hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4263.txt

Episode: 4263
Title: HPR4263: An interview with Adam Matthews about the Disco Pigeon
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4263/hpr4263.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:12:47

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4263 for Wednesday 4 December 2024.
Today's show is entitled, an interview with Adam Matthews about the disco pigeon.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 24 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Ken Interviews Adam, who stole the show at our camp with his disco pigeon.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Following on from my interview with Millie Perkins, episode 4248,
she mentioned that she might have a clue as to where the disco pigeon was located.
So that has brought me to interview Adam. Adam, how are you?
Hello Ken, yeah, very nice to meet you. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, very well, thank you today. It was a little bit cold, a little bit snowy today, where I am, but yeah, very well.
Very good. Now, you were asked on camp 2024 when we were looking back in 10 years' time as to what on camp that was.
That will be known forevermore as the disco ball pigeon on the camp, and you are responsible for that disco ball.
Can you tell me how you ended up stealing the show?
Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you a little bit about the pigeon, about why I made it, and why I ended up bringing it to our camp.
Our camp is very open-sourced, focused, and in the building of the pigeon, I've used a lot of open-sourced tools.
So, before we get to that, I'll just tell you a little bit about where the pigeon came from and why I built it.
So, a group of friends and I, we got to festivals regularly, and years and years ago, we decided it was too difficult to find each other in crowds, and a couple of friends of mine, they came up with this genius solution of duct-taping a plastic decoy pigeon to the top of a curtain pole, and we would wave it around in the crowds, so we could all use it as a homing pigeon, you might say.
It was a bit like at the airports with the people and flags, and all the terrorists all come behind them.
So, humble beginnings, and…
What sort of festivals were these?
Festivals like Secret Garden Party and Shambhala, they're regular stables.
Never heard of them.
They're quite small ones, yeah. They're… they're… they're… they're… they're… they're not really the same size crowds, or aren't as well known as a Glastenbury, but…
You can think of them almost like the best bits of Glastonbury condensed.
They're music festivals, are they?
Music festivals, yeah.
Oh, very good.
Very good, yeah.
Cool.
Yeah?
Great.
Okay.
I'll wait you so far.
We're in the field.
We're in the plastic pigeon around.
So each year we have taken turns to decorate a new version of Pete the Pigeon.
He's become, he's become our group mascot, our group totem, if you will.
He's an excellent wingman at these festivals.
So yeah, we all take turns carrying the silly pigeon around.
But I always had this ambition that I wanted to build the ultimate version and I had this
idea of it having it being immurable and it would rotate and have up lighters and eventually
the idea evolved and it's had more and more additions over the years.
He's now got a small machine, so.
It's a never ending project, it's a never ending project and it's this original plastic
pigeon has got on well out of hand now.
And it is really.
Is the inside of the pigeon still the plastic pigeon?
Yeah.
So let me for the viewers at home, there's a thumbnail in the episodes.
So you imagine a pigeon and it's got, imagine a disco ball and one night that maybe had
a few few drinks too many and they decided to get married and their offspring was the
disco ball pigeon, disco ball in the shape of a pigeon.
So lots of little glass reflectors and then underneath that, that's rotating on the
pole as we speak and underneath that, there are three little stainless steel extrusions
that pointing up lights and then it's like a starlight pattern.
But one thing I did notice and that it looked like a helicopter in the shadow directly straight
above some of the mastodon pictures.
Was that intentional or was it just, it's just a happy accident that the shadow does look
cool like a little silhouette on the ceiling of a venue tent or a conference ceiling.
Yeah, it was just a happy accident.
It has a spotlight underneath beaming upwards and it casts a nice shadow.
But yeah, as you say, there's a, there's a motor inside the pigeon with a little gearbox
so it's, the pigeon is turning very slowly atop his pole and then as you say, there's
some addressable LEDs that are providing colour and a little smoke machine built into the
bottom.
So, so yeah, it's become, it's become quite the, quite, quite the over engineered project.
