My name is Jean-Daniel. A visual communicator by training, a developer by trade. Since 2024, in Prangins, I have been making digital objects that behave like objects.
It all started with a telephone turned into a lamp. When my children asked me what the dial was for, I had to tell them: nothing. So I set out to make it work. Turning the dial had to change something: the light, a colour, a mood.
I started with Arduino, then the ESP32. I took electronics courses and learned to design my own circuit boards. Then came the radios, then the private lines. Each time, the same question: how do you bring technology into an object without taking away its gestures?
Then I learned that an object that works is not yet an object you are allowed to sell. Standards, testing, certification: a discipline in its own right, designed for production runs, not one-off pieces.
That is how the Lucarne was born. A brand-new object, designed from the outset to be able to leave the workshop. It does some things less well than your phone. That is precisely why people grow attached to it.
What interests me is that simple gesture finding its purpose again.
Atelier N°24 — Prangins, Switzerland.
Four workshop rules
What guides every object.
A button stays a button.If a gesture already exists, we keep it. Nobody should need a menu to switch on a lamp.
Technology minds its manners.It’s there, it does its job, it doesn’t demand attention. The digital side serves the object’s presence, not the other way round.
Less, but in your home.An object can do less than your phone and still matter more, because it lives in the room, where everyone can see it.
The imperfections are intentional.4,096 pixels, a patina, a dial that catches slightly: what makes an object endearing isn’t on its spec sheet.
At the workbench
Draw the circuit, solder, try it out. Start again.
Assembling, wiring, bringing the original controls back to life.Testing the sound, the light and the connections.The Lucarne, prototype v2: a circuit designed in the workshop.
You’ll find the user guide on your piece’s product page. For care advice or a fault, get in touch and tell me the model and what you’re noticing: we can then look at what can be done.
