Hello, I'm Justin.

I'm a maker and educator who loves to explore new technologies. My work blends front-end development, fine arts, and years of involvement in the maker and startup communities. I work primarily with MERN stacks (Mongo, Express, React, Node), and also have extensive experience with rapid prototyping projects.

In 2020 I left a full-time role as a software engineer to pursue an opportunity to run a makerspace program at a middle school. The class I teach is called "Workshop," and exists somewhere between a design thinking program, a shop class, and a coding bootcamp.

Want to know more?

You can find me on LinkedIn and GitHub. You can also reach me via e-mail at justin@isamaker.com.

Select clients

Google, Nike, Nissan, United Airlines, ComEd, A.C. Moore, USAA, Prota Ventures, DeepLocal

Expanding Internet in a Box's Storage on a Raspberry Pi

Expanding Internet in a Box's Storage on a Raspberry Pi

Running Internet in a Box on a Pi is great until you run out of storage. Check out this post to see how I set up my instance.

Sojourn Fare

Sojourn Fare

Growing gourmet mushrooms can be hard, but it gets easier when you have a data-heavy AgTech startup doing it for you.

A.C. Moore Put to Light

A.C. Moore Put to Light

A custom-built Put to Light system for A.C. Moore's warehouses to increase order processing speed and accuracy.

Solar Calculator

Solar Calculator

Using a Raspberry Pi to let homeowners see exactly how much solar potential their house has.

Headless Raspberry Pi Startup with Ansible

Headless Raspberry Pi Startup with Ansible

Get your Pi up and ready to go with a few short commands and an Ansible playbook.

Lost Arts

Lost Arts

Creating an easily changed WordPress site for the my favorite constantly-evolving makerspace.

Automating Donations with IFTTT and Qapital

Automating Donations with IFTTT and Qapital

Automatically put money towards a donation every time something gets mentioned in the news.

Creating a RESTful API on a Raspberry Pi with mLab

Creating a RESTful API on a Raspberry Pi with mLab

Learn how to use mLab's cloud-hosted MongoDB instances to make MERN development on the Pi a lot easier.

Lawton Academy

Lawton Academy

A website redesign for a Lawton Academy, a school that focuses on bringing out the best in its students.

En Las Tablas

En Las Tablas

An easy-to-use custom WordPress site built for a community arts and outreach organization in Chicago.

Sixty8 Chicago

Sixty8 Chicago

A clean website built for an even cleaner grooming product. Sixty8 Chicago makes pomades and other barber-related items for the discerning customer.

Nissan Commercial Vehicles

Nissan Commercial Vehicles

Browse through some of the projects I worked on for Nissan Commercial Vehicles with my front-end team.

Joe's Barbershop

Joe's Barbershop

A built-from-scratch WordPress site to show off the best barbershop in the Midwest

Arduino-Controlled Projection Mapping

Arduino-Controlled Projection Mapping

Turning a room into a projection-mapped beauty with Resolume, Magic Music Visualizer, and a custom-built cupcake controller running on Arduino.

Chicago Transit Authority Train Time Texter

Chicago Transit Authority Train Time Texter

Creating a button to text me how long I have to get to my L stop before I'm late for work.

Bark Tracking with the Intel Edison

Bark Tracking with the Intel Edison

Listening for loud dog barks in my apartment and then logging the data to Phant.io through Node.js on an Edison.

Gigity.tv

Gigity.tv

The project that got me serious about web development. Check out how I helped a small startup completely redesign their brand and website.