Make: Online: Maker Faire Archives

Archive: Maker Faire

July 3, 2009

Musical makers at Maker Faire '09

Scottish sound designer, the Amazing Rolo, traveled to Maker Faire this year especially to see what sorts of cool musical technologies people were cooking up. He made a series of videos of makers demoing their wares. Of the three videos above, he writes:

First up is Elly Jessop, a Masters Student at the uber-cool MIT Media Lab, and her Vocal Augmentation and Manipulation Prosthesis (VAMP). Next is Barry Threw, from Keith McMillan Instruments, showing off the K-Bow (and accompanying software) for extending stringed instrument performance into the digital realm. And finally, the amazing Moldover and his totally bonkers Syncomasher.

The Amazing Rolo

June 28, 2009

Heads on Fire at Maker Faire

Heads on Fire hosted the Bay Area Maker Faire Fab Lab. At Maker Faire Austin, the Fab Lab has been hosted by the Boston Fab Lab at the South End Technology Center. Wikipedia has a decent list of the various Fab Labs around the world.

June 27, 2009

Getting real with Physical Design

[Image from Shopbot Tools]

Daniel Smithwick has been working to develop a new model for architecture. Instead of building each structure as a custom object, people can use software and hardware to make repeatable designs that can be manufactured and assembled where and when they are needed.

He recently wrote an article on the Shopbot site to help explain his vision of design and manufacturing of housing and other objects.

Our company's vision is to revolutionize architectural design and production and to make these processes transparent by empowering consumers throughout the world with the online tools and resources that enable them to become the producers of their own creations.
Not only are there incredible inefficiencies in the current practice of design, fabrication and construction of architecture, but until now these processes have been limited to costly design professionals, wasteful manufacturing facilities and labor-intensive site work.

You may want to take a look at the Physical Design site for more information.

Blimpduino and UAV at Maker Faire

Chris Anderson demonstrates the systems of the BlimpDuino.

The Blimpduino kit is a very low cost, open source, autonomous blimp kit. It consists of an Arduino-based blimp controller board with on-board infrared and ultrasonic sensors and an interface for an optional RC mode, a simple gondola with two vectoring (tilting) differential thrusters, and ground-based infrared beacon. Assembly is required, including soldering.

Anderson created the BlimpDuino with Jordi Munoz of DIY Drones. Their entry, shown in the video above, took first place in the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition a few months ago.

If you want to build the BlimpDuino, the documentation is on the site and pretty good. Printing the build notes out and setting aside a few hours with the soldering iron should have you in pretty good shape.

June 26, 2009

Mini Maker Faires at Copperfield's starting this weekend

Starting this weekend, Copperfield's books in CA is hosting a series of mini Maker Faires, we hope you can join us for a fun afternoon this summer! Download this PDF for more information.

Mini Maker Faires at Copperfield's:

6/26 - Sebastopol (11am - 1pm)

7/11 - Petaluma (11am - 1pm)

7/18 - Montgomery Village (11am - 1pm)

7/25 - Healdsburg (11am - 1pm)

8/1 - Petaluma (11am - 1pm)

8/8 - Montgomery Village (11am - 1pm)

Weekend Project: Potato Gatling Gun

Here is a brand new version of the popular potato cannon built by the DeRose family
and shown at this years Maker Faire. Check out their website for more details.
To download The Potato Gatling Gun MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

June 24, 2009

Rodney Brooks at Maker Faire

Rodney Brooks, of MIT's AI Lab and iRobot, is one of my all-time heroes. His work has had a huge impact on how I look at technology in general, robotics in specific, approaches to problem-solving, and more. So I was bummed that I missed his talk (and meeting him) at Maker Faire. Thanks to FORA.tv, I didn't miss it, nor did you. His 33-minute talk is a fascinating look at the coming "age wave," the need for robots to help/subsidize an aging population, the role of makers in industrial and technological innovation, discovering where the exponentials are in technology and manufacturing and exploiting them, and much more. Good stuff.

