O U R S T U F F
NEW! I VOTED WEARABLE BLINKY BADGES!
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We are so excited to finally show these to you! What better way to show that you participated in democracy than to wear it loud and proud! These are small circuit boards that have both blinking and solid ON modes, which you can "pin" to your clothes using the 2 provided magnets. They last way longer than a sticker and you can wear them every day up to the election! Remind EVERYONE to vote! We have both pre-assembled badges, and solder-it-yourself kits which are very fun to put together and beginner friendly. They are for sale on our Tindie storefront. Be sure to follow us (@frivolous.circuits) and tag us in pix of you wearing your badge on instagram!
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Soldering instructions are on our Hackaday.io project page, or you can download our datasheets with instructions here. They're also open-source! You can order your own boards from OSHPark (in purple) and provide your own parts, it's all on Hackaday.
Irreverent Electronics and Frivolous Circuits
We're building handy electronics for makers and engineers, and are working on some funny and irreverent gadgets and stupid desk toys that are certain to hook you into beginning programming and tinkering. Check us out on Tindie! We also have some STEM-related knitting accessories that we're selling under Alpenglow Yarn.
Handy Electronics
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Knitting Accessories
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W H A T ' S T H A T Y O U S A Y ?Stupid Desk Toys? I'm in!
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A B O U T U S
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We firmly believe that electronics is for everyone, and we have two main goals:
We've heard so many women say that they wish they had taken some science and engineering courses in college, or that they took a few but left the field because they felt like outsiders in a nerd bro culture, and were constantly fighting to be taken seriously and were constantly judged for what they didn't already know. Because of crap like this, there are disproportionately few women who pursue electronics hardware and design as a career, and out of those who do start in the field, even fewer are retained. This imbalance is a serious issue, and it's not limited to women, it's also true for people of color, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and people who grew up with economic hardships. The whole space of technology suffers in both culture and innovation when diversity is lacking. |
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We're working on creating a space where it's OK to be a beginner, it's OK to ask questions, and it's OK - scratch that - it's actively encouraged to get stupidly excited about blinking lights. We want everyone to know that it's never too late to learn new skills.
Alpenglow Industries is founded by Carrie Sundra. Carrie grew up on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands, then attended Harvey Mudd College where she proudly scored a 19 on her first electrical engineering exam. Electronics felt esoteric and unrelatable, so she subsequently chose to pursue more mechanical and manufacturing courses. But shortly after starting her first job, she got thrown into fine-pitch SMT soldering and sensor research for a 6” micro air vehicle (and this was in 1999, this stuff didn’t exist yet). Suddenly, faced with a super cool application and concrete “thing” to build and make work, electronics got a lot more interesting. Ever since, she’s designed custom PCBs and helped develop products for a variety of applications - from avionics for small UAVs that are now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, to livestock thermometers, to waterproof power scrubbers, to assistive devices for freezing-of-gait Parkinson's symptoms, to her own yarn-winding and twisting devices. She now lives in San Luis Obispo, a coastal California town which is home to a burgeoning tech and maker community. She climbs, snowboards, knits, makes stuff, helps promote the Softec Women in Tech group, and teaches soldering to anyone who wants to learn.
Alpenglow Industries is founded by Carrie Sundra. Carrie grew up on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands, then attended Harvey Mudd College where she proudly scored a 19 on her first electrical engineering exam. Electronics felt esoteric and unrelatable, so she subsequently chose to pursue more mechanical and manufacturing courses. But shortly after starting her first job, she got thrown into fine-pitch SMT soldering and sensor research for a 6” micro air vehicle (and this was in 1999, this stuff didn’t exist yet). Suddenly, faced with a super cool application and concrete “thing” to build and make work, electronics got a lot more interesting. Ever since, she’s designed custom PCBs and helped develop products for a variety of applications - from avionics for small UAVs that are now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, to livestock thermometers, to waterproof power scrubbers, to assistive devices for freezing-of-gait Parkinson's symptoms, to her own yarn-winding and twisting devices. She now lives in San Luis Obispo, a coastal California town which is home to a burgeoning tech and maker community. She climbs, snowboards, knits, makes stuff, helps promote the Softec Women in Tech group, and teaches soldering to anyone who wants to learn.