New video up!

My latest element14 presents video is up! It took me over a year to finish this project alongside my PhD! You can call me Dr Lorraine now :)

This is my first elmement14 video in a while :)

I added some electronics to the Lego Barad Dur to make interactive and terrifying!

It's 2025 and I'm putting some new life back into this website.

Let me re-introduce myself! I'm Lorraine, I'm a research associate at Lancaster University in the UK and I've just finished writing my PhD on "Extending Physical Computing to Enable Educators to Teach Children about Data". I'm originally from Dublin, Ireland and I live in North Yorkshire in the UK with my husband and two sons. I love to make things with electronics and am a video content producer for element14. My projects are fun beginner projects using products like micro:bit, Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

With some more time on my hands I'm hoping to do some more fun projects and post them here. I'll also be back filling some gaps of previous projects so check out my previous posts on my home page.

This was part of my own personal moon phase! I was and still am obsessed with the moon, it's just really really cool.. and I love it.

I also ran to the moon

This video makes a spinning moon attached to a number pad. You enter a date into the number and it spins the moon around a light to show you what the moon was doing on that date. How cool is that!

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Another moon video :)  And another running video! Here instead of competing with my brother, we joined forces to try and run to the moon. I knew I bought that moon dress for a purpose

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This was more like a how not to create an air hockey table!

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This was a really fun project.. it didn't work out exactly as I wanted but I had a good workaround.

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It's been a while! But I want to start adding projects to this blog again, starting with my Halloween project for 2022. The idea is to have a TV in the front window facing out with either a motion sensor or a camera detecting people walking past. On the TV an eyeball will open when it sees someone, and then the iris will move following them as they walk past my house!

All the code is on my public github: https://lorraine.mcunderwood.org/halloween-2022-tracking-eyeball/

Stage 1: Make the iris move

14/10/2022 21:00, Stage 1: Remember how to use pygame. I've created a pygame program with the eyeball and iris sprites. The iris reacts to keyboard commands. The code is stage1_keyboardirish.py

And a video on twitter of it working:

Stage 2: Blink

It's almost 1am and I've got the blink working! I downloaded PhotoShop onto a new laptop in order to make my images transparent. The blink involved adding another sprite for the eyelids to come down over the iris and changing everything to alpha. The code is stage2_blink.py on GitHub.

Video: https://twitter.com/LMcUnderwood/status/1581069758241251329

What I want is for it to go in reverse really... the closed eye to open and watch people. But that's a job for another day

The moment I saw the Pimoroni round display, I wanted to make it into a mirror! This draws makeup lines on your face for you, years before TikTok filters existed!

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This is my competitive spirit coming out! I recreated a childhood arcade game but with live strava data. It shows me, my brother and my husband running 100km. Who's going to make it to the finish line first!

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This was a follow on from the sensor video... the buttons got wet and didn't work so I used pose detection to detect people.

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This was the perfect reason I needed to add wires to my front garden :)

I really want to extend this project

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Did you know that you can cross stitch a QR code? It's a really geeky way of displaying information. They take a while to stitch - around 5+ hours for a beginner, but I find stitching relaxing and a great break from the computer screen.

Here's some steps to help you make your own.  

1. What do you want to hide behind the QR code? QR generator websites offer lots of services, some you might have to pay for. I'd say keep it simple! A website or an email address. Copy what you want to use.
2. Find a QR generator website. If this is for something commercial or you want to last forever, sign up for an account so you can keep your QR code.
3. Paste your website or email address that's it. Your QR code is generated.
4. Download it for safe keeping.
5. I printed mine so I could stitch without my computer.
6. Get your stitching materials together: aida, thread, scissors, cosy chair.
7. Start stitching. My stitch took 4.5 hours. I watched a movie so I wasn't speed stitching until the last 90 minutes when I wanted to go to bed!
8. Scan your QR code using a QR app on your phone.
9. Tada! It works

I've never had problems with my stitches scanning. If you do, check your pattern against what you've stitched - you might be missing a square.

In 2017 I made a cross stitch that would e-mail my husband that I was on my way. I framed it and put it up at work where it still is!  

I'm making a 7 segment display RGB LED clock.

I'll produce a video for element14 on how I made it but here's some photos of my progress so far. The base is 3d printed with a RGB LED strip inside. The lid is a laser cut foggy acrylic.

I haven't decided what microcontroller to use yet.