Big leaps forward for Hutton this week.

Firstly, built the final hardware prototype – a custom shield to sit atop the Electric Imp shield, and the appropriate cabling to make it easy to assemble/disassemble. Then, after a trip Maplin and some wandering around hardware stores, acquiring the components for the housing and spending an afternoon in the workshop, drilling, nibbling and filing the housing for the project. By the end of Thursday, it was all boxed up, running off a battery and 3G, and it even appears to be able to be mounted where I hoped it would.

So that’s most of the build for Hutton done. In week 81, I’m going to work on documenting it and preparing the short film about it.

A few more sketches on Wingreen appear to be taking that to an interesting place. I’m going to have to park it soon, but there’s one more thing I’d like to try before I do.

Also, small pieces of maintenance on previous projects for clients – fixing mapping solutions now that Cloudmade is turning down free projects, and dealing with some bugs in Dundry that reared their head as the client started poking it again.

The pace of self-initiated work is proving a little challenging: maintaining momentum when I’m the client, and not feeling guilty that I’m not doing work for a client, is sometimes tough. It’s important to remind myself that the self-initiated work is an important component of my career, and that it’s not “clientless” work – it’s just that I’m the client and there are no invoices. On the flipside, when it’s going well, it’s very satisfying, and I’m looking forward to working out how to present it.