User:Rpoints
Hey my name is Rich and I've been a "maker" of various things all my life. I grew up in Wayne and Washtenaw counties and moved away for grad school in Boulder CO where I lived a car-free and bike-centric lifestyle for 16 years, I'm trying to do this in the Detroit metro area but it aint so easy. I consider myself an environmentalist and that the planet is in peral, I have hope that we humans just might be smart enough to keep things in check. With this in mind many of my projects have an embeded goal of reducing environmental impact.
For the past 10 years I've been fascinated by the potential of the LED to transform the way we use artificial light and the energy needed to power them. I remember when you could first buy SMD strips of LEDs for the first time, each strip would have 2-3 different color temps, since then CRI and lumens per watt continue to improve. With each improvement my passion increases.
Lately I'm an aspiring tig welder and instead of making recycling with my practice welds I've been making various simple LED light fixtures. The welds are generally pretty crappy but they're good enough to shade and focuse the harsh light of an LED. One of my end goals with welding is to build a second bakfiets or Long John style cargo bike; ask me about my first one sometime.
As we enter into 2017 one of my goals is to make one light fixture, lamp or lighting projet per week! If you have ideas for a lighting project lets chat!
In 2010ish I discovered the Arduino and started doing home automation stuff, particularly controlling 12V LEDs around the house. Since then I've had a half a dozen different incarnations of a system. These days I'm running a Raspberry and 2 Arduino Megas to do a variety of operations around the house. I have no formal training in coding. I worked as a self taught freelance web developer for a bit in the early 2000's and have an intermediate understanding of Apache but these days I've been playing with Node.js. But currently I'm struggling with getting some Arduino functions to play nice with each other. Anyway I'd love to get a home automation group going out of i3. Chat me up if you're interested.
I grew up in a family of woodworkers and handywomen. My dad has a small woodshop filed with a bunch of raw cut Michigan hardwood, I plan to put some of that to use in my lighting projects. I've recently been inspired by the craftsmanship, skill and artistic abilities of Paul Sellers, a master woodworker and teacher. I will most certainly use some of his teachings in my making endeavors.
I could say more but that's all I've got for now. I'm looking forward to meeting and making with the i3 community.
Ride On! Rich
