04/22/2026
As many of you have probably noticed, LightLab doesn't really do shows anymore. Why? Well, we got tired of it. After 9 years of moving flight cases late at night, getting home at 5am, we lost the passion for the scene that we once had when we were younger. We have full time careers, and we wanted to focus on those while freeing up our weekends to enjoy life.
I've decided to keep posting on this Instagram page to document my other endeavors of electrical engineering art. With this I present to you my first piece: Lucky Tom.
While on a bike ride with I found this poor guy destined for purgatory outside of a dumpster. I strapped him to my rack and took him home with me. I tore out all of the original components and put in an ESP32, Bluetooth controller, amp, servo controller, and a 40ohm speaker I salvaged from some of my other junk laying around. The motors were good after some oil and minor repairs. The code uses FFT to isolate and compress the vocal range of songs and open the mouth with PWM, with random neck movement. I installed RGB LEDs for the eyes to show Bluetooth connection status. I crossed a couple of the wire colors and decided I like it that way, because it makes him look even goofier. If you have any questions about my projects, feel free to ask away.
