Transcript for Embedded 346: You Have Everything You Need with Sophy Wong about space suits, motivation, writing, and making.

EW (00:00:06):

Welcome to Embedded. I am Elecia White, alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Sophy Wong. We're going to talk about wearables and about making.

CW (00:00:16):

Hi Sophy.

SW (00:00:17):

Hello, thanks for having me.

EW (00:00:20):

Could you tell us about yourself?

SW (00:00:23):

Yes. So I am a designer. My background is in design, specifically in graphic design. I've worked as a graphic designer. I've worked in fashion, I've worked in costuming, I've done a lot of different kinds of making. And now I'm really focused on wearable technology. I like to build my own wearable technology and I write a lot about my work. I've written a lot of tutorials for HackSpace magazine, some tutorials for Make Magazine and Adafruit. And yeah, I'm just exploring that world. I like to do a lot of digital fabrication in my process. So I also do 3D modeling, 3D printing, laser cutting. I really just like to fuse technology with physical hands on making.

EW (00:01:17):

Neat. And I have questions about so many projects and so many questions about how to make my project better. First though we want to do lightning round, where we'll ask you short questions. We want short answers and if we're behaving ourselves we won't ask, what, why, how.

SW (00:01:33):

Okay.

CW (00:01:34):

Complete one project or start a dozen?

SW (00:01:37):

Start a dozen definitely.

EW (00:01:40):

First project someone new to electronics should try?

SW (00:01:44):

Sewing an LED into a piece of clothing.

CW (00:01:50):

If you could teach a college course, what would you want to teach?

SW (00:01:54):

I would like to teach design for making anything.

EW (00:02:00):

If you had a space suit and could travel to any object in the solar system, which one would you choose?

SW (00:02:07):

It's not very far away, but I would love to go to the moon.

CW (00:02:12):

You could be home for the weekend if you went to the moon. So that's yeah, I agree.

SW (00:02:17):

Exactly.

CW (00:02:17):

If you could be the costume supervisor on any film franchise which would it be and why?

SW (00:02:23):

Oh, okay. I have two, any Alien movie and Dune, Any rendition of Dune.

CW (00:02:32):

The new one, the old one?

SW (00:02:34):

One that hasn't happened yet, any Dune.

CW (00:02:37):

Do you have a favorite programming language?

SW (00:02:46):

CircuitPython. Thank you, Adafruit.

CW (00:02:49):

And do you have a tip everyone should know.

SW (00:02:53):

Yes. A tip everyone should know is always do some research before every project. Research makes everything better, that's my tip.

EW (00:03:06):

When you say wearables that you work on sometimes I think about things like Fitbit which are wearables I've worked on, but your wearables are different. What do you mean when you say wearables?

SW (00:03:17):

Yeah. I think a lot of people when I say wearable technology that's exactly what they think about. They think Fitbit, they think smartwatches, maybe VR headsets. And that's absolutely what's top of mind of wearable technology right now. But it's a narrow slice of what's out there because there's so many people tinkering and building in this space. And there are so many components and materials and tools that are available to people who are outsiders of any kind of industry really.

SW (00:03:57):

And so I have a very wide broad definition of wearable technology that I like to keep in my mind, which is really anything that goes on the body and comes off of the body that incorporate some kind of technology into it, or was made using some kind of innovative emerging technology. And that allows me to include in my definition new kinds of technical materials, like 3D printed fabric or fabric that incorporates conductive material like silver, copper.

SW (00:04:43):

And I feel like that also allows me to include work by a lot of different kinds of people who have different backgrounds. Some people are coming to it from a technical background. Some people are coming to it from a design background or they're just interested in it and they want to start tinkering. And I think the more we include as examples of wearable technology the more open we are to having a broad definition of that, the more examples of it we can learn from. And I just think it's such an exciting and burgeoning field that the more we can learn from what people are doing the better.

EW (00:05:28):

So technology that is wearable.

SW (00:05:33):

Yeah. I mean, if you think about it that way we've actually been doing this for a very long time. A pocket watch is a piece of technology that's wearable and it faces the same challenges as a VR headset in a lot of ways.

EW (00:05:52):

Yeah. I mean, it's got to keep working. It's got to be removable. It can't get too dirty.

SW (00:05:59):

Right. And it has to have a power source that is safe and that can keep it running as long as you need it to run. It has to be comfortable. It can't have any pokey edges that are going to snag on your clothing. And yeah that's why I think it's important for people who are interested in building wearable technology. Maybe they have a really huge idea, like building something like their own version of a HoloLens or VR headset. Yes, you can get there. You can build that today, but if you start by trying to solve the basic problems of any wearable, by just putting an LED into a wristband, you're going to quickly run into the complexities that you're going to have to solve for those bigger projects.

EW (00:06:52):

You've mentioned CircuitPython, so you have a favorite language. You've mentioned conductive thread, you've mentioned fabrication, 3D printing, CAD design. These are a lot of disparate skills. How do you learn all of them?

