas that did not make the cut
Use a sorting algorithm to efficiently sort a list of things in order
A video series of puppets saying common quotes and truisms
Desktop application UI wrapped around common Windows Linux MacOS command line tools
Visualization of robots as they attack critical infrastructure using Conways Game of Life
Create a series of 3D printed jigs for making exploded electronic circuits without PCBs
A Wheres Waldo hunt and search photo book that teaches people how to ID local species of birds.
A art installation where a user enters a room that looks like the inside of a kaleidoscope
A website that uses flowcharts and other tools for helping with life choices all users submitted
Paper sculptures in glass terrarium with flowers, house plants, and other nature things
Sending a Baltic birch plywood postcard via the Canadian post of every mammal in BC
A lamp made of acrylic shards of pressed flowers in the shape of a lotus flower
A staircase tunnel of glowing dried flowers in shards of glass
A poster of level maps for classic 80s and 90s video games nostalgia
Allows people to assert their experience with a skill with 3rd parties confidence score
A identify provider for all digital platforms based on social trust
Citizen science water quality monitoring device
Connect old style phones together in a point to point telephone network
Create equilateral triangles LED panels to construct LED polyhedron shapes
Give Vancouver its own unique tone by installing wind chime like devices in the trees across the city
A mesh network of birdhouses that chirp messages to each other using audio for the physical layer of the network
An art installation of a sphere of LEDS that show the night sky from outside earth
Glowing tentacle monster made out of flexible vinyl ducting and LEDs
A sensor that can tell you when you are hungry or dehydrated, and other basic human needs
Using magnets coils to levitate the mouse in the air, and 9 degrees of freedom sensors to detect motion
Use a CNC to make paint dot paintings one dot at a time
All the bad one liner ideas that wont get developed into anything
Connect ChatGPT to Text to Voice application inside a Furby/teady bear style robotic pet
End-to-end encrypted digital vault for storing and sharing sensitive information after death
Use a accelerometer to control pacman on a LED Matrix
A necklace penchant that has a LED matrix that displays Atari Space Invaders animations
A crowd of mini wacky inflatable arm man (Air Dancers) in a matrix controlled by sound
A generated a social media platform for trees in a city
A robotic marionettes that dances and makes generative art during a music festival
Generative line drawings in sand based on the album The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd
Layered paper craft light boxes of the different chapters of The Little Prince
Stainedglass windows for each location in Alices Adventures in Wonderland
A series of small artworks, one per quotable line from a book, movie, or album, built and shared on a steady schedule.
A fantasy movie league where players draft actors and films to earn points based on award nominations and wins, box office sales, and other movie statistics
A movie recommendation site based on the people who work on movies
Elevate your bathroom or kitchen with unique and meaningful ceramic tiles inspired by mathematical shapes and designs that are both visually stunning and tell a story
A dice that when rolled shows a random number within a range on a screen
Instead of using Blurb publishing tools create the book using HTML and CSS
A coffee table with a CNC topographical map with contour and elevation lines
Recreate the German Enigma machine cipher device as a kit using PCBs
Origami Sacred Geometry + Individually addressable RGB LEDs + Wall Sculpture + interactive
Betting against consumers on human nature
Radio badge that pulses when other badges are nearby
An automatically weekly generated global scavenger hunt with leaderboard
Take several time lapse videos of the Cherry Blossom park while its blooming
A outdoor game that rewards you for spreading your DNA to as many other players as possible
A convention badge
A convention badge for BACnet plugfest that is useful for testing
A 8 position dip switches breakout board
Youre a Biopunk building their garden by selectively breeding for DNA markers in plants
Your incharge of mutations and creation of your army You send your army out to collect food and battle enemies Tower defense style game without towers.
A game where you start as the smallest living thing, then grow and evolve depending on what actions you do the most
Membership owned club house that can be used for members use.
A chatbot that can organize simple tasks by date, location, or person
Light shines through colored glass that rotates to produce washes of colors on the ceiling
Get your contacts to update their information in your address book
A website that asks you 20 questions and tries to uniquely identify you in the world What are the optimal questions to ask?
