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Maker projects and doodads that weren't professional enough to include somewhere else
I'm the kind of person who puts their mind to a "fun project" to the point that it eventually becomes an all-consuming obsession until it's done with - or, in some unfortunate cases, abandoned. Most of the time, I have no idea what I'm doing in the beginning and am guided only by a vague notion that I'll probably learn it along the way. It tends to work... most of the time. Unfortunately, I don't tend to document these forays super well, so I'll just mention them here with whatever pictures or videos I have of them in action. This section will be forever a work in progress, as I continually do weirder things and hopefully remember to take photos.
LED Clothing
I can hardly remember how the idea for these came about in the first place. I wanted to create an attention-getting costume for a university party and somehow ran across RGB LED strips. Then I found out they ran on 12V power and that I could run 8 AA batteries in series to light things up portably... one thing led to another, and soon I found myself the owner of a brand new set of LED trackpants.
The first time I wore these I felt like a celebrity, since people would stop me to ask about them every 5 minutes
Since then, I've made LED clothes for a number of occasions - the classic pants, which I still think work best, but also shirts and even an LED bikini. They're all various degrees of finicky and unreliable, since the LED strips they're made from are not the hardiest, but they're sure to make an impression for the one night they do last. Also, I learned a lot about electronics, soldering and not making a mess with hot glue.
3D printer from scratch
This is one project I wish I had documented better, because building this thing and making it work may have been one of the longest and most harrowing ordeals I've been through. I decided at one point I really wanted a 3D printer, though it was never clear to me exactly what I would make with it (D&D minis, probably). Since I felt it would be too expensive to buy one in Brazil or import it, I went for the next best thing, which was apparently to make my own.
Using a design from a Polish guy who dropped the project halfway through and mixing parts imported from Aliexpress, printed at my University and cut in a wood shop, I eventually managed to get it printing after about a year of on-and-off work. I learned everything from how 3D printers work to how they're put together, the printing itself, maintainance, firmware installation and configuration, the electronics on the arduino board it runs on, what every little colorful wire sticking out from it does... you name it.
The printer as it looks on my desk today
I ended up spending about as much money as I would if I had just bought one that would have probably given me an order of magnitude fewer migraines, but in the end I learned so much I can't say it wasn't worth it. It's temperamental and I got to making very decent prints (and absurd numbers of calibration prints) with it when a critical part broke off. I haven't had time to fix it yet, but I'm sure I will eventually...
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