Hi! Thanks for the kind words. Yes, this was a first BM project - a first hardware project, really. I had never played with microcontrollers or CNC machines before. The fact that everything worked on first try, on schedule, came as a major surprise to everybody, myself included.
I think the key is to choose your complexity. Some things may look complex, but they are actually just the juxtaposition of some simple, repeated elements.
Ironically (speaking as a software engineer), the one thing that we didn't finish on time was the software. We ended up running some simple code to power the colors, as opposed to the fancy fluid simulation that I had originally envisioned (http://gregschlom.com/flow-and-wonder/)
I think the key is to choose your complexity. Some things may look complex, but they are actually just the juxtaposition of some simple, repeated elements.
Ironically (speaking as a software engineer), the one thing that we didn't finish on time was the software. We ended up running some simple code to power the colors, as opposed to the fancy fluid simulation that I had originally envisioned (http://gregschlom.com/flow-and-wonder/)