Well, once was a silly thing to wear around, there's actually become a little passion project
into which I can pour a lot of my creativity and and it brings a lot of joy to say it gets
so much attention at these festivals and the way it works when people, it attracts a lot
of people coming over, they want to talk to you, they want to ask you about it and the
way it works is if you compliment the pigeon then in return you're giving a little, a little
bit of a good sticker and the sticker will say, I fancy pigeons on it, it's got a silhouette
of pigeon on, on the sticker and what nobody seems to pick up on is the fact that I fancy
pigeons is a play on the words of being a pigeon fancier.
Yes, I can keep pigeons, you're a pigeon fancier, nobody gets that.
I got that straight away, I was just going to say I'm a pigeon fancier, awesome.
So, sorry again, I was just going to say all along the way in the making of the pigeon,
I've used various open source tools and this is how I ended up coming to a camp with the
pigeon.
How did you hear about that camp?
From the late Nat Linux podcast.
That's cool, yeah.
Yeah, we, Millie and I both listened to those religiously, we're great big fans and
it was really nice to meet the presenters as well because a lot of them are there, it'll
come.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's nice to put a face to the voice finally.
Yeah.
Did you, I like the weird, I was talking to Millie about this as well, some people have
heard this before, you know, when you go to a conference and then you're home, I know
that voice.
That person doesn't look anything like that, he looks like his head.
Yeah, yeah, it's quite bizarre because you build up an image of how you think somebody
looks.
Yeah, and the voice and, yeah, the image is shattered when you meet them.
Yeah.
And I ended up having spoken with your resident many, many times and he's been on the New
Year show as well, we do a 26 hour New Year show, minimal every New Year, where people
from the community's various different podcasting communities can come on and just say hello
one, wish all the other listeners a happy thing, what Joe was on and he was at the event
and I completely had no clue who he was, I think he's a little bit shy of that, but I did
manage to find one or two beforehand because I really wanted to meet him.
Yeah.
So I did figure out what he looked like before going, so I did find him and had a lovely
chat with him.
He's very nice.
Very, very good guy.
Very nice.
Yeah.
So, pigeon and hand, head to Manchester, walked in, then what happened?
Yeah, so I arrive at our camp, I do a presentation on really giving thanks and gratitude to a lot
of the open source tools that have gone into the making of the pigeon and other various
personal projects, the projects like WLED, which is an open source, LED library effects.
That's at the core of a lot of my visuals, IT type projects, I do quite a few things
with LEDs and without WLED, a lot of the things that I dream of, wouldn't really be possible.
So really, I'm giving gratitude to projects like WLED and other inkscape, for example, is
used in the designing of the stickers and a clipper is used as the firmware on my 3D
princess.
So, yeah, there's been various tools along the way that have been really useful to me.
And so, yeah, that's a large part of what my presentation's around.
And a large part of the reason why I wanted to go and present myself, put myself out
there in this scary situation, speaking on stage isn't something that comes naturally
to me, so a large part of the reason why I wanted to do that is, I'm really keen to
meet a lot of technical people in the industry at the moment because I've got my eyes open
for new career opportunities, so by putting myself out there with the pigeon, it's opening
up conversations with these people, these conferences that I wouldn't otherwise have had.
And it's actually, funnily, I never would have imagined this when building the pigeon,
but it's turning out to be a really useful career prop.
Yeah.
This is just good.
The ultimate business card, really.
Exactly.
So, yeah, I've been having great success with that and met some very interesting people
and have had some really interesting career prospects landing my lap because of it.
I'll camp isn't the only conference that I've been to, I've subsequently been to Manchester
Tech Festival with it and done a similar sort of presentation.
And yeah, like I say, I had some really interesting conversations off of the back of it.
Cool.
As I said, it stole the show.
It was absolutely awesome.
But now that I'm thinking about it, how you, like we've got to practically, from an engineering
point of view, you mentioned WLED, two links cable, okay, fine.
But how are you getting power up there to rotate the, to rotate the disco pitch and using
the slip ring or just find the engineering behind the pigeon?
Yeah.
So the motor is inside the pigeon and the power comes from below in a capsule at the bottom
of the pole.
So as you say, you need to provide power from the bottom to the rotating top and the easy
solution for that would have been a slip ring.
But I'm quite, I like, I like to have a complicated thing.
So I came up with a, welcome to HBR.
I came up with a more nerdy solution, which was to use a wireless chi module.