SW (00:07:12):

It's something that I've done for a very long time is I'm not a specialist. I'm absolutely am a generalist. And it's something that I used to think was a fault of mine because I tend to get really interested and really excited in something. And I dive in and I learn everything I could possibly learn about it. And then I maybe do one project with it and then they move on and I get excited about something else.

EW (00:07:47):

It sound so familiar.

SW (00:07:50):

Right. I think a lot of us do this and I think a lot of us think that we're doing it wrong. But we're not, we're not doing it wrong, it's just a different way of working and a different way of learning. And every skill that I have learned over the years. And there's been a lot. I mean, when I was in college I was a designer and I was studying design, but I took every kind of art class I could possibly take.

SW (00:08:19):

I took photography, screen printing, ceramics, drawing, sculpting. I just wanted to learn everything. I mean, none of that was going to help me get my degree. And I knew I wasn't going to grow up to be a sculptor, but I just wanted to learn the process. And I thought there might be something valuable in it that could help me as a designer. And it's true because the more you understand about making processes the more informed you can be as a designer, the better your designs can be. And the more effective your designs can be. And it just empowers you. It's like having a large vocabulary within a language allows you to be more articulate about your thoughts. And so that's how I think about picking up skills. It is kind of a challenge to sort of maintain all that information in my brain so I offload a lot of it.

SW (00:09:22):

I take a lot of notes. I have notebooks and notebooks going back for a long time about what I'm learning, what I've learned, what I've done, what I would do differently. I use Evernote a lot to store information, and I'm constantly going back into my notes. I read a lot of my own tutorials to remember how I did things, because as you mentioned all those different things I do 3D modeling, programming, I can't possibly keep all of that in my brain all at the same time. So I have to go back, I have to relearn it. And that's the tax of being a generalist, but I really wouldn't do it any other way because I now know that that's kind of my superpower, that's what I do.

EW (00:10:14):

I love the idea of the micro obsessions and the trying everything just to know how it done. I don't need to become a sculptor, I just want to know. And the notes, did that help you get into writing about making or, I mean, sort of a chicken and egg problem there?

SW (00:10:38):

Yeah, exactly. Chicken and egg is such a great way to describe it because before I started really writing a lot of tutorials about my work I was documenting my processes, but I was documenting them for myself. I wasn't as rigorous I would say about organizing that information and I didn't really have a very developed process around it.

SW (00:11:10):

So it was just this looks interesting, I'm going to take a photo of it, or I might forget this later, I'm going to do sort of a chicken scratch diagram of what I just did. And it was loose, but I did generate a lot of material. And I remember the first tutorial that I ever wrote was for a really big project that I had done using Adafruit components. And I wrote it up as a tutorial on their website. And it literally took me over a month to write the tutorial because I had to rebuild the project to remember how I did it and to take better photographs of it. And the documentation that I had done in the first draft of that project really wasn't enough to explain to someone else how to do it if I wanted that person to have a successful experience in building it.

SW (00:12:08):

So that was a huge lesson for me that I could actually make my documentation more useful. I could give it another purpose if I just put a little more effort and thought into capturing it in the first place. So now I do have a bit of a process when I document and write about my work. And it's mainly starts with photographs. I photograph my work as I'm going, and I try to take two kinds of photographs. I take photographs that are just diagrammatic for me. And then I take photographs that might have a little more visual information in them or be a little bit cleaner so that it could explain that step to someone else. And then I go through those photographs and write the tutorial from the photographs, and that's actually developing that process for my tutorials has made me a better documenter in general just for my own sake.

SW (00:13:23):

So chicken and egg, I'm not sure. I guess actually writing the tutorials came first and made me better at documenting.

EW (00:13:34):

How many times do you usually have to build a project before you're ready to write about it?

SW (00:13:42):

Now, when I write tutorials I really design the project for the tutorial. So now when I do it, it's generally one time. But when I say that I do incorporate a prototyping process in there. But the prototype is going to be very low effort, low material cost. And I'm really just making sure that everything I think is going to work in the project really will work before I dive into building it. I try to design the project for the tutorial specifically. So I might make design choices that are different than if I was just building this thing for myself or for my portfolio. I might make it a little bit simpler so that I'm only illustrating one or two concepts at a time. I think that makes a better tutorial. And I might make some material choices that are more accessible to people, that are less expensive or easier to find. And my tutorials in general, most of them are designed specifically to be written up as a tutorial. So I generally build those one time.

EW (00:15:06):

That makes sense. I mean, if you were building it for yourself and then doing a tutorial separately you might have to go back and redo it because of the simplification and the ordering and all of the bits about making it so that you're photographing the right thing. You get pretty shots instead of those shots where you can see all the wires on the other side.

