About

Hi, I’m Darin “DW” White, long-time maker, living in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I’m the creative guerrilla behind makebright, partnering with an associated posse of smart people to do cool stuff.

The #1 question I get: What is makebright?

Best answer: makebright is undefined. It is being invented on the fly. It is whatever blows our hair back. There’s no real profit motive, but we do like money insofar as it buys tools and materials to make and do more stuff. That’s the mission: make stuff. Make connections in my community. Make a thriving creative ecosystem. Make interesting art. Make electronic gadgets. Make a persuasive argument for turning off reality TV and making your own reality. Make consumers into creators.

I was a founding director of kwartzlab, a collaborative group of 35 cross-discipline makers working out of a 3000 sqft space in Kitchener. Two awesome years contributing to kwartzlab inspired me to diversify and create makebright.

I’ve got pretty broad making interests including:

photography – I shoot Nikon crop bodies I’ve picked up on kijiji. Also doing lots of experiments with CHDK and Canon PowerShot point and shoots, again: picked up second hand.

social experiments

my 5+5 event that connects the public, local artists, and kwartzlab makers
an experimental art gallery – engaged my friend James Nye to exhibit his work in our lab
maker ambassadors for KW at the Bay Area Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA
and engaging smart Eng students from UW to show their work at kwartzlab

electronics – I’m a self-taught hardware lover. Done a lot of work on both Atmel AVR and Microchip PIC microcontrollers, as well as Arduino. Built a lot of sensors from scratch including capacitive, PIR, ultrasonic, and piezo-electric. I’ve smoked a lot of FET’s in the process of designing a high-current, low-cost h-bridge to drive a robot I’m working on.

art – it turns out that half a fine art degree and lifelong creative interests mesh well with my love of electronics. Installation art is most interesting to me personally.

fabrication – I designed and made my own 3-axis CNC circuit board mill from scratch. Ok, well I made three of them before it worked right. One of the projects I’m most proud of.

You can find me in all these places: