I'm amazed by the use of off-the-shelf hardware to build such a large system! It's a testament to the awesome hardware eco-system we have access to today. Congratulations to the whole team on the successful build and I'm grateful for Jeff's willingness to share everything with us!

Throughout the article I read about the pain caused by static electricity. Yet no efforts to address that directly:

1) There exists spray to make floors / carpet less prone to static buildup.

2) Air humidity! 30% or 70% makes a lot of difference in how easy static dissipates.

3) Don't touch wiring unless absolutely necessary (grab cables by their isolation, use isolated tools to strip wires & screw in terminals, etc). And: wire up all non-ESD sensitive parts before connecting to gpio (vs. connect to gpio & then futz with wiring, hook up leds, buttons, etc).

4) Touch a grounding point before doing these things.

Even if the floor covering works against you, working ESD safe isn't difficult or expensive. It just requires understanding of the problem.

I am honestly wondering how the finances are handled. Like did Network Chuck have a blank check to invite others to join or was he operating on a fixed budget?