SW (00:15:32):

Exactly, exactly. And I choose things, well, Now I do. I mean, you can look back at some of my tutorials and see where I didn't make these choices and I definitely learned from that. But I try to choose things like wires that can be seen in the photograph on the background that I'm shooting them on. I did a jacket that was a black jacket. And in my mind I was still kind of building this for myself. I wanted it to be a very elegant implementation of this material that I was using. The base material that I was using was black, so that it would disappear on the black fabric of the jacket. But that just made it really difficult to photograph and to show in a tutorial. And now in hindsight I wish I had done an example of it that was a contrasting material so that you could really clearly see in the photograph what I'm trying to explain to you.

EW (00:16:41):

I mean, yes, that totally makes sense. You came from a graphic design background, and then I believe you worked in costumes.

SW (00:16:51):

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

EW (00:16:52):

What was the first bit of technology you added to a costume or a project like that? Was there something that was like, "Oh, once I decide where to put the battery I can..."

SW (00:17:10):

Yes. I was really interested in fashion and I wanted to have my own fashion line. This is before I knew anything about electronics, before I knew I could even do electronics. I was really more interested in fashion. And so I started my own very small independent fashion line where I was making clothes and selling them in small boutiques. And so I was watching all things fashion related, I was just trying to absorb a lot of information and ideas because I hadn't studied fashion in college, I studied graphic design. I was obsessed with Project Runway, as many, many of us are and were, back when it was new. And in the second, I think it was the second season of Project Runway. I saw someone, a designer who was putting electronics into her designs.

SW (00:18:12):

She was putting electronics in her clothing and it was amazing. Her name is Diana Eng. I'd never seen that before. I didn't know that any of those components even existed. And I saw her do things like put a camera in a hoodie and a heart rate sensor in the sleeve of the hoodie. And if it detected that your heart rate increased, it would interpret that as maybe you're having experience you want to remember, so it would take a picture. So I love this combination of concept and functionality, and I was just taken. I was like, I need to figure out what this is, where is she getting that stuff? How do you use it? I need to know. So I bought her book, she wrote a book, I bought her book, I bought other people's books.

SW (00:19:03):

And I just started picking up tutorials and learning about wearable, Arduinos, LilyPad Arduinos, anything I could get my hands on that was this kind of wearable component. And he started with conductive thread. I didn't know how to solder. And my very first project is a sweater that I made from scratch. And I added LilyPad Arduino microcontroller to the front of it and connected some lights to it and wrote a very, very simple program in Arduino because I didn't even know really anything about coding. So I was really just kind of feeling my way through it. And as soon as I finished that project I was hooked.

SW (00:19:47):

I was like this is the beginning of something cool. Exactly as you said I now know how to put lights in things that I can wear. This is huge, I didn't need to add a lot of complexity to the engineering side of it, I could let the complexity come out of the concept on the design of what I wanted to do. So that was really the genesis moment for me for what I'm doing now. And that's one of the things that hasn't fallen away. As I said before, I get interested in a lot of things. So I didn't know if that one was really going to take, but it seems like it did because that was, oh, many years ago, six or seven years ago now, maybe more.

EW (00:20:35):

I often get stuck on projects when the clean, beautiful thing I had pictured in my head is clearly going to a mess of hot glue, blood, batteries, tears, and compromise. How do I avoid that feeling? Do you ever feel that way?

SW (00:21:01):

All the time. All the time. I feel it on every project. For me it's not about avoiding that feeling. It's just something I know is part of my cycle. I think of it like my maker cycle. And the only way I've been able to conquer that is not to avoid it, but to get past it. To know that that's coming and recognize it as the feeling I always get at some point in my project. And I just have to think back on the things that I have finished and the things that I am proud of and the things that I made that I like and know that I can get past that feeling, because it happens every time. And for me I need so many things at this point that it's kind of predictable and I know it happens at around the 75% point, maybe the 80% completion point, of my project.

SW (00:22:08):

I think it's because that's the point where I have learned so much more than when I started the project. I know so much more at that point. And there are things that I look back on that I wish I had done differently a little bit earlier in the process. It's like you know enough about your project now to be critical of it and that's very dangerous because you start second guessing yourself. And I know it happens to so many people too. My mom is writing a book right now and when she started writing her book she was churning out chapters. I mean, every other day she was like, I have another chapter I'm going to send it to you to read. And it was amazing. She hit this flow and then she got to, I think she had like three chapters left and she was like, "Oh, I don't know."

SW (00:23:10):

She's like, "I don't know if I'm going to finish it. It just doesn't seem like it's that grade. Or I don't know if anyone's going to care about it, or I don't know if maybe I've made some bad decisions about what I've been writing about." And I was like, "Mom, you are so close to the end. And I know what you're feeling. You're feeling the 75% feeling, just get to 100% and then you can change anything you want to change. You can always go back and change it, but don't doubt what you've already done at this point."

SW (00:23:47):

So I think for me it's just learning your own vulnerabilities and knowing that most of them are in your mind and you can get past them and you have gotten past them in the past and you can do it. It's not all the fault that you can see right now. There's also good, good stuff in your project. And you just have to trust that it's in there.

EW (00:24:19):

That's really good advice, hard to follow, but hard to get advised.