Use AI to help with labor intensive grant writing
A segmented display that combines a forgotten numbering system and a method for telling time that no one uses
Following the pattern of a japanese cloth armor from the 1800s, make modern cyberpunk equivalent armor for raves
A chatbot that gives you writing prompts for daily journaling. Ask follow up questions for clarity. Builds a web of knowledge about you and gives feedback
Use cell phone sensors to create a filtered list of suitable plants for a space then show the plants using Augmented Reality. Dating app for plants
An A2 LED panel that shows a progress bar of how much of your life has passed and how much time is left.
A website that lets users upload their own glyphs images for the top of keycaps
Resource management, worker placement, exploration tile game.
Laser cut or PCB fancy versions of the Skull card game
A mystery letter is delivered filled with puzzles that need to be solved in order to give directions to a meeting place for the start of an adventure.
A programmable strip of LEDs that can be attached on a rod for light painting.
A live interactive translink metro map of Vancouver using LEDs on a PCB
Use AI to summarize large amounts of information into brief notes and key points
A photo of Vancouver’s skyline with each building painted over in a different artistic style
Create a series of buttons with labels, install them around the city, see what ones get pushed most
A photo book of just the tops of very tall buildings, just the top few flors, just the tip
Traveling art exhibit of all the sculptures from a single great master 3d printed in marble
Adding fully addressable RGB light to your lego creation, using lego as light pipes,
AI generated a personalized story book that incorporates information that you provide, following the common story types. Hero's journey, etc, made for kids
Like, Pictionary but an AI draws the picture and you try and guess the prompt that was used to generate the picture
An ear-shaped electronic badge that records speech to text 24 hours a day using OpenAI Whisper, feeding a personal AI assistant.
Constellation map PCB made with overlapping LEDs
Homes for birds, and puzzles for humans
Create a mobile of regular polyhedrons and other geometry shapes using papercraft
Before the Mario movie release date, create a replica of the Princess Peach castle stained glass window using the digital stained glass method
People are disconnected more than ever and need a reason to reconnect with each other. Create a series of postcards and send packs of them to friends and family, for them to send onwards
A macro pad keyboard with most commonly used Emoji as key caps for quick access when you want to respond to a message with an iconography.
Procedurally generated Art PCB of mushrooms for the GameOfShrooms art project. Backlit LEDs to add a nice glowing effect.
A photo booth where the camera is only triggered when you scream loud enough. Producing a photo with real emotions.
A USB to Serial port board that supports many different physical layers. TTL 3.3v, 5v, RS232, RS485 2wire and 4 wire. DB9, DB25, Screw down terminals, etc
A series of PCB art badges, one for each of the 130 mammals in BC, with LED eyes and an SAO connector for an art show display.
An electronic flute PCB the size of a ruler with hot-swappable keyboard switches, a MEMS mic for breath control, and an ESP32.
Set up a photo booth in a park when the cherry blossoms are blooming, offer to take free portrait photos to the public and use the experience to get better at portrait photography.
2022 year end review.
Post mortem from showing the Flocking AI bird gallery at Maker Labs during Eastside Culture Crawl 2022: pitch, sales, and what to fix.
A gallery of MidJourney-generated 4K UHD artwork sized exactly for Samsung The Frame TV to avoid the mat border, free to download.
Tools and equipment I use in 2022: VS Code, KiCAD, Sony a6400, Sigma 150-600mm, Logitech MX Master 3S, and a Pixel 6 Pro.
Year in review 2021: 31,893 bird photos, 363 species, moving from Vancouver to Burnaby, and a year of working from home stats.
Beginner birding resources for Vancouver: intro videos, local birding sites, and notes from making the Birds of Play card deck.
A list of my current tooks that I am using in 2021
February 2021 brain dump on getting into birding with a Sigma 150-600mm, plotter twitter projects, and a 52-card bird playing deck plan.
Why I will not buy from Dell again: a saga of failed cancellations, lost rewards, wrong shipping addresses, and useless chat support.
A list of boardgames, card games, drawing games, trivia, and social deduction games to play remotely with friends during COVID-19.
