March-April '25: New 3D prints, videos with Raspberry Pi + OpenMV, and SF Climate Week

Heya! Here's what I've been up to over the past month, and what's coming up next.

🛠️ Projects

• 3D-printed guitar pins: I restrung my beloved blue guitar, but ended up cracking a few of the cheap plastic pins. After few design rounds in Onshape, I had a working model for replacements. Check out the write-up, grab the model, and tweak it for your own use!
• Modeling a 3D-printable Raspberry Pi enclosure on the iPad: I'm learning Nomad Sculpt so I can model organic shapes on my tablet. My first design – a cute little kiwi – turned out to be either VERY small or VERY big, thanks to Nomad's semi-unitless interface... The next step is a simpler enclosure, which I'm planning to combine with parametric pieces created in Onshape. Very stoked about using Nomad to sculpt custom wearables (such as disposable mask covers). 🤩
• Near-infrared photos, for cheap: Here's the comprehensive, dynamic write-up for my IR-modded digital camera, and the experiments I've been doing with it since 2009. New stuff: photos from a Waymo autonomous car! As I keep playing with this setup, I'll update that Notion page and the social threads linked therein.

🎬 Videos

There were a few fun videos for the Hackster.io channel:

• Pi Day interview with Raspberry Pi's Sam Snyder: The Pi team had an epic year of releases! We dug into all the new goodness.
• Hackster Café interview with OpenMV cofounder Kwabena Agyeman, about two new cameras launching on Kickstarter (8 days to go!)
• Hackster Impact Spotlights – Smart Home: A monthly series highlighting open-source hardware creators from the community, and the tools they use to build their tech.
• Coziest Mailbag Ever: This is technically from the end of February, but I love it anyway. Unboxed three cool hardware bits from friends and tested them out.

I also restarted my casual #SpaceSongSunday series at the end of March, with two new song adaptations (Tom Waits' "Green Grass" and Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars"). This is a series where I occasionally go on Instagram Live and sing songs about space (including covers, adaptations, and originals). You can also find episodes via the hashtag on Instagram, and I'd love to expand to a Peertube instance soon!

📆 April events

Earth Day (4/22) & SF Climate Week (4/19-4/27): I'll be working to fix up Green-EE – my directory of resources for building and selling hardware more sustainably. I'd also love to grab some short video features from in-person events. (Psst... I'm available to hire for videos like this – although these days, I use captions and keep the mic out of frame. ;) )

Still pulling together my indie contracting structure, so this month, I'd like to update my video background, film a short intro for my channels, upload more clips from the backlog, fix my domains (including alexglow.com and green-ee.com, which have been languishing in favor of bit.ly links to my Notion pages), and set up a PO Box for future Mailbags. Whew!

Project-wise, I plan to revise my wearable-art PCB of the Joule Thief circuit for Earth Day, and would also love to make a custom set of my favorite components in KiCad 9! I'm sure other ideas will crop up as well.

💙 Media obsessions

I got really into Lord Huron – specifically, the 2021 album Long Lost. It's a dreamy, eerie, romantic, glitchy trip through backwoods nostalgia. This dovetails well with my ongoing hunger for '50s-flavored rock by modern artists like Mon Laferte, Stephen Sanchez, and even Green Day.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you around!