Why I'm Building in Public

I’ve spent years writing Python at a semiconductor company, debugging firmware pipelines, and quietly building things on the side that never quite made it out of my garage. If that sounds familiar, this post is for you.

The Background

My day job is software engineering — Python, mostly — at a company that designs microchips. My background is in electrical engineering, which means I’m comfortable at both ends of the hardware-software stack: reading schematics, flashing firmware, wiring up breakout boards, and then writing the code that talks to them. It’s a strange combination, but it’s useful.

What it doesn’t automatically give you is a path from “I have an idea” to “here’s a product someone can buy.” That gap is what this whole project is about.

Enter The Ephergent

The Ephergent is my brand for 3D-printed electronics and interactive desk sculptures — objects that sit at the intersection of art, engineering, and interactivity. The first product is Totem, a capacitive touch-activated sculpture that responds to your presence with light. More on that in future posts.

The name comes from the word ephemeral — things that exist briefly, matter while they’re here, and leave an impression. I liked the tension between that and the permanence of physical objects. Also, it’s just a weird word and I find that memorable.

Before Greatness LLC is the parent company that wraps everything together — The Ephergent store, this blog, and whatever else I decide to ship.

Why Build in Public?

This is a question I asked myself seriously before committing to it, because building in public isn’t free. It costs time, and it costs a certain kind of pride.

Here’s where I landed:

Accountability. When you announce what you’re working on, you have a reason to actually finish it. I’ve started and abandoned more side projects than I care to count, almost always in silence. When nobody knows, there’s no cost to quitting. Building in public changes that math.

Community. The maker, electronics, and 3D printing communities are genuinely generous spaces. I’ve learned an enormous amount from people who documented their process openly — their failures as much as their successes. This is my way of paying that forward. If even one post saves someone three hours of debugging, it was worth writing.

Teaching by doing. Writing about a thing forces you to understand it at a different level. When I have to explain why I added a 330Ω resistor to the data line, or why I changed print orientation on a part, I catch gaps in my own reasoning. The blog makes me a better engineer.

What to Expect Here

This isn’t a polished brand blog with carefully curated success stories. It’s a working log. Expect:

• Build logs: What I’m making, how it’s going, what broke
• Tutorials: Practical guides on ESP32, CircuitPython, NeoPixels, 3D printing for electronics enclosures, and whatever else I’m learning
• Honest reflections: When something doesn’t work — and things will not work — I’ll write about why
• Product development: The business side, including the content-first approach I’m taking to launching The Ephergent

The Content-First Approach

Most hardware startups build the product first and figure out how to talk about it later. I’m doing the opposite — deliberately. Before I have a polished store, I want to have documentation, tutorials, and a track record of showing up consistently. Content builds trust. Trust precedes purchase.

This blog is the foundation. The store is built on top of it. If you follow along, you’ll watch the whole thing get assembled piece by piece.

Welcome. It’s going to be messy and interesting.