At the ripe age of 18 while at college in early 2020, I choose to design a project to create a physical/electrical integration module for all departments utilising OSC1.
The aim of the project was to create a module that would be able to interact with device’s/hardware on stage through show control. It was designed to have I/O serving things like light switches or striker switches in the set as inputs along with having outputs in the form of relays for items such as solenoids and motors for example. It communicated over the network by sending and receiving OSC commands. (I planned for possible expansion to sACN and ArtNet)
This module would allow the user to connect things happening on stage with lighting or sound cues elsewhere. This also allowed for interactive projects where lighting or sound cues are triggered by interactions in the space by actors or audience.
To produce this I choose to design a full PCB on-top of the networking and microcontroller functionality provided by an OLIMEX ESP32-POE to do this I had to learn KiCad to develop schematics and gerber files to send off to a PCB manufacturer. Alongside that I had to learn about I2C integration to use both an IO expander for the mosfets/relays and PWM driver for the indicator LEDs.