6 years ago, I had never designed a PCB. I'd touched maybe a few lines of code. Almost a high school dropout. I found resin casting when I was in pursuit of making some custom joycon buttons and shells. I wanted to make something that no one had made yet! Not knowing where to go, and with a pretty severe lack of good info on the subject, I found the CGCC discord channel. That became my new home for this hobby. Other makers there were doing resin casting just like I wanted to do! I made my first set of resin cast buttons. It was an addiction at that time of my life. I couldn't get enough of the hobby, and started an Etsy store. I would cast buttons at night. I'd bring my fresh castings to work and sand them/clean up the edges during my breaks at my 9-5. 5 years ago, someone asked me to do some LED buttons. I had barely soldered before. I got it done. I immediately became fascinated with the idea of doing LEDs that could change colors. I picked up an ATTINY85, as many people do, and found Arduino. I wanted to make something that no one had made yet! After much tinkering, prototyping, I finally realized I'd need some way to do a custom flex PCB. I had never done a single PCB, let alone a flexible one. I found Fusion 360, and got a student license with my community college email, and got to work. A few more months later, and many sleepless nights, I had a working prototype inside of a joycon. I even turned it into a kit, sold a bunch, and learned about the woes of flex PCB fragility. A bit later, I became obsessed with microsoldering videos. I got into doing diy repairs. I found folks on Facebook needing help with consoles and I helped them. I learned how to microsolder and use hot air guns etc. Eventually, someone asked me if I would take on doing a "padhack" of a GameCube into a pro controller. After starting with the button PCB, I quickly gave up and decided to just make a new PCB. How hard could it be? ProGCC 1 was born. Around this time I had made a game boy color RGB led kit. I wanted to make something that no one had made yet! LED kits existed, but not something fully customizable like I wanted. I quickly became overwhelmed with my Etsy and selling GBC RGB kits, and I began shopping around. That's how I met Kyle at Handheldlegend and eventually I joined the team because it was a great relationship and it took a huge load off of me for warehouse/fulfillment. ProGCC 1 had a home, and we grew it from there one step at a time. I have painstakingly clawed my way through THOUSANDS of hours of tutorials, hundreds of electronic component datasheets, hundreds of GitHub repos. I've spent more time than you can imagine trying to perfect my craft and learn as much as I could. All of this has led to the GC Ultimate 2. I've had to build these skills entirely on my own with little to no guidance. There are numerous open source and free tutorials I've used as a help. For all of the wonderful references that exist, I am eternally grateful. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, don't we? Where I'm at right now is that I'm a bit disappointed that there has been a great improvement in recognition of indie software devs, but not so much for hardware devs. I wish that would change. Most of all, thanks to everyone who has believed in me for this long. I've made a lot of screw-ups and I've fell short, and with the support of random makers and nerds online I've been able to continue in my small corner of the world. Thank you, sincerely. Here's to GC Ultimate 2 and beyond! Pictured: one of my first shitty soldering jobs, some of my favorite resin buttons, and the GC Ultimate 2