SW (00:24:24):

It's hard to follow. Yeah. And I think to your direct question, which is how do I avoid this? Or how do I get past it? Talk to someone else who makes things, because everyone feels that. So talk to someone else who makes things, talk to someone that you trust that you feel you can be open about that feeling with and someone who believes in your work. If you need a pep talk it's totally fine to ask for a pep talk. I do it all the time.

EW (00:24:56):

That's it. I'm just going to go up to people now and say, I need a pep talk. I need a pep talk. You have a book, Wearable Tech Projects, 30 projects who make so and where. Who did you write it for?

SW (00:25:14):

Yes. So the book is interesting because I wrote the book as separate tutorials and separate articles. So really you can jump in at any point and read, you can read the foundational article that's just basics of wearables. Or you can read a tutorial that tells you how to put an LED into a hat. If you're a little more advanced you can jump right to the more advanced projects that have coding and soldering involved. I really wrote each tutorial with a different person in mind, but I was always trying to include something that will be useful for you whether you are advanced or a beginner. And I think that's another really interesting thing about wearable technology is it is such a combination of different skills and requirements. And so maybe you are a very advanced and technical electronics person, but maybe you've never made anything that needs to be launderable before.

SW (00:26:31):

Or maybe you were a cos player and you're really good at making comfortable elaborate garments, but you've never done anything with electronics. There will be an article in the book for both of those people and everyone in between who's interested in this stuff. Also the articles were serialized in HackSpace Magazine. So truly is a collection of the wearable technology tutorials I did for them for, I think it was spanning like about a year and a half, two years. So yeah, it's kind of a different type of book, it's like all of that information that it was kind of spread out throughout the magazine over the course of those issues, all collected together in one place.

EW (00:27:29):

But I like how there was also the general information and the inspiration as well as the "here's a project, here's a project, here's the project." There was also the "these are the problems you're likely to have when you have a wearable." And here are some wearables people have made that are probably way outside anybody but professionals reach, but they're cool so what can you learn from them.

SW (00:27:52):

Yeah. And I wanted to include... I really wanted to share other people's work, not just the work that I do because we all have a different kind of focus and reason for being interested in wearable technology. And to the beginning of this conversation, when we said it could be Fitbit, it could be HoloLens, or it could be me putting RGB LEDs on my fingernails.

SW (00:28:18):

It's like I wanted to show the breadth of what's out there and give people sort of license to say this tutorial teaches me how to do this thing, but it's maybe not the thing I want to build. I want to take this concept and build the thing that's in my mind. So yeah, I just tried to make it really wide open and inspirational.

EW (00:28:50):

Do readers need to understand electronics when they go in?

SW (00:28:58):

I'd say, no. I did know anything about electronics when I started tinkering with electronics. And even now I think of myself as beginner to intermediate beginner. I'm not an electrical engineer. And so my tutorials are pretty simple in terms of circuit design and in terms of coding as well. I don't have any formal training as a programmer. So they're pretty basic in those technical aspects which I think makes it pretty approachable if you don't have a lot or really any experience with those fields.

EW (00:29:48):

Do readers need to be able to sew?

SW (00:29:53):

No. There's some projects that don't have any sewing and there's also I have a little article in there that explains how to do very simple running stitch, which is all you need to know really for conductive thread. And yeah, sewing it's a great skill to have, but you definitely don't need it if you want to get into wearable tech. There's lots of other ways to attach things to your body.

EW (00:30:23):

So much hot glue.

SW (00:30:25):

Yeah. Yeah. Hot glue Velcro, yeah, safety pins.

EW (00:30:32):

In the lightning round I asked you about a space suit and I was pretending you didn't have one, could you tell us about your space suit?

SW (00:30:45):

Yes. So my spacesuit is a costume. It's an original design that I created because I really just wanted my own space suit and I'm not going to space in it and I didn't want to make a replica of the functioning NASA space suits. I wanted to create my own design. And I was really inspired by my favorite sci-fi space movies like Alien, The Expanse, all those kinds of sci-fi space movies where there's a person in the space suit and their lights in the helmet shining on their face and it's really cinematic and dramatic. I love that. And I really wanted to have that for myself. So I decided to... At one point I just realized I have the skills to make this, I'm just going make this. So I designed it and I built it.

SW (00:31:48):

I have a couple of tutorials that came out of it as well. I wrote a tutorial about putting the lights into my costume helmet and that's in HackSpace Magazine. It's also in my book and I also have a tutorial about the laser cutting that I did for the foam portion of the space suit that's in Make magazine. And yeah, I completed it and it's one of my favorite things I've ever built. It has a fan on the belt that blows air into the helmet so that I stay cool when I'm wearing it and my helmet doesn't fog up. It also has sound reactive lights that flash on the outside of the helmet. So when I talk inside the helmet there's a visual representation of me talking on the outside of my helmet. And yeah, it's pretty exciting for me because even though I built it just for myself I was contacted by a director who makes music videos and he wanted to do a shoot using my space suit.

