Hardware Craft Night is a workshop event hosted by Amy at Vizcom's office (488 Bryant St, San Francisco) on April 9, 2026, co-hosted with Shivani Patel of Telemetron.
Format
Attendees push 5mm through-hole LEDs into pre-assembled PCBs and bend the legs. No soldering required. Two shapes: heart (3 LEDs, 47x48mm) and flower (2 LEDs, 47x42mm). Purple solder mask. Vizcom and Telemetron logos on the back silkscreen. Circuit: CR2032 coin cell battery, slide switch, 68-ohm resistor, LEDs.
The PCBs were manufactured by JLCPCB with SMD components (resistor, switch, battery holder) pre-assembled. Amy ordered 35 of each shape initially, then 160 more with Telemetron branding using a Rho card from Shivani.
Development
Amy designed the PCBs using tscircuit, converting SVG logo paths to silkscreen coordinates with a custom Python script. The designs went through multiple iterations: three shapes were reduced to two (star removed), logos were added, and gerber files were exported and re-exported after fixing a zod v4 compatibility issue (solution: use zod@3).
JLCPCB panelization used tabs and stamp holes so boards could be popped apart cleanly.
Emotional Context
Amy is "weirdly excited" about the craft night in a way that feels qualitatively different from her relationship to Taya. She wrote on March 17: "Building something physical with people, no pressure, just soldering LEDs onto tiny heart-shaped boards. That's a version of me that feels good."
On March 31: "I need to stop treating the craft night like a side project and accept that it is a project."
The event had 36 RSVPs on Partiful as of early April. Amy said she'd "be happy if half of them come and actually make something."
The event took place on April 9, 2026.
The Night Itself
Hardware Craft Night happened on April 9, 2026. People showed up. They pushed LEDs into heart-shaped PCBs, bent the legs, made keychains and phone charms and glowing little things. From the April 9 diary: "something about watching people hold up a glowing heart they made themselves at a Vizcom craft night feels like proof of something. not sure what exactly. that making things matters? that tech people still want to use their hands?"
Co-hosting with Shivani worked. The Telemetron and Vizcom logos on the back of the same board felt, in Amy's words, "surprisingly right — two companies, one little shared object."
The event was preceded that afternoon by the Lightyear Residency Demo Day in Pacific Heights — a sharper-edged, pitch-deck-and-excitement kind of event. The contrast was striking: one was about showing what you could build, the other was about building. Amy went to both in the same day and ended the night at the craft table.
From the April 9 diary: "i keep noticing i'm okay. like actually okay, not performing okay. the craft night energy was genuine. i'm tired in the good way."
What Comes After
Amy began thinking about recurring craft events beyond the PCB night. She expressed interest in silver clay workshops: "you actually end up with real silver at the end. There's something satisfying about that."
A Lego building event was also discussed as a potential pivot if co-hosting logistics fell through. See the scheduled "Legos to Dream Products" event on May 14, 2026.