iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 15h

Third time's the charm! No stencil this time. I squeezed paste on each pad, put it on the hot plate, then ended up re-touching most joints with the iron during the testing process. Ain't pretty, but it sure is fun. #electronics

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 10/10/2026

10 years ago this week, I released a lil VR game. Now it's playable in or out of VR - right in your browser. You can race your friends, make your own courses, or kick back and watch others in FF-TV. It's open-source now too! facetedflight.net

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 09/10/2026

Slapped together a "stop backing up" sensor for my partner, using an esp32, an old ultrasonic sensor, and spare neopixel strip. Anything within a certain distance of the sensor makes the rainbow light party. #esp32

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 07/10/2026

Thought my old computer had a bad power supply, so I replaced the PSU. My first time swapping one. Turned out the older machine just didn't like all of its cores getting slammed.for species id.....oops.

A black computer tower with its side panel off, lying open on a dark leather chair in a room full of houseplants. Inside, a Corsair liquid cooler and a large Gigabyte GeForce RTX graphics card sit above an empty lower bay, with a braided cable routed around the drive cage.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 05/10/2026

Time to convert an old breadboard project to a protoboard project. What shenanigans are you all up to today?

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 02/10/2026

Painted a turtle print to give my sister a smile. Found out afterward I should have painted the lines white, not black. Doh. #3dprinting

A small 3D-printed turtle held between finger and thumb: bright green head and legs, brown shell with dark lines painted into the grooves.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 30/09/2026

Stan has been bringing her kids around almost every day! So far we've named Peaches, and Poe (short for poe-tay-toe). Still haven't quite worked out what the last of the triplets should be named. #raccoons

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 25/09/2026

Making physics core to the six degrees of play experience means that you can tug on a game to see how its influences pull its neighbors. #gamedev

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 23/09/2026

Meet The Dude. I put my hand on the glass and so did he! Then he curled up at the door and laid down. I think it's safe to say I found my spirit animal...or he found me...something like that. Either way, snacks are involved.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 19/09/2026

Most of the raccoons that I started the project with ended up being moms! Cutie had 4 kits, Stan 3, and Mama Pedro has 2.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 18/09/2026

my 2nd attempt at assembly for my glint revE board, so i thought i'd do a lil stop-motion experiment using one shot per assembly step for the glint board. kinda sorta works, but i should really do per-part next time... #animation #stopmotion

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 13/09/2026

Finally assembled a pcb with smd components thats actually working! Further proof third time’s the charm.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 11/09/2026

these lil buggers like to go all melty when soldered on with an iron. feels good to finally get one on that isn't all toasty.

Extreme close-up of a small cream-coloured four-pin Qwiic connector soldered onto a green circuit board, its four solder joints bright against the copper pads, with the silkscreen label J6 beside it and a blue silicone work mat behind.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 07/09/2026

Debugging pics sometimes hit like artwork. Also: goddamn I f’d this up.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 06/09/2026

I’ve been going to #PAX on and off since the start in Bellevue. I love going, but holy crap there’s just too many people to enjoy the booths and get a good look at games, let alone try and play them. That said, it’s great to see so many of us nerds, geeking out over everything. End of old man rant

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 01/09/2026

The tile in its dev enclosure, fully hooked up and working from a battery for the first time!! No cord, just the thing sitting in my hand. #electronics

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 29/08/2026

This is Cutie Pie, mother of 4. Instantly recognizable due to frequent bleps

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 25/08/2026

Adding speed control to the motor. It had one speed and that speed was super fast, so now there's a knob. #3dprinting

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 23/08/2026

Tree support patterns never get old for me. This simple hose adapter looks almost alien before the supports are removed. #3dprinting

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 18/08/2026

Powering the panel up. The magic smoke stayed inside and the lights came on, which is all I was hoping for. #electronics

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 13/08/2026

The plate is technically for the raccoons. The squirrel reviewed that policy and chose to ignore it. #wildlife

A squirrel standing over a blue-and-white paper plate of food scraps in the grass beside a stone wall.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 11/08/2026

Miss B. the opossum came back by! She's the whole reason our lil backyard observatory project even exists. What creatures of the night are lurking in your backyard? #opossum #trailcam

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 08/08/2026

Six Degrees started as a flat 2D graph. Then I added more games and watched it fall apart. The shape it actually needed was a night sky. #dataviz

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 06/08/2026

I didn't draw a face on anything. We bought this one because it already looked like a Boo from Mario. I just gave the little ghost a set of programmable LEDs, so now it glows however I tell it to.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 04/08/2026

For weeks I was sure it was the same raccoon on repeat. Then you start noticing the little differences, and you can't stop. Now I want to know every one of them by name.

A raccoon sitting upright on a stone garden wall in daylight beside a yellow feeding dish, looking toward the camera.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 30/07/2026

First light. I'd soldered hobby kits before, but never anything that was my own idea. Watching these do exactly what I told them to felt like getting away with something.

Addressable LED strands glowing green and cyan in a dim room, wired to a small microcontroller on a breadboard.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 28/07/2026

First real pixels off the panel. It's an LED matrix run by a little ESP32, and watching an actual picture light up on it does not get old.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 23/07/2026

Same automata, now with a motor instead of the hand crank. Turns out 'a motor' quietly meant 'absolutely feral speed.' The crank is more dignified. This is more fun.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 16/07/2026

My first automata. It's an old Zelda print, an Octorok, that I finally painted, riding a cam I made by animating the motion in Blender and printing the curve. Crank the handle and the little guy dances.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 14/07/2026

One of the living room lanterns. A look from outside first, then a peek inside at where the addressable LEDs live.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 09/07/2026

This is the first thing I've ever soldered. Not this connector, not this board. Anything. A few joints are ugly. They all held when I tugged. I'll take it.

A small hand-soldered green protoboard sits on a blue silicone soldering mat. A black 3-pin connector with red, white, and black wires is soldered to one end, feeding an addressable LED strip, with a separate red-and-black power lead. Around it are spools of green and yellow hookup wire, flush cutters, and pliers.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 03/07/2026

Testing the lantern guts on the couch, because that's where the lanterns are going to live. A little XIAO chip learning to push a whole strip of addressable LEDs around.

A breadboard on a black plastic mount resting on a couch. A red Arduino Uno (SparkFun RedBoard) at the top is wired by blue, yellow, red and black jumper wires down to a white breadboard holding a small black Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32, a USB-C cable, and a few loose resistors. An in-progress test of the lantern's LED controller.

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Uncle Matt Makes _____ @unclemattmakes.com · 27/06/2026

Low-poly fish. High-fidelity pooping. A reef that runs in your browser, and the whole food chain runs on poop. It falls, sprouts kelp, then fish swim over to eat. Pull the thread on anything alive in there and it leads back to poop. polyfish.unclemattmakes.com

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