Episode 30 - Erin St. Blaine
Show Notes
Transcript
Paul
Welcome to the CircuitPython Show. I'm your host, Paul Cutler. This episode I'm joined by Erin St. Blaine. Erin is a light artist who creates sculptures, costumes, and artwork with programmable LED lights, often including interactivity and data visualization, to bring her creations to life. Erin's mission is to inspire more young makers, especially girls who are underrepresented in the STEM world, to use art and technology to make their own dreams come true. Erin, welcome to the show.
Erin St. Blaine
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.
Paul
How did you first get started with computers and electronics?
Erin St. Blaine
I've always liked computers. My parents were early adopters. We had like an Apple 2E when I was a kid.
I used to play games on that thing all the time and just learned DOS when I was in high school and really just always get into it. It was the new, exciting thing when I was a teenager. I've always enjoyed using computers.
Getting into electronics was kind of a different sort of backdoor thing. I was a professional fire dancer and doing a lot of fire shows around the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a lot of fun. And there were a lot of places where I just couldn't perform with fire. Fire, it can be a problem. They don't want to let you indoors with it. You know, there's insurance, there's fire marshals to deal with. So I was looking for some kind of other show, some kind of other, you know, revenue source where I didn't have to deal with the fire. And back in the early 2000s, there weren't fancy LED flow props like there are now. And so I mostly got into electronics because I wanted to make myself some poy that I could use inside that would rival the coolness of the fire show. And then after I started playing around with that, I started realizing I could do costuming too. And I did a lot of other kinds of events. We performed at a lot of corporate shows, that sort of thing in the Bay Area. So started making light up costumes. And then what really like made me jump into, you know, off the defense, I suppose, was that I'm a professional mermaid as well. My mermaid shows we, you know, I go to little girls' birthday parties in a mermaid tail and, you know, sit in their mansion pool or whatever and be aerial or whatever that was. And I, I decided I wanted to do a light up mermaid tail and combine my two passions. And man, that was a hard project. It was, yeah, I didn't know what I was getting into. I feel like if I had, had if I'd known how hard it was going to be to make an electronic, addressable mermaid tail that worked underwater, I would have given up before I started.
But luckily, I had no idea how hard it was going to be. At the same time, I met a couple of Adafruit folks. Phil Burgess from Adafruit lived just down the street from me.
And he was a real instrumental in helping me. I had so much help. And I remember in the early days, like going online and finding so many people online that were ready to help me.
with my projects. I didn't know anything about coding, but, you know, the fast LED community online was really active and really wonderful. And everybody was super excited about my projects. Not a lot of artists. We're doing electronics at the time. Hopefully there are a few more out there now. I'm starting to see a lot of stuff. But when I started, it was kind of a blue ocean.
Paul
So you have over 100 projects in the Adafruit Learn Guide. Where do you find your inspiration for all of them?
Erin St. Blaine
Oh my gosh, everywhere. I was just at a Santa Cruz regional burn at Unscrews this last weekend and walking around looking at everybody's light up coats. And now I'm dying to do a light up coat tutorial. That's going to happen soon. Every place I look, every place I go, I just get ideas all the time.
When I first started, of course, I had to kind of come up with my own ideas. And it was, it was this event company that I was running. I wanted to come up with, you know, a really great costume that I could wear to the Exploratorium for a big corporate party. So doing costuming was really a big part of my initial inspiration. And now I'm well known enough, I guess, that people will email me with their ideas, which is great. I don't have to come up with my own inspiration anymore. Also, I work with a lot of the folks on the Adafruit team.
And I get to do a lot of way more complicated projects than I'd be able to do by myself because I get to work with the engineers. And it's real nice being on that team because I'm not MIT graduate. I don't have a big background in coding and engineering. I don't know how this stuff works from the ground up, but they don't know anything about vinyl cutters. They don't know anything about sewing. So my skill set is real nice. It complements a lot of the engineers that work for Adafruit and we can work together and create things that none of us can do on our own.
Paul
For those just getting started with Neopixel or LED projects, what advice would you have for them?
Erin St. Blaine
It's not going to work the first time. You need patience. You need patience. And And you need to be able to fix things.
Man, I can't tell you. Like, the fire shows that I used to do, you soak that thing in gas, you light it up, it burns every time. I developed a whole LED light show with persistence of vision poe and light up costumes.
Everything was synced supposed to sync together. You know, I think maybe that show has gone off perfectly one time in my whole life. Electronics is hard.
It's really frustrating. It's really, it takes time consuming. It's a detail-oriented thing.
You really need to be able to be in that brain. And it's worth it. It's really worth it.
When I get out there and I'm wearing my light-up corset at this event, everybody, they're following me around. People are just drooling over this stuff. It's really putting the time and energy in is worth it.
Paul
You mentioned being a mermaid. What were the challenges with the LEDs that you referenced?
Erin St. Blaine
Oh, my goodness. LEDs and saltwater are not supposed to go together. And I wanted to be able to take this thing into the ocean.
I mostly at first performed in pools and that kind of thing. And even chlorine, it's not good for LEDs either. I was doing so much research.
I found myself on like Navy SEAL websites, researching Open Row of projects, you know, anybody that was trying to do DIY electronics underwater. And there really wasn't much out there. I was also learning a lot of different arts.
I was learning how to work with neoprene. My first monofin, I tried to do fiberglass on my own and learn how to do that. So there was challenges on every single level.
That tail took me two months to make, working on it incessantly. And it broke every single time I used it. As soon as I'd get in the water, it would work for 10 minutes, and then it would flicker and go out.
