About

About the Sparkle Shield

I've loved electronics, programming, and building things that blink since I was in elementary school. I learned to solder in the 2nd or 3rd grade, and took apart every broken appliance in the house (and maybe a few that were working just fine before I got to them). One of my first electronic projects was a simple smiley face made out of colored LEDs on a simple protoboard. It was pretty crappy, but I loved it. Thirty years later, I still love electronics, and I still love things that blink.

I designed the first version of the Sparkle Shield on a high speed bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing, with copious amounts of unsolicited advice from my fellow travel companions. (Guys, I'm still using Eagle, but I have embraced the wonders of autorouting). The train ride was part of the Hacker Trip to China 2015, a three week tour of the hacker, maker, and electronics manufacturing scene in China, led by the amazing Mitch Altman. 20+ geeks from all over the world, travelling together for 3 weeks visting hackerspaces, manufacturers, schools, and industrial markets in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing.

I made the first one for myself - a simple project to test working with chinese manufacturing. The first boards were made by my friends Ian and Jin, at Dirty PCBS. When get a custom circuit board made, you have to order a minumum order of ten boards. So when I posted a photo of my completed shield to my friends on Facebook, I casually offered to send the extras to any friends that wanted one. And a bunch did. But they didn't want be to assemble it for them - they wanted to build it themselves.

Rich, a buddy from college, was the first to respond. He's teaching his homeschooled eight-year-old son Murphy to solder. But the first version of the board was really hard to solder. The LED legs were too close together, and it was really easy to create short circuits. It took me all night to build the first one, with lots of swearing and debugging. I knew if I was frustrated trying to solder it, there's no way I could send one to Murphy, despite Rich's insistence that children have tiny hands which are perfect for detail work. Don't worry Murphy, I've got your back. I want you to have a kit that I would have loved to build when I was eight.

So I went through a few different design iterations, testing every way I could think of to make it easier to solder, and adding a few cool extras, like the ability to chain multiple shields together and support for external power to allow running the LEDs at maximum brightness (they're REALLY bright).

I even made a board with every possible arrangement of holes and pads I could think of.

I finally had something that I felt confidant would be easy for people of all ages and experience levels to solder - even if you've never soldered before.

After going to all this work, and some encouragement from Mitch Altman, I decided I should make a larger batch and try to sell them to other people that might want one.

Designing this kit has been a childhood dream come true. I hope you enjoy building and programming it as much as I've enjoyed creating it.

Acknowledgements

This kit was inspired by two similar open hardware products: the Neopixel Shield and the LoL Shield. I've borrowed a number of good ideas, ranging from inspiration to board design to ways to make the instructions better. I've learned a ton from each of them, and this kit is much better for it. Much thanks to Adafruit and Jimmie Rodgers for paving the way.

About me

My name is Scotty Allen, and I'm a geek. I love building things - software, electronics, even a land yacht! I used to work in Silicon Valley as a software engineer for companies like Google, Ooyala, and Shopkick. In 2011, I set out to build my first company, AppMonsta. In 2014 I gave up my apartment to become a digital nomad. Since then, I've traveled the world full-time, meeting awesome people and building awesome things. The center of my orbit is still San Francisco, where I store my hang glider, land yacht, and a bunch of half-finished projects.

If you want to say hi, you can find me at @scottyallen on twitter, or scotty@sparkleshield.com.