Updated podcast list for March 2020 with picks like Clarkesworld, Stack Overflow Podcast, Hello Internet, Reply All, and 99% Invisible.
February 2020 brain dump: pocket operator pinouts, CNC squid kits, maze dice sculptures, photo ideas, and the Hub16 macro pad.
January 2020 brain dump: links on polyhedra, plotter art, LED lava lamps, capacitive touch PCBs, and tools for makers.
Walkthrough of every panel in the digital stained glass window series: beehive, mountains, stars, hexagon weave, heart, sun, and more.
Post mortem from the September 2019 digital stained glass workshop at Maker Labs: what worked, what broke, and what six attendees built.
A workshop at MakerLabs Vancouver where attendees design a 9x9 inch illuminated stained glass window with WS2811 LEDs and CNC-cut foam.
My 2019 tools and equipment list, with notes on why I switched to PlatformIO, Firefox, and away from Samsung phones.
June 2019 bookmarks: a Casper nightlight teardown, the Etch-A-Snap Pi camera, SVG Nest, and stacked paper stained glass.
Slides from the March 2019 ESP8266, NeoPixel, and FastLED workshop I taught at Maker Labs.
Bill of materials for one stained glass panel: pixels, acrylic, plywood, and laser time totalling about $156 CAD.
Why I rebuilt blog.abluestar.com on a fresh Jekyll theme, plus a 20-year history of my CMS choices from plain HTML to static sites.
My February 2019 podcast rotation, with a starter episode picked for each show from Reply All to 99 Percent Invisible.
February 2019 links on Arduino LED projects, an Etch A Sketch CNC, a zombie ESP8266 game, and James Clar's neon art.
What worked and what didn't on a two-month trip through South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and China.
Two days at the Huaqiang Road markets in Shenzhen and the pile of LED strips, switches, and Pi cases I came back with.
Snapshot of the software and hardware I leaned on in 2018, from VS Code and PlatformIO to a Surface Pro 3 and Sony WH-H900N.
November 2018 bookmarks on Wobble Garden, PCB art, SI playing cards, sand tables, and Islamic geometric design books.
May 2018 grab bag of links: pen plotters, ESPEasy firmware, the TWANG dungeon crawler, and a wooden lego planter.
Building hexagonal baltic birch frames for the stained glass panels on the table saw, with a grooved channel holding the acrylic.
Writing the firmware for the stained glass panels with FastLED on an ESP8266, using LED offset sets to drive randomised patterns.
Parts list for the stained glass windows: white acrylic, square WS2812B LEDs, a Wemos D1 mini, and a 5V 5A supply.
How I design the stained glass panel patterns in Fusion 360 and Inkscape, then export SVGs ready for the laser cutter.
Tech demo notes for the stained glass windows: gluing acrylic, building cardstock dividers, and killing LED hotspots.
Inspiration for the stained glass windows project, from Lumina Lab's Stoicheia dodecahedron to mandala work on Instagram.
A python script that hunts kangaroo words, smaller words hidden inside larger ones, across the 20,000 most common English words.
Notes on dropping Evernote for are.na, TeamViewer alternatives, blockchain art, the Ice Cold Beer game, and a pile of bookmarks.
How I buy Bitcoin and Ethereum from Canada using Coinbase, LocalBitcoins, and Quadrigacx, with the fees and signup time for each.
A Wemos D1 and OLED shield that polls the Coindesk API every five minutes and shows the current BTC price and my running profit.
What I brought to Vancouver Maker Faire 2017: the LED Pillar rhythm game, laser kaleidoscope, fox mask, thunderstorm cloud, and more.
May 2017 links: ESP32 sniffers, a giant laser-cut Bulbasaur, an 8-bit computer from scratch, Big Poop Data, and the BLACK 2.0 paint.
What I put in my Vancouver earthquake kit for under $30, parts list, and the personal items I tell people to add themselves.
April 2017 links: Google AnyPixel, a drinkable tequila cloud, the Cubic Cyphercon puzzle badge, ESP8266 deauther, and Shodan.
Notes for any landlord considering renting to Vancouver Hackspace: unpermitted electrical, absentee board, garbage, fumes, missed rent.