And then I'd pull out my enclosure, and it'd be flooded with water. And, man, there was just so many learning curves. And I just recently did a new tutorial on Adafruit about LEDs and harsh environments where I took a lot of the things that I learned over the last seven years of fixing that tail and made a new version.
I threw the old one away. I made a whole brand new one, which it still has its problems, but it is built in such a way that I can work on it real easily. It's really easy to change out light strips and it's a lot more reliable.
I work as a mermaid at the mermaid bar in Sacramento. There's a mermaid bar called dive bar right in downtown Sacramento. We have a 40-foot saltwater aquarium above the bar where they have mermaids that swim every single night.
And it is a saltwater aquarium, and I will wear my mermaid glimmer. That's her name, my light-up mermaid glimmer tail in the aquarium, you know, usually mostly for special events. I don't do it with every swim.
But it's still a lot of wear and tear to get that thing running. and to keep all the lights on, because, of course, being an LED artist, it bugs the heck out of me if one of the light strands goes out. But, you know, another thing that I've learned over the years of fixing this tail is how to make it fail gracefully.
So when one of the light strands went out on my initial tail, everything downstream of that light, you know, because that's the way Neopixels work. If you lose one connection, everything else goes out. The way I built this new one is all the lights are more in a starfish, you know, sort of configuration.
So if one of the light strand goes out, only up to 20% of the lights will go out if one light breaks. So a lot of things like that. And I feel great that I was able to work all this out.
It was so much frustration over the years. But now I'm able to share that with people and hopefully save other people a lot of headaches by writing it up in the tutorial and really getting some of that knowledge out there so that hopefully other makers won't have to go through some of the frustration that I went through.
Paul
Speaking of sharing knowledge, you just released recently a learn guide about LED and neopixel diffusion. What tips and tricks do you recommend when it comes to diffusing LEDs?
Erin St. Blaine
Get creative. I just went around my house and I'm a crafter, so my craft room is pretty epic. It has a lot of stuff in it.
And I just tried everything. It's a pretty great tutorial. Check it out on the Adafruit Learn system.
I went through maybe, I don't know, 30 or 40, maybe 50 different materials and just took some photographs of and video. of what it looked like real close up, what it looked like with a little space. With diffusion, it's half about the material and half about the distance between the pixels and the material.
A couple of inches of space makes a huge difference. You know, there's so many different things out there. There's no way to make a comprehensive.
This is how everything gets diffused tutorial. But it's a good place to start, you know, take a look and just get creative. come up with all kinds of any material that you look around.
You've got to kind of get your diffusion eyes on, go to the craft store and just stroll around and try stuff. You're going to come up with something that nobody's ever thought of before.
Paul
With over 100 different learn guides that you've published on the Ata Fruit Learned system, do you have a couple that are your favorites?
Erin St. Blaine
Let's see. I really enjoy some of the super simple ones. I have a unicorn horn that I have a capacitive touch on.
You touch it and the tip lights up. and little simple stuff like that. There's so much fun to make.
I really like the tutorials that are good for you to make with your kids. I like seeing some of these projects out there in the wild. I went to Maker Faire, and I saw a kid running around in my unicorn horn because Dad made it for her, and it was just the sweetest thing.
I feel like if people can find a way to connect with their loved ones through building presents for them or building tutorials, I really, I really like that. My other favorites are the ones that have inspired some of the bigger makers. I just showed, I have, I've been getting into making large-scale art.
I have a big, large-scale jellyfish, a swarm installation with 50 large iridescent jellyfish that are all interconnected and they run animations to the swarm. And I put this up at the Autumn Lights Festival in Oakland last October. And a lot of the other artists and makers at that came over.
and sought me out and they're like, Erin, you're the one that got me started. This was my favorite tutorial. And then I would go and look at their art piece and I'm like, oh my goodness.
It is just, it's beautiful to see how people can get inspired by, you know, whatever it is, the ukulele tutorial, the, you know, the unicorn horns, whatever it is that catches people's fancy. And I love seeing people take that and run with it and create something that I never even dreamed of, you know. I just think that's just beautiful when that happens.
Paul
I was sharing before we started recording that your sound reactive ukulele project was one of the first ones that I deconstructed as well. So it's got to be pretty cool to come across people building your projects that you see out in the wild like that.
Erin St. Blaine
It really is. It's real special. Before I started working for Adafruit, I did a mermaid tale tutorial as well.
And I've been to some mermaid conventions and events where I've seen other tales made from my tutorial. And I can tell, right? I can see the way they did the paint, the way they did the monofan, everything is.
And I love just going over and taking pictures with them. It's so fun. It just tickles me to know that people are taking this stuff and using it and putting their own twist on it.
Paul
Last question for you. You're starting a new project. Which microcontroller do you reach for?
Erin St. Blaine
Almost always the circuit playground express. That thing's got capacitive touch. It's got buttons.
It's got switches. It's got sensors built in. It's really easy to alligator clip, too, so I can prototype with it really well.
And it runs CircuitPython. It runs Arduino. It is just this fantastic prototyping board.
And it doesn't always make it into the final project because it is a little bit bigger and a little more expensive. But the amount of prototyping ability on that thing is just amazing. And with all the sensors already included, it's one of my, definitely my go-to.
If I'm teaching people how to use microcontrollers for the first time, that is definitely one of the ones that I think people should always start with.
Paul
That's the one I started with.
Erin St. Blaine
Yeah, absolutely. Easy to use and just full of features. Make code, you know, all kinds of options with Apple.
Paul
Erin, thanks so much for being on the show.
Erin St. Blaine
Thanks for having me.
Paul
Thank you for listening to The CircuitPython Show. You can find out more about Erin and her work at her homepage at Erin St. Blaine.com. For show notes and transcripts, visit CircuitPythonShow.com. Until next time, stay positive.