So the same module that you would use to charge your phone wirelessly, you pop it down on
the wireless pad in it and your phone charges, that's the same sort of module that provides
power from the, from the base of the pole to the rotating pigeon without any contact.
So unlike a, a slip ring that it has terminals in constant contact and slipping around each
other, it's transmitting the power wirelessly.
And to get the alignment right on, they need to be very closely aligned, very well aligned.
So yeah, to get the alignment correct was, was, was one of the more challenging aspects
of building it.
And nobody sees it, nobody knows that's in there, because it's all hidden and being covered
up.
So the, the only time we get to brag about it is when I'm doing a presentation on it at
a conference, but otherwise, nobody at the best of those knows that's in there and there
was really no good reason for me to have made it as complicated as that.
Why, why not go for a slip ring then?
The, the way the motor was turning on the center of the axis at the top of the pole meant
there was clearance problems with, with the slip ring.
Yeah.
I think there are slip rings that, that would have done it if I'd have investigated further,
but I just had it in my mind that it would be cooler if it was wireless.
So, yeah.
Absolutely.
Again, half of the radio, why did you use, because I wanted to, this is, this is absolutely
excellent.
I'm just, because now we're mentioning wireless charger, I'm, you're diverting me off
my roll, which is like to ask interview questions, I'm wondering, don't why, are you not going
to lose a lot of power in that, is, is there not going to be any issues?
Yeah.
And I see that the Tommy of, it's connected to the Tommy of the pigeon, that's an official
ISO term, but yeah, like have a 3D printing inside to make the plates, presumably there's
one spinning induction ring and there's another fixed induction ring.
Exactly.
So, do you have like the drawings of the inside, someone?
No, none of it was done with drawings.
It was all done by feel and, yeah, duct tape and spin and string, yeah, exactly.
That part, there are some 3D printed parts in the base of the pigeon, but not in the
pigeon itself and not to do with the power transmission.
So I don't think I actually had my 3D printing at that stage, the 3D printer came later,
so then then he got some 3D printed parts after the fact.
So at this point, yeah, there was epoxy and, yeah, bits of fiberglass and things like that
all holding it together.
So the motor is on a, is it whole, when the pole comes up, is the motor physically
attached and then everything is attached to the motor?
The motor is attached to the pigeon, so the motor spins with the pigeon, as well as
the little gear box, and so then there's like a universal coupling, it's from a remote
control car, just to take up any tolerance in, if it's not perfectly centered on the
system.
It's one of those springy, they're both described in the text, I have one here, but that
ain't going to help in the module by cast either, it's, yeah, it's like a little spring that
allows tolerance.
So the motor shaft is attached to the pole below and the motor is fixed to the pigeon.
When you access the pigeon via secrets, or is it all like hot loot or epoxy together,
can you maintain it?
It's sealed, now, yeah, so when it was being built, the wings were detached, they were
so enough, if you will, and then have been bonded back on and re-sealed, and then at
top of that has been, then all of the little mirrors have been applied.
So did you get them, did you cut them, or did you just, is this something that you can
think by an alley express?
They come in sheets, they come in sheets, yeah, and they come with quite a week, almost
like a double-sided adhesive, which wasn't very strong, so I actually dissolves all of
that, and then replaced it with a epoxy instead, which is much, much stronger, so he's,
yeah, I mean, obviously at festivals there's a bit of hustle and bustle, and you need it
to be robust, and it has been knocked over twice now, and been fine both times, so it
can take a knock, surprisingly, you know.
How do you power this as a festival?
In the base, there are 6, 18, 650 batteries, which were reclaimed from old laptops, and
it has a small battery management system on there, which will, it allows you to plug
it, it's just a USB-C connector, and on the base, and you can charge it up with a standard
phone charger, it takes maybe 8 to 10 hours to charge up, and it will have about 12 hours
of runtime, so you charge it up overnight, and it'll go all day again the next day.
Cool, yeah, cool, excellent, that's about the technology of the thing, fantastic idea,
grid project, and grid business cards, speaking of which, what's your background?