A guide to laser cutting in Vancouver after 4000 hours on the machines: where to cut, who to follow, and which shop to avoid.
March 2017 links: a laser kaleidoscope, Lixie nixie alternatives, Vancouver crime maps, Eruv wires above Manhattan, and PBF comics.
Where to do woodworking in Vancouver: rentable shops, intro courses at the Round House and Maker Labs, plus where to buy wood and tools.
A guide to 3D printing in Vancouver: where to get prints done, what printer to buy, where to find models, and which shop to skip.
Working notes on the ESP8266: useful libraries, debugging the Arduino core, taming the 300mA current spikes, and deep sleep gotchas.
February 2017 links: laser-cut art from 1000 Errors, paper beetle kits, Mongoose OS, the USB Killer V3, and the CIA cartography map drops.
January 2017 links: HexCells, the Universal Play Machine, makerjs for laser drawings, Mosquitto MQTT, and Node-RED home automation.
The software and hardware I leaned on in 2016: VS Code, Fusion 360, Wanhao i3, X-Carve, Surface Pro 3, MX Master, and the Makers Notebook.
November 2016 link dump: open source car control, ESP8266 MQTT LED controllers, the Maslow CNC, Boldport, and the poop emoji oral history.
Plain-language notes on picking a threat model and the low to high effort tools I actually use to defend against it.
My running list of must-see movies from Mad Max Fury Road back through Spirited Away, Memento, and Cube, with short notes on each.
A running list of podcasts I listen to, from Radiolab and This American Life to The Dollop, 99% Invisible, and The Moth.
A coroplast low-poly fox mask wired with NeoPixels and a WeMos D1 mini, with a brightness dial after Halloween blinded everyone.
Growing an oyster mushroom kit and over-engineering it with an ESP8266, DS18B20 sensors, MQTT, and Twilio alerts.
Notes on picking up a used Wanhao Duplicator i3, getting started with Cura, and a list of 3D printing resources.
A list of alternatives to Vancouver Hackspace after its community turned toxic, with makerspaces, meetups, and tool libraries.
Post mortem of the CNC zen garden at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2016: shorts, skipped steps, and fixes that worked.
How to recover an L3D Cube Particle Photon from the red SOS blink by reflashing firmware on Windows.
An ESP8266 internet button that fires IFTTT recipes, built for an upcoming VHS workshop.
Pattern tests for the firefly room running on the VHS LED wall installation.
A Halloween hat in progress with NeoPixel LEDs driven by an Arduino.
A 1.5-metre coroplast version of the Wintercroft fox mask, built during a VHS giant fox head build night.
A sous vide PID temperature controller box with LEDs, seven-segment displays, and a relay. Not a bomb.
Source code for the IStandWithAhmed workshop, a binary count-up clock with a WS2811 strip and Arduino.
A laser-cut acrylic Wintercroft fox mask for Burning Man, ruined by Gorilla Glue foaming under the panels.
A NeoPixel LED belt built for Burning Man that cycles through colour patterns.
A laser-cut wood yellow jacket in a top hat for the Fancy Bugs Burning Man series, made at VHS.
A laser-cut wood American cockroach wearing a top hat for the Fancy Bugs Burning Man series.
A laser-cut wood blowfly in a top hat for the Fancy Bugs Burning Man series, made at VHS.
A laser-cut wood jumping spider with a top hat, another entry in the Fancy Bugs Burning Man series.
A laser-cut wood praying mantis wearing a top hat, part of the Fancy Bugs series for Burning Man.
A large map of Black Rock City for camp visitors to mark cool spots with push pins and flags.
A low-poly Wintercroft fox head mask cut from coroplast, ready for mirrored acrylic panels.
Laser-cut mustache pendants strung on ribbons, hung from the dome roof as Burning Man gifts.
A nesting laser-cut gift box for Burning Man, sitting in the dome for people to trade trinkets in and out of.
Mario coins and coin boxes that did not turn out, passed along to a kids camp to play with.
A Processing-generated visualization of my 23andMe DNA data, to be laser engraved on the MeeBox for Burning Man.
Showing the 200 most recent posts here; the full archive remains available through year, tag, and category routes.