UPDATE: I had a job
This post is mostly housekeeping to push the Hire me! post down the page. I was hired by VTProDesign in October 2021 as their Senior Electrical Engineer. We’re an experiential entertainment company that does both temporary activations and permanent installs. One of the first projects I worked on was the Stranger Things pop-up store. I’ve now been there a year and it’s been a blast.
My name is Eliot Phillips and I’m looking for engineering work. I’ve got 15 years experience building and writing about custom hardware. In the last few years the work I’ve done has run the gamut of simple prototypes to full production items for public consumption. I tend to focus on the electrical engineering aspects of projects, but I have a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. I enjoy getting into interesting projects on the ground floor and collaborating with others to steer them towards success.
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Before lockdown, I participated in two board gaming groups. One was every Monday at Dave and Pinguino’s apartment and the other was every Tuesday fortnight at work (an intentionally pretentious time period). That last one has been going for seven years so far. Now that our movement has been restricted we’ve been exploring other ways to play and it’s been a bit rough. I wanted to share some of the options out there and what we’ve been using. Continue reading
Two Bit Circus closed its doors due to COVID-19 in mid-March and laid off all salaried staff a week later. I’ve interviewed with a couple engineering firms in the meantime; they mostly see me as a resource for building quick-turn physical prototypes… in person. If you’d like to work with me, check out my resume and portfolio. I’ve been quite busy and thought I’d share what I’ve been working on even if it’s not my traditional style of projects. Continue reading
Eliot Phillips
Senior Electrical Engineer
Los Angeles, CA
eliot@robotskirts.com
https://robotskirts.com/category/portfolio/
Another year older. The photo above is from a sign painting workshop I took from Bryan Yonki last month. This month I’m participating in the UC’s Victory Garden program while I work on purchasing the house next to the Art Park. I still live in Highland Park and work for Two Bit Circus. Our retail space is a year and a half old now and gets more popular every weekend. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in February. In the last year, we threw two successful, small warehouse parties. That was a nice experience because up to this point we’ve done larger things outdoors and far out of town. I’m still regularly board gaming with at a weekly meetup with Dave, Pinguino, and Craig, usually for campaign style games, and then I still host a fortnightly game night at work. I started bouldering at LA Boulders last fall after meeting a couple people who described how much they enjoyed the problem solving. I spend about 4 hours a week on it and really enjoy it. This summer I plan on headed back to Space Camp and ToorCamp. The Adidas LED jacket was my favorite project from last year and I’m glad I got to share it with so many people.
I like Advent calendars. It’s a gift every day! But I don’t really like the bulk manufactured ones that deliver milk chocolate in different wrappers. I did discover an Irish Whiskey one a few years ago but it was $161 and every bottle is just 1oz. I decided I’d make a liquor advent calendar of slightly lower brow booze. Continue reading
Photo by Pinguino Kolb
I think I had this idea of stuffing LEDs down the stripes of track jackets many years ago but the technology wasn’t there at the time. I was probably assembling my LED matrix hoodie and wanting a way to keep the LEDs captive and straight. With the package size of addressable LEDs shrinking we now have ones that are small enough to to fit inside factory sewn stripes. My friends and I have built a few of these now and I wanted to share some of the techniques we use to make a hopefully robust glowing jacket. (tl;dr at the end) Continue reading
This year we celebrated Ninjapenguin 13 by throwing a Hackers (1995) themed party. In the movie, they visit a club called Cyberdelia where in one scene the two main characters take turns fighting for a high score in Wipeout. One of my contributions to this year’s party was to recreate that experience. Continue reading
I’m spending the day in our local art park, La Tierra De La Culebra in Highland Park. The label Leaving Records has been hosting free music events there every other Saturday. This is the seventeenth one and the crowd is about 60 people. It’s a mix of ambient, jazz, and beat scene music artists. Continue reading
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