Having spent most of my career working digitally, I often have the desire to make something tangible. It starts with the desire to make a real object and not a series of zeros and ones that might be wiped out with an ill advised placement of a strong neodymium magnet.

There is a certain sense of satisfaction that comes from creating a finished physical object. I wrote this story with the intent of chronicling that journey. Hopefully this can provide some assistance to those interested in following a similar path that might seem daunting at first.

I just recently completed building a major hardware project for a client and I felt it might be helpful to write about how I started.

Two summers ago, I had the distinct honor of being a part of a pilot program intended to provide mentorship to children as a part of the Maker Education Initiative. I ended up being assigned to the beautiful Makerspace in the New York Hall of Science out in Queens, NY.

As a part of the program we had unfettered access to the host of tools available at the space which included 3D Printers, CNC Routers, and Laser Cutters. Coupled with a small stipend to purchase electronics we were allowed to build anything we could conceive.

The most exciting part of undertaking a project like this is the ability to learn and mix disparate ideas and disciplines like lego blocks to build your idea. The best advice for the kind of mindset you have to adapt is aptly summarized by Elon Musk in a recent AMA.

”I do kinda feel like my head is full! My context switching penalty is high and my process isolation is not what it used to be.

Frankly, though, I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

-Elon Musk

If you’re contstantly willing to learn and adapt you can make anything.

Prototyping exists to prove an idea, it's fast & loose just like sketching. There usually is no one definite way to build an idea. I didn’t have much time to put together the cube so for the first build I had to assemble something relatively quickly and easily. There are many places to get electronics and I chose Adafruit for the close proximity of their warehouses to the museum.

Since I had a small stipend and a simple idea my parts list was relatively sparse. As a part of the program, we also had access to a series of basic electronics that included, soldering setups, electronic components and other prototyping gear.

I 3D printed an ABA plastic mounting structure for the Raspberry Pi. I don't recall the original mount I used but you can find something similar by searching Thingiverse, a one stop shop for open source 3D files. For the enclosure I cut square pieces out of a clear acrylic plate which I then sanded to create a frosted diffused glow.

Note that while going through this process I was constantly hitting up against the material limits of whatever I was working with. As Ive said earlier thin plastic could only do certain things and act certain ways. As you experiment with various materials you will start learning about the inherent properties of each one.

Creating the mounting structure for the 5 LED walls proved most challenging and I was never quite happy with it. I ended up 3D printing another harness I found on Thingiverse atop the Raspberry Pi. I then attached a wooden dowel to support a laser cut piece of wood holding the top face of the LEDs. Sugru, a fast drying putty like adhesive, was used to quickly mount this top plate after it failed to stick several times using glue.

Once this was done, all that was left was securing the acrylic shell to the base. The finished cube was almost entirely different than I had first imagined. Honestly, I was unhappy with a lot of the compromises I had to make to finish the prototype.

For my demo at the museum I ended up running a self contained twisted python web server on the Pi so I could remotely control the cube over the local network. This allowed me to create and serve a local web page from the Pi that ran three functions: The rainbow strand test, a simple remote controlled night light, and a notification mode for the e-mail count in my inbox.

Currently, the cube has found another life softly glowing on top of my shelf ambiently displaying the weather on a colored temperature scale. I recently modified the code to include the weather, you can find the rough code I wrote for this on Github. It's hard coded to my local network so I can control it from any device in the house via http. It sources it's weather information every three minutes from the Dark Sky API.