The Brick That Shall Not Be Named: A Joe Broms Story

• August Hardware & Electronics Engineering Meetup by MacroFab & Mouser Electronics event is live! Come grab some food, beer, and socializing if you’re in the Houston area.
• Joseph Broms 
  • Joe received his B.S. at the University of Illinois in Computer Science
  • He has worked in numerous industries including, medical device, security, professional audio, broadcast, and education
  • One central theme to Joe’s career is successfully turning ideas into sellable products
  • Has worked on many projects ranging from a FDA approved cardiac simulator to a critically acclaimed instrument tuner, APTuner
• Joseph is about to release a product called ProtoBricks on Indiegogo 
  • Protobricks are LEGO compatible building blocks to lower the entry level of how electronics work 
    • Purpose is to remove how much ancillary gunk is needed to understand how it works
    • It has been Joesph's hobby for the past seven years with many different revisions
  • Mold design and plastics 
    • LEGO stud pitch is 7.986mm, 2.54mm on solderless breadboard = exact factor of pi difference
    • Used modified LEGO bricks as initial tests
    • 3D printing has gotten good enough to prototype injection molding
  • Electrical Contacts 
    • Copper tape and sheets pressed into the plastic did not work
    • Spring loaded pogo pins everywhere!
    • QUANTITY DICTATES EVERYTHING
• Stephens Game - Room for of balloons. How do you get rid of them. 
  • Joseph - Blowtorch
  • Stephen - Pull a vacuum on the room
  • Parker - Throw cats into the room
  • Combination - Flamethrower vacuum cat

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!

Tags: 3D Printing, educational electronics, EFM32 Gecko, EFM32 Gecko Silicon Labs, Indiegogo, injection molding, LED, LED driver chip, lego compatible, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, multiplexors, pi, Podcast, protobrick, shapeways, Silicon Labs, sketchup, solderless breadboard