Rodney Brooks: Remaking Manufacturing With Robotics

June 19, 2009

Weekend Project: Arduino Rumble Robots

Learn how to modify the classic Rumble Robot toy with an Arduino. Thanks go to
Dino Segovis for this Weekend Project from Maker Faire.
To download The Arduino Rumble Robots MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

June 14, 2009

Aquaponic education and the Sun Curve

Megan Simmons of ISKME tells us about the Sun Curve Design Challenge. OERCommons is a place where they are storing and sharing educational resources about the Sun Curve and other educational projects. The structure and systems were designed by INKA Biosperic Systems. You might also check out her photos of the project at Maker Faire.

June 13, 2009

Bilal explains Instructables

Bilal has been hanging out with the Instructables folks for a while. When I bumped into him at Maker Faire, he was typically animated as he told me about what they do there.

BoingBoing video at Maker Faire

BoingBoing video visited Maker Faire!

In today's edition of Boing Boing Video, Mark Frauenfelder and Boing Boing Gadgets editor Lisa Katayama profile three cool things found at the recent Bay Area Maker Faire: The Yudu personal screen printer, an interactive, collaborative, musical Tesla Coil, and a candy-fabbing device from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

More:

June 12, 2009

Weekend Project: Frankenstein Prototypes

Designing and offering a new invention usually requires making a model
of what you have created. Perry Kaye explains the art of Frankenstein Prototyping
and shows us a new invention and how he built it in this Weekend Project from Maker Faire.

June 10, 2009

Faire-inspired spot illos

Daniel Carter, our Art Director, writes:

James Provost, an illustrator from Vancouver, attended Maker Faire, and it inspired him to create a sweet set of "DIY spot illustrations" which he's posted on his site and on Flickr. I love the illustrations -- very MAKE!

Thanks, Daniel (and James)! Sweet, indeed.

James Provost, Technical Illustrator

James Provost's photostream

Remaking a Maker Faire booth

So, what to do with a slightly-used booth from Maker Faire? Well, if you're Dino, of DinoFab, you make a food prep/passthrough counter for your kitchen. Nice that he's still wearing the shirt, too. Memories.

DinoFab

TechShop Post-Maker Faire Open House

There's a big Open House at TechShop, Menlo Park, this Saturday, 6/13/2009 from 10 AM to 6 PM.

There will be a presentation and workshop by Bob Johansen (Fellow from the Institute for the Future) discussing points from his book on leadership skills for makers.

They're also offering TechShop Maker Faire Membership Specials, going on until 6/15. These are memberships for $75 per month, $375 for 6 months, and $675 for a year. They're apparently selling fast, so get while the gettin's good. Jim Newton tells me they might be full by the end of the week.

TechShop Post-Maker Faire Open House #2

June 9, 2009

Nathan Hickson's Maker Faire video

Nathan Hickson made this short montage of some fun things he saw at Maker Faire. I missed most of these things myself!

June 8, 2009

"Go home and make your own Maker Faire"

[Photo by Scott Beale]

Dan Chiles is a member of Springfield City Council in Missouri. He visited Maker Faire and wrote about it in the Springfield News-Leader. I think he does a fine job, in a brief piece, of capturing the wonder and inspiration (and the delightful wackiness) of a Maker Faire:

I saw a fire truck that belched fire, and a mammoth mechanical fist powered by shrieking diesel motors and controlled by two guys who sent us colorful hand signals, and a skating Barack Obama robot pulling a human in a cart.

I saw hundreds of homemade rockets hissing into the sky and parachuting to earth, and giant mechanical cupcakes motoring between weird mutant bicycles, and a guy building round aquariums to display gently undulating jellyfish. I saw a $700 machine that reads your computer design and makes an object out of plastic ... or sugar!

I saw Star Wars technology morph with Jules Verne Victorian imagination into an alien art form known as "Steampunk." There were Steampunk belly dancers in a magic show and they drove a car shaped like a giant mechanical copper snail. Teams of young blacksmiths hammered out Steampunk artifacts for wide-eyed kids.

The two guys who made jetting streams of Mentos and Diet Coke famous were there spewing on legions of laughing spectators.

There were buildings full of kids assembling robots, electronics and gadgets. There were buildings of kids tearing apart electronics, gadgets and appliances to see what was inside.

Art cars covered with ink pens and pinwheels or shaped like a shark prowled the parade grounds.

Human beings rode on human-powered amusement rides and listened to rock bands powered by ranks of laughing men and women pedaling bicycle generators.

And I love the Dale Dougherty quote he ends with