Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Time!

Time marches on! I've been bad about updating my blog but hope to get into a weekly habit..
What's happened in the last few months? Well after months of prep, Vancouver had it's Maker Faire. Above are the rock stars responsible. (though two excellent people and a whole slew of volunteers are in fact missing form this photo)

I was lucky enough to be involved in the 2011 Illuminares festival. This fantastic yearly event has puppet makers and performance artists gather together for a night of incredible sights and live music. My small contribution was the lighting and sound systems for a giant heron puppet as well as some RGB LED controllers for a number of glowing columns. Lessons learned included;
-always buy about %15 more stock then needed when making wiring harnesses, especially if you're getting volunteer help
-lead acid batteries aren't happy discharging at even 1/2 their amp-hour rating (ie; a 5 Ahr will see a serious voltage drop if 2.5A is drawn) and this gets worse in cold weather
-don't let feature creep carry you away to the lala land of unachievable goals...