Featured Mod: Laine’s Luna

New month, new Featured Mod! This time it is one of the best mods from last year, from a dear friend of mine, Laine.

Lets see what he has to say about this cool little scratchbuild.

Where did you get your inspiration for Luna and what was your thought behind this project?

– At first it started as basic geometric shapes just to fit hardware, but it’s been a year of constant evolving to get to the final design. The last part of the build I got heavily into retro futurism and aeronautical design. There’s not a lot of thinking behind the project, I just went to the workshop each day with some inspiration and a vague idea of what I wanted for each part.

What did you find as the biggest challenge when building Luna?

– The electronics, what would work and what wouldn’t. Since the Brix is a closed, proprietary system there isn’t a lot of information and schematics covering the hardware. The PWM for example is completely inverted, and a lot of the wiring was guesswork and trial and error. It was also the most fun part, because it really reminded me of when I first started with computers and had no idea what I was doing.

I have been following your work since a long time and one thing that I love is that all of your photos, even the work in progress photos in your build-logs are of really high quality, why is that?

– Thank you! Photography is a big part of my life, probably more so than computers and building. If you’re enjoying yourself it usually translates into what ever you decide to do, and I really like playing around with my camera.

I want to give a big thank you for being able to ask you some questions about this little, but detailed build. Do you have any last words you want to say?

– Adam Savage put this into words better than I could ever do (from his list, My 10 Commandments for Makers);
Discouragement and failure are intrinsic to the process. Don’t hide from these. Talk about them. They’re not enemies to be avoided, they’re friends, designed to teach your humility.

Go easy on yourself. Don’t compare yourself to others; go ahead and be envious of others’ skills, because frequently you can’t not. Use that.