The Birth of Project Starlight
Every great project starts with a spark — and for Project Starlight KitForge, that spark was the drive to merge artistry with engineering. What began as a late-night conversation between makers evolved into a mission to redefine how light transforms miniature worlds.
Ha, OK the above was written by our good friend ChatGPT, but it sounds too serious and AI-ish. I found it funny though so I’m going to keep the generated stuff in, and then just do the ‘real’ stuff after…by the way it wasn’t born as a late night conversation, it was broad daylight at a cafe. Idea Rocket Labs had just been born, and I was customer #1! FIRST!
I’ve always admired the model makers out there — hobbyists, pros, all of ’em. The sheer act of creating something from nothing just knocks me out every time. And these folks? They don’t do it for money or fame. They do it because they love it. I mean, really — you’d have to. Nobody wakes up one morning, sighs, and says, “Yaaay, another day of building tiny plastic spaceships, exactly what I don’t want to do.” Doesn’t happen.
Aside from the artistry itself, it’s the lighting that kills me every time. Fiber optics for starship windows. Long filaments glowing on a UFO. Blinking lights on scale-model aircraft. Neon strips casting that perfect cyberpunk glow over a rainy street in New Chiba. Even the harsh overhead lights of a gas station in the middle of nowhere while a UFO lands in the distance — all of it! The right lighting turns a model into a movie still. It’s pure magic. (Full disclosure: I can’t model my way out of a paper bag, so this is pure fanboy energy.)
Here’s the thing — I’m not a hardware guy. I fear the soldering iron. I couldn’t tell you what half the stuff on a PCB does, and I probably spell Raspberry Pi with a “y.” So naturally, when Hugo told me he was starting a company — Idea Rocket Labs — my first thought was, “Perfect. I can finally pay someone who knows what they’re doing so they can make my little dream project into a reality!”
Hugo and I go way back to our days at Platform Science. He’s one of those people who’s absurdly generous with his time — the kind of mentor who’ll hang back after hours to help you figure out why your personal project just turned into a smoke machine. I asked him if he’d be up for helping me with a lighting project I’d been noodling on for ages, and, being Hugo, he said yes without hesitation.
He started by asking the smart questions — the kind I hadn’t even thought to ask:
- “Do you want to make this mobile? Like, battery-pack mobile?”
- “Sixteen LED ports — too much?” (Me: There’s no such thing as too many lights, Hugo.)
- “The Pi can save its state between shutdowns, so if you unplug it, move it, and plug it back in, it’ll boot up right where you left off.”
- “When you 3D print the case, just keep the dimensions or larger — that way you can customize without breaking the layout.”
- “Want to sell this someday?” <— THIS never even occurred to me!
This is why he’s the hardware brain and I’m the guy who says, “Make it blink faster.”
After we hammered out the core design — 16 ports, safe power draw, modular LEDs, React frontend, Python backend — Hugo went to work translating my “wouldn’t it be cool if…” ideas into actual code and copper. And he did it gracefully. Remember, he was in full start up mode getting Idea Rocket Labs off the ground, and he was crushing it with my project as well.
Once we locked the basics in, the real fun began: picking out the LEDs. Color temperature, brightness, diffusion patterns — all the little details that make light feel alive. That’s when Project Starlight stopped being a concept and started glowing for real.
Step 1: Design
Step 2: Print
Step 3: Add light
Step 4: Amaze