SW (00:32:59):

And so I sent him my space suit and they did a video shoot in the Badlands in South Dakota. And that's just a super iconic sci-fi location where they've shot Starship Troopers. And there's so many sci-fi movies have shot there because it looks like the surface of Mars. So yeah that video just came out and it looks amazing. And yeah, it's just super exciting that something that I designed out of my own mind and built just as a costume for myself ended up being used in a creative project like that. So that's super exciting.

EW (00:33:43):

How would I find that?

SW (00:33:46):

So the videos for a band called Saul, they're sort of a rock band and it's a great song. The song is called King of Misery. And it's on Vivo, it's on YouTube. Yeah, you can look up the band, it's Saul, S-A-U-L.

EW (00:34:06):

All right.

CW (00:34:07):

How is this foam? I don't understand how you can make foam look like aged metal, that's incredible.

SW (00:34:14):

Yeah. It's one of my favorite things to do. So the foam comes in sheets, it's EVA foam, and it's sort of like... It's basically yoga mat foam, but with no texture on it, it's completely smooth. And you can make this foam look like almost anything, it's heat formable, and you can edge into it with a laser cutter. And so that's what I did most of the textures, they're all laser cut on my laser cutter. I've seen people make this foam look like leather by heating up tinfoil and just pressing it into the surface. It's very sculptural. It's a really incredible material. It's used a lot in Cosplay and it's incredibly light and it's flexible. So it's comfortable. It won't chafe as you're wearing it. It's amazing stuff. It's amazing.

SW (00:35:16):

I use the same material to make a robot suit for the same director. So there's another video coming out soon for a different band that has a robot suit with a jet pack on it. And I made that whole thing out of foam.

EW (00:35:33):

Is there going to be tutorials on that one too?

SW (00:35:37):

I haven't written any for that. I haven't planned to write any for that yet, but I thought that if there was interest in it, once it comes out and people see it, I will be happy to release some of the files for that if anyone wants to build their own. I think the robot's suit is sized for the actor. So that one's a little trickier, but I built the jet pack completely out of foam and I was thinking it might be nice to digitize those files and just share them.

EW (00:36:10):

One of the things you said about cinematic aspect of having lights on the face of the person inside, that's been one of those cinematic things that always kind of bothers me because I don't like lights shining in my face. When you wear it do the lights inside obscure your vision?

SW (00:36:33):

This is really interesting because I also used to watch these movies and think, "Oh, they are just doing that for cinematic effect. They're just doing that to make it look cool." But then at the same time, I'm like, "But yeah, it does look really cool." [crosstalk 00:36:49].

EW (00:36:48):

... In there.

SW (00:36:52):

Right, exactly. So I learned a few things. Yes. When the lights are shining directly on my face it only becomes a problem when I'm in a dark environment, like the vast empty vacuum of space. So not ideal in that situation, but when I'm in a well lit room at a convention most of the rooms are pretty well lit for photography purposes. And when I'm in a light, a bright room, it's fine I can see out fine. It's just when it's dark outside that I see a glare basically.

SW (00:37:38):

And then the other thing I learned is when I'm trying to shoot this spacesuit for photographs or for video having the light on the inside of the helmet cuts down on glare from the outside. So you don't see the camera reflection in the visor, or you don't see the lighting reflection, from outside lighting you don't see production people reflected in the visor from the outside.

SW (00:38:05):

So there is kind of a functional aspect in filmmaking to having the light on the inside of the helmet shining on their face. And I think it's an interesting thing to think about with wearables, particularly with costuming and performance. I think that a lot of times these aesthetic versions of wearable technology, we tend to think of them as maybe just being stylistic or less about the engineering and more about the look. But really when it comes to putting something on the human body, there's engineering involved even if it's just an aesthetic piece, because like I said before you're going to come up on functional requirements that the human body just brings with it to every project that is wearable.

SW (00:39:03):

So my space suit, as I said, I didn't wear it into space, but I wore it at a convention and I wanted to stay comfortable. I needed it to stay cool. I needed the batteries to be in a place where I could recharge them easily or swap them out. I needed to be able to turn it off quickly if I went into a dark room. And so there's a functional aspect to it even though it's a costume.

EW (00:39:34):

When the music video people returned it was it dirty and sweaty?

SW (00:39:43):

Oh yeah. So, I mean, I designed this for wearing at a convention. I did not design this for being worn out in the fields, scrambling over hills, in 100 and whatever degree weather. I mean, it is hot. So yes, it did come back with a little wear and tear on it. Fortunately I'm fine with some additional weathering as I call it. But there are some things that I will need to repair, but that is another aspect of wearable technology. Your body moves and flexes and is exposed to so many different forces throughout the course of a day, even if you're not out in the desert climbing up and down hills. And so your wearables go through a lot and as robust as you make them, you will need to repair them.

