Few years ago I was so lost while learning electronics. Then I found Adafruit guides and it was empowering and exciting! Suddenly, I didn’t feel so dumb or alone. Now, I've gone from lost maker soul to publishing my own Adafruit Learn Guide – it feels incredible to give back to the community that has given me so much. Let's take a quick look at the project!
This is a Bluetooth connected necklace. It has a brass piece that acts as a capacitive touch button, is powered by an ItsyBitsy nrf52840 and the code is written with CircuitPython. The necklace "chain" consists of the wires connecting the pendant to the microcontroller and rechargeable battery hanging behind my neck, and all those wires are hand wrapped with some gold embroidery thread.
This necklace was something i've been wanting to make for a while, ever since I created a similar concept ring that uses the magical Black LED material:
I made a ring! It lights up! Also it’s a prototype! 🎉
— ✨ charlyn ✨ (@chardane) January 6, 2020
This special type of acrylic looks opaque, but it lets light through beautifully ✨💖 quite fun to play with, gonna see what else I can do with it 💡 #ledtwitter 😄 pic.twitter.com/KbhX8beiQW
After that project, I began to wonder "what else i could do" with that acrylic, and envisioned using the adorable Dotstar Matrix from Adafruit. But then, the pandemic hit, I went into interview prep mode, and a bunch of projects got backlogged.
Fast forward to 11 months later, I was experimenting with some combinations of brass and acrylic shapes, and things just kind of clicked into place.
Figuring out the shape I wanted and having beautiful brass pieces to play with gave me so much motivation to go through this project. But after getting all the way to the end of the project, I had so much doubt about whether or not this was going to be interesting enough. Thankfully, I recently have been getting really good at just ignoring my imposter syndrome. With clammy fingers I hit "send" on an email to Adafruit, proposing to write a guide for this project, and the rest is history!
Few years ago I was so _lost_ while learning electronics. Then I found @adafruit guides - it was empowering & exciting! Suddenly I didn’t feel so dumb or alone.
— ✨ charlyn ✨ (@chardane) December 23, 2020
Today I published my 1st Adafruit Learn Guide! Truly hope it helps someone on their path too! https://t.co/k7EEVGmULC pic.twitter.com/XdQrMXVdGV
There are lots of people who have said such positive things about this guide (and me 🥺), and I am really grateful for all these wonderful maker friends.
Check out the full guide over at Adafruit!
Dotstar Fortune Necklace with Bluetooth and Touch
Had to do a few steps in this project multiple times just to be able to take photos and write a quality guide – it was all worth it! Thanks for reading through my journey. I hope this guide inspires you to make something beautiful. 💖