Something of a cerebral week, I think. That's not quite the correct word for it but there's that feeling of having worked hard, without any (well, much) of that work being physical.

Part of it was being on the edge of my comfort-zone as I drafted a list of job requirements for what I'm calling the Sales / Marketing / Storytelling role. It's really good to have moved that on. I'm going to share it with a couple of friends for feedback but writing it down has been a blocker for some time and it's good to be past that step.

Most of it though has been preparing a lecture. I've been asked to give a guest lecture to the students on the Connected Evnironments MSc at UCL Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis to share my experiences with running an IoT business and scaling up from a prototype to manufacturing.

The lecture is this coming Thursday, so I've been collecting my thoughts; revisiting sections of the book and the Indie Manufacturing project; and pulling together slides.

There's more to do this week, but it's falling into place. Thankfully. It always does, but the flux of processing it in my brain also always brings a bit of anxiety. I've given enough talks to learn to embrace it—it's borne out of wanting to do a good job and its absence would be a warning sign that I'd likely mess things up. Still, it's the part of giving a talk that I least enjoy!

Back on more comfortable territory, I've been prototyping an add-on button to My Bike's Got LED. It mounts to the handlbars to allow me to control the lights without having to pull out my phone:

  • Adrian McEwen: Experimenting with adding a button to control my #MyBikesGotLED lights. Starting with some reuse: harvesting a button PCB from a waste board (well done past me for test points next to the button to solder to now!) and an old bike inner-tube for waterproofing #weeknotes #ibal234 pic.twitter.com/Kbqgvum1kn
    An unpopulated printed circuit board with a corner of if, which contains the footprint for a button, cut out. The button to mount on it is next to it
    The small button circuit board with the button soldered on, as well as two wires which run out of view. Next to that is a short section of old bike inner tube
  • Adrian McEwen: Modded the #WLED code so a button press cycles through the presets, and got a first attempt at a #3Dprinted handlebar mount. Both need more work, but good enough for a first road test #ibal234 #weeknotes pic.twitter.com/OrOyxWUPpt
  • Adrian McEwen: Here's the set-up mounted on my bike. It worked okay for Friday night's 25 mile ride, although I also found a couple of things that need improving for the next version #ibal234 #MyBikesGotLED #weeknotes