SW (00:40:44):

I really like mechanical connections for that over something like glue, because it's just easier to repair something if in the course of breaking it doesn't tear itself apart. That's something that I think about even when I'm just sewing the space suit. I knew that it was going to be subjected to a lot of wear and tear. And so I checked all the seams before I sent it out. And I actually just made sure that my seams weren't too tight because if your seams don't give then the fabric tears. And I'd rather have to just sew the seam back up than mend the fabric.

EW (00:41:33):

I would be worried about the electronics and how to make everything reliable enough to survive an outing and how to document it well enough that when they get there and somebody who's never seen it before knows how to use it.

SW (00:41:47):

Yes. All of that. The spacesuit project I made for myself, I know how to use it because I built it. I sent them a lot of documentation. Fortunately, it's pretty simple. What I built is very simple. And so I'm so glad I made this choice. I kept the electronics local to wherever they're performing their function. So the helmets lights and the battery for the helmet it's all in the helmet. The helmet is one unit. It doesn't plug into any other part of the body. So you can just take the helmet off, put it right back on and you don't have to disconnect or reconnect anything. That's something I learned in my first costume that I ever put electronics in. It was a Jawa costume from Star Wars, and I have the lights on my mask are connected to a button in my glove.

SW (00:42:46):

So I have a wire running all the way down to my glove because I thought it would be cute to make the Jawas blink, which is really funny because they don't actually blink in the movie. But when I do it at little kids at conventions, they're like what? They freak out, it's fun.

SW (00:43:02):

But that makes it really difficult when I want to just take my mask off. It's a whole production to unhook that wire. So now I try to keep everything really compartmentalized in terms of electronics. And thankfully I protected everything from the environment. I really weatherproofed it pretty well. The other problem with putting lights in the helmet is your breath creates a lot of moisture. So I made sure that everything in the helmet is pretty well protected from that. So it actually with the electronics fared much better than the sewing.

SW (00:43:47):

The electronics came back fine. But knowing that, I built the robot suit a little bit differently. And I used some electronic components that were a little bit less custom, but allowed me to create the functionality that I wanted. But I didn't use any exotic kind of batteries. All the electronics in the robot suit use 20, 32 coin cell batteries, really easy to find. Everyone knows how to use them. They're not like LiPo batteries that are difficult to send through the mail. And I have to really explain to people how to use them safely. I prefer if I'm going to send something out to someone else I don't want to take the chance that they're going to handle a battery improperly.

EW (00:44:41):

With things like the spacesuit and some of your other projects. I mean, there's a lovely light up to it that just I want, and you have a handy sampler, that's a synthesizer glove sort of thing. Have you considered distributing kits so people can build these things instead of trying to adapt them to their local materials.

SW (00:45:10):

It's a thing that I've thought about. And I think it's a good idea. I'm coming around to it. I think in the past I thought, oh, I don't want to lock people in to making exactly what I made, but now I kind of see the value of being able to give someone everything they need so they can just get started. I think having energy and having momentum on your project is so precious and especially I think this year has really, really brought that to light for me. So it's something that I'm thinking about more and again, I think I would design specifically for that kind of kit product. I think that will be a fun design challenge actually, yeah.

EW (00:46:09):

I have some listener questions. One from Jordan who doesn't understand why we're not doing this in video, because it would be so much better, asked the questions, how do you make animations feel natural especially when they're responding to sensors? Okay. So my question is what is he talking about? And then I guess his question?

SW (00:46:31):

Oh, I think he's talking about light animations if you're triggering them with a sensor, say they're maybe responding to your voice or responding to your motion or responding to some kind of outside stimulus. I think that he's asking about since that seems really-

EW (00:46:58):

Have you done animations like that?

SW (00:47:00):

I've done some, so I've done... I have a mask that I've done that is an audio reactive mask. And I've done some... So usually what I've done in that realm is sound reactive lighting or I've done some temperature reactive lighting. And I think it's a design question. So for me, I'm thinking of those two examples, the audio reactive mask and the temperature reactive skirt, and both of them, they have different inputs.

SW (00:47:42):

One is sound, and one is temperature, but the output is the same, it's a lighting effect. And as a designer I'm trying to think of... So the question is how do you make that seem natural? So as a designer, I approach that challenge by thinking about what is expected as a viewer. So if I want the light to read as reacting to temperature visually, I think temperature is a slow change. I would expect that light animation to be gentle. And I would expect the colors to reflect what I think of as a temperature cue. So I think red, orange, feels hot and blues and greens and cool colors feel cool. And that's just borrowing the visual language that is kind of standard in my culture. But if I'm thinking of the sound reactive project what I would expect as a viewer would be something that changes quicker because sound evolves quickly as I'm listening to it.

SW (00:48:58):

It's kind of a higher impact input, I think. I would expect that light to react, to mimic like a sound wave. It would be more maybe undulating or a little more vibrant. And I would expect that visual change to be really apparent. Whereas the temperature one, I would expect it to be sort of a gradual. I mean, I think when you're trying to create lighting animations, and you want them to feel natural, you really have to do, like I said, you really have to do research. You really have to look at something natural and try to pick it apart and extract the qualities of it. And then look at how you're going to replicate that.

