Erin St. Blaine

[Music]

Welcome to The Circuit Python Show.

I'm your host, Paul Cutler.

This episode I'm joined by Erin St.

Blain. 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 under

represented in the STEM world, to use art

and technology to make their own dreams

come true. Erin, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

How did you first get started with computers and electronics? I've always

liked computers. My parents were early adopters. We had like an Apple IIe 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 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. Fiery can

be a problem. They don't want to let you in doors with it. You know there's insurance, there's fire

or marshals to deal with.

So I was looking for some kind of other show,

some kind of other 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 poi

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,

off the deep end, I suppose,

was I'm a professional mermaid as well.

My mermaid shows,

I go to little girls' birthday parties in a mermaid tail

and sit in their mansion pool or whatever

and be Ariel or whatever that was.

And 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 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 gonna be.

At the same time, I met a couple of Adafruit folks.

Phil Burgess from Adafruit lived just down the street

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

were 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.

So you have over 100 projects in the Adafruit Learn Guide. Where do you find your inspiration

for all of them? 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 this event company that I was running. I wanted to come up with 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 an 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, right?

So my skill set is real nice.

Like it, it compliments a lot of the engineers that work for Adafruit and we

can work together and create things that none of us could do on our own.

For those just getting started with NeoPixel or LED projects, what

advice would you have for them?

It's not going to work the first time.

You need patience.

You need patience 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 poi and

light up costumes. Everything was 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 really 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 uh is worth it.

You mentioned being a mermaid. What were the challenges with the LEDs that you referenced?

Oh my goodness um LEDs and salt water are not supposed to go together and I wanted to be able

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-rove 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 I my first monofin I

tried to do fiberglass on my own you know and learn how to do that so there

challenges on every single level. That tail took me two months to make of 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

about LEDs in 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.

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 and because of

course it you know being an led artist it bugs the heck out of me if one of the light strands goes

out but you know another 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 strands 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, you know, 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. 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?

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

on the Adafruit Learn system, I went through maybe, I don't know, 30 or 40, maybe 50 different

materials and just, you know, 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 that 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, take a look and just get creative.

Come up with all kinds of, any material that you look around.

You 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.

With over a hundred different learn guides that you've published on the Adafruit Learn

System, do you have a couple that are your favorites?

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.

They're 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, you know, 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

swarm installation with 50 large iridescent jellyfish that are all interconnected and they

and they run animations through 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.

I just think that's, it's just beautiful when that happens.

- 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 gotta be pretty cool to come across people building

your projects that you see out in the wild like that.

- It really is.

It's real special.

Before I started working for Adafruit,

I did a mermaid tail 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 model fan, everything is,

and I love just going over and taking pictures with them.

It's so fun.

It just tickles me to no end

that people are taking this stuff and using it

and putting their own twist on it.

- Last question for you.

You're starting a new project.

Which microcontroller do you reach for?

- 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 to,

so I can prototype with it really well.

And it runs Circuit Python, 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.

- That's the one I started with.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Easy to use and just full of features.

Make code, you know, all kinds of options with that book.

- Erin, thanks so much for being on the show.

- Thanks for having me.

- Thank you for listening to the Circuit Python Show.

You can find out more about Erin and her work at her homepage at erinstblaine.com.

For show notes and transcripts, visit circuitpythonshow.com.

Until next time, stay positive.

(electronic beeping)