I'm from a cyber security background, so I help, what that often looks like is I'm
brought in when a company's experienced security compromise, that might be something like
ransomware or an account takeover, I'll help them remediate the initial compromise, and
then once all of the dust has settled, and all of the fires have been put out, I'll then
go on to get them up to a standard to prevent any future reoccurrence of security issues,
quite often these companies, maybe they're on the smallest scale of things, so they may
maybe not have very good security practices in place, and I'll help them to get up to that
standard and maintain that standard, but as I say, I'm actually looking for career opportunities
at the moment, I'd like a change, I've done this consulting type work for 20 years now,
I'd really like to get into application security, and maybe like a DevSecOps type,
become a product-based engineer rather than a consultant.
Would you not like, I mean obviously you've got like an artistic bent, where did that come from?
Or are we just lucky because you start well for the pigeon, and then it evolved from that?
Do you do more artistic work?
Where does creativity come from? That was one question, where does anybody's creativity come from?
I'm not sure I can answer that one, but I feel like I'm a tinkerer at heart, I always have been
since I was a little kid, even in primary school, I was tearing the family would give me
old broken electronics, old radios, anything like that, they would all be donated to me,
so I could tear them apart and see what was inside them, playing around with building little
electronics projects, even from being very young, and yeah, that's just carried through,
I have lots of little, I do like the smaller, smaller things, one of the such examples,
the last year I made familiar in fact for a Christmas present, a small,
like the size of your palm, elevitating plant pot, so it uses electro-magnets,
and that has WLED in there as well, so it all lights up and out, it's made out of
perspex, so it's all see through, you can see the electronics inside of it, all the electro-magnets,
and then it has this like demonic school plant pot that floats midair, and it's
from slowly rotating, it's with a small succulent plant in it, so yeah, tinkering is near
indeed to my heart, and I'll never stop tinkering. Awesome, well yeah, I hope I hope somebody
listening to this ideally, cybersecurity for a theatre somewhere. That'd be great, yeah.
If I could do a quick shameless plug, if anybody is listening and has a DevSecOps type role in mind
that they think that could be suitable, my contact you can get in touch with me at, if you go to my
personal landing page, it's a-d-math-use.co.uk, math-use with two T's, so a-d-math-use.co.uk,
and all my contact details are on there, and you can find out a little bit more about the
pigeon on there as well, there's also links to Pete's Facebook page, if you want it to see more.
All that information will be in the show notes for this episode just as by the by, so you can get
that there and we'll redirect over to your website. Okay, before I let you go, on camp,
was it your first on camp? It was my first on camp, yeah, yeah. Thank you, what you think?
It was great, yeah, it was really, really good. I know it's not been on for a few years, so we've
all been missing out. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, it was fantastic. Not to take away from any of the
presentations or talks, but I found the most value was actually just in being in this melting
part of all these techy people and, you know, all the conversations in the corridor, and
hallway track, as we call it, yes. Yeah, hallway track. Yeah. That was where I, yeah, I was
I was most at home, I really, really loved bumping into people and meeting all those new people.
You need to submit some shows to HPR. Basically, I run down on the electronics of the
of the pigeon with me, great show, and you can tell Millie that she also needs to send the show,
then you can both come to the HPR table and sit there and leave your bag there in your power supply
and the whole lot, so you can, it's an ideal way to just bend the conference. The only downside is
you never get to any of the talks, but the talks come to you, so it's great, great stuff.
Was there anything, any talk that you went to or anything that you thought I really would like
HPR listeners to hear more about that I can track down maybe somebody for an interviewer?
Well, obviously, I have to mention Millie's talk, but I know you've already had that.
Obviously was the best presentation that was there, and I have to say that, of course.
She did a really good job. I was very impressed with her presentation, and
who else? I quite enjoyed the modular laptop presentation. Do you remember that one?
No, I didn't get to any presentations, only Tuk's jam.
I come to expect that now without a conference, so I just go and interview the people afterwards.
Just another quick one, there was a lady, Millie might have mentioned, there's a lady called
Charlie, who was doing a presentation also on hormones automation. Charlie was really lovely,
we got to meet her in the bar afterwards and spend a little bit time with her.
She was great, we really enjoyed spending time with her. Charlie or her or her or her, I'm
put you in that awesome name. Cool stuff. Was there anything else that we should have
mentioned that we didn't? Did you want to get out there? I think we've, I'm sure I'll think of
something after we end the call, but I think we've covered the major points. Great stuff,
thanks very much, Adam, and tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker. Public
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