EW (00:50:00):

As an engineer I tend to take the opposite approach where I have a piece of technology and I learn all about how it works. And now in order to prove that I have learned everything I have to do everything that it does. If it does rainbow, I have to show the rainbow and your approach seems like you would get much better animations. But it's hard sometimes. It's hard sometimes when you're building with technology to remember the goal is how it looks on the outside not to keep thinking about how the technology is built and how much you can do with it and how exciting it is that you can make it turn white and black at 50 Hertz.

SW (00:50:53):

I think it's so interesting that you bring up these different approaches because I love that. I love that your process and your approach to it will be different. And I think to me having a background in design means that I was really taught about communication. I think for me if my project can communicate for itself that's sort of my highest level of success. And so when I look at a problem or I look at an idea and I'm trying to design a solution for what I want to create, I think I borrow from your sort of engineering perspective at first. And I think designers who are purely communication-based are missing out if they're not including the process of diving in and learning everything about what the thing can actually do. I think that's so important. And someone else mentioned to me we're having another maker who has a design background was saying like, she's a woodworker and she thinks a lot about chairs. And she was like, "I've sat in so many chairs and it feels like they're designed by people who never sat in a chair before." I'm like, "I know what you mean."

SW (00:52:43):

I think having an engineering approach and a design approach at the same time is so much more powerful than just one or the other. So I use those terms kind of interchangeably as well. And I want the walls to kind of blur between them because I think both approaches have so much value.

EW (00:53:08):

I agree, but I feel like my brain is so wired for the engineering approach that I can't always see my way to the designer approach. Do you have any advice? I spent a lot of time looking at art, doing origami, but are there books or things I can do to get better at-

SW (00:53:32):

Designer brain.

EW (00:53:33):

At designer brain?

SW (00:53:34):

Oh, designer brain, yes. Okay. Books and I'm going to be honest. I like books. I don't read a lot of books. I just don't have the attention span to sit down and turn pages. I listen to a lot of books. There are lots of great design books that are known as the pillars of design. I would say you could skip a lot of those and go to a podcast, go to a podcast by Debby Millman. Debby Millman has a podcast, she's a graphic designer, but her podcast is called Design Matters. And she interviews graphic designers, writers, artists, all kinds of different creative people who have different approaches, this is something that I think and I say a lot, they're all designers. A lot of them don't know that there are designers, but they're all designers.

SW (00:54:41):

Everyone's actually a designer because we all design things. But good designers put a lot of time and effort and study and practice into design and they get better at it, but we're all capable of designing. And we all design things by accident all the time. So go to Debby Millman's podcast and listen to her guests, they're phenomenal. And she is a designer, teases out a lot of design thinking throughout their conversations and I've learned a lot there. And she interviews some very famous designers who then you could go and look up, Stefan Sagmeister. Oh gosh, so she studied with Milton Glaser who recently passed away and he's a phenomenal artist and designer. But so she's kind of a great door into design if you're new to it. And if you're wondering how you could possibly be a designer, honestly, I guarantee you will connect with one of her guests and realize that you are also a designer.

EW (00:56:02):

It's kind of like the show is a lot about everybody is an engineer.

SW (00:56:06):

Yes. Yup.

EW (00:56:11):

Do you have any other projects that we should talk about? Do you have anything that's like, everybody should try this. Everybody should know about this particular project because everybody should just do it. It's just so much fun. It's okay if it's light up shoes. Everybody really secretly wants light up shoes.

SW (00:56:34):

I mean, I was going to say I think that everyone should make a sewn circuit. I think everyone should sew a circuit, because you will be amazed at the material that you're creating. I think about electronics it just blows your mind when you start to realize that electronics can be different than what you thought they were. When I was a kid I thought electronics were made by robots. I had no idea how electronics worked. I never opened up a calculator. I never opened up a game console. I wasn't that kind of tinker when I was a kid. And I think a lot of people have that kind of background, but a lot of people I know who work in this field, they're like, "Oh yeah, I grew up like taking things apart. And my parents always got mad at me." And I'm like, "I never did that."

SW (00:57:34):

And I never did that because in my house electronics were really precious. They were really expensive. And they were these magical devices that I just was afraid I was going to break them. So I never took those things apart. And I didn't know how they worked. And I had this idea in my mind that electronics were this mystery inside of a plastic case. And I thought they were hard edged and kind of ugly and kind of I didn't see them as a creative tool. I didn't see them as a place of creation. For me they came to my house and they were already made. And when I realized I could sew a circuit that just exploded that paradigm in my mind and I realized that electronics could be anything and that I could do them.

SW (00:58:38):

And I just think it's a powerful experience and it's fun and it's quick and it's cheap. You don't need any complicated tools or materials for it. You need the thread and then you need a needle and a fabric, a piece of fabric and maybe an LED. And you can get going.

