Explore the journey of creating dance-mat.js, a project that combines Raspberry Pi, Bare Conductive PiCap, and Node.js to build a Dance Dance Revolution controller. Learn about the challenges of side projects, from inception to maintenance, as Ramón Huidobro shares his experiences at JSConf US 2019. Discover the technical aspects of the project, including npm package creation, USB interface implementation, and key parsing. Gain insights into working with Raspberry Pi, gadget menus, and JavaScript file descriptors. Understand the complexities of physical hardware integration and the potential for future improvements. This 17-minute talk offers valuable lessons for developers interested in hardware-software integration and creative coding projects.