EW (00:59:02):

And a battery.

SW (00:59:04):

And battery.

EW (00:59:04):

I think you need a battery somewhere there too.

SW (00:59:05):

You need some components. Okay, fair enough, you definitely need some components, but they are fairly inexpensive compared to getting into big deal microcontrollers or big electronics kit. And you don't need a soldering iron. It's a little less intimidating if you've never soldered anything before, and yeah, it's fun.

EW (00:59:36):

So you use the LEDs that has a little holes on the edges that can be sewn on to like the LilyPad style things.

SW (00:59:44):

Yeah, you can use those. You can also just use regular through hole LEDs with the long wirey legs. You can just roll those into a ring and you can sow directly to those.

EW (01:00:01):

All right. Well, it appears I need to go find the conductive thread and put some LEDs on my slippers.

SW (01:00:09):

Yeah. It's so fun. It's really fun. I know winter is coming, I think it's nice to put LEDs in your hat and if you're going for a winter evening walk and you want to be visible you can make your own.

EW (01:00:24):

And with the little coin cells, it's not that heavy.

SW (01:00:27):

Yeah. That's another thing I really like about those batteries that are really light.

EW (01:00:34):

You mentioned motivation and I just wanted to ask a question about that. It is a particularly bad time for motivation for many people. Do you have any advice on that?

SW (01:00:47):

Oh, it's something that I'm personally struggling with this year and the only way that I'm able to keep going. I mean, honestly I look at my work and I'm like, does anyone really need this right now? And the truth is that I need it right now. I'm doing a lot of compartmentalizing to make it through this year in my mind. And I'm using this year as a motivation to be a little more scrappy about my work and use the things that I already have. I have a Post-it on my computer right now that's a reminder to myself and it says "you have everything you need." And that's a reminder for me that I don't need to go out for materials. I'm a scrappy person and I can use what I have on hand. I'm also kind of a hoarder. So I have a lot of materials on hand. I'm very fortunate to be able to collect things that I don't need right now.

SW (01:02:01):

I'm using this year to work through those. That's kind of giving me a little more... It's making me feel better about working on my projects. And when I share my projects I feel... At first I thought I don't want to detract from really important conversations that are happening in the public right now in our communities and in the country. I don't want to add noise. I want those important voices to come through. But at the same time I don't want people to remove themselves from those conversations because of fatigue.

SW (01:02:47):

I do think it's still important to share your work and what you're doing on a daily basis because we're all in this together. So in terms of motivation for keeping going on projects, I think it's about figuring out how your project and your work is a value. And if it's only a value to you that's still a value, so keep doing it.

EW (01:03:17):

Yes. I like that. It's hard to remember that it's okay if it's just a value to you. I've been doing some odd or a gummy that ends up with paper, nautiluses all over the house and I like it. And yet the only thing that I'm doing is trying to figure out how to build up to a joke about argonauts, which are an animal in the deep ocean that are also called paper nautiluses. And so the origami shells... And it will be hilarious when I finally get the joke done. But in the meantime, Christopher's like ankle deep in little seashells, paper seashells.

SW (01:04:03):

That's awesome.

EW (01:04:05):

Sophy, it's been wonderful to talk to you. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with?

SW (01:04:10):

Yeah, I think I already touched on it, but I just want to keep in mind that this year is difficult, but I think we can use it to refocus our work and find more value in what we're doing for ourselves and for others.

SW (01:04:31):

Something that comes to mind for me is I often think of my work as being very accessible because I put everything I do on the internet and I share a lot of my techniques and my processes openly and freely on the internet. But it's a reminder to me this year that that doesn't necessarily make it accessible to everyone because not everyone has access to the internet. Not everyone has the ability to buy all the components that I list and not everyone has a safe and quiet space to build these things. I don't have an answer to how to solve all of those problems, but I think the first step is just acknowledging them and learning more about those barriers. That's my final thought. Just try to share your work and try to help other people get over the barriers that keep them from experimenting.

EW (01:05:31):

Excellent. Our guest has been Sophy Wong, a multi-disciplinary designer, working with wearable technology and digital fabrication. You can learn more about what she does on her website, sophywong.com. And of course, there'll be a link in the show notes.

CW (01:05:47):

Thanks Sophy.

SW (01:05:48):

Thanks so much.

EW (01:05:50):

Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Helen Leigh and Sophy Kravitz for recommending Sophy Wong. Big thank you to our Patreon supporters for Sophy's mic. And thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show@embedded.fm or hit the contact link on Embedded FM.

EW (01:06:10):

Now a quote to leave you with from a book that I picked up and enjoyed, it was called The Confectioner's Guild by Claire Luana. It's a young adult fantasy mystery so just don't judge. And the quote here, "You deserve a place in this world, a place where you can be safe and whole and happy, never apologize for insisting on it, for fighting for it."

EW (01:06:43):

Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of logical elegance and embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them. At this time, our sponsors are logical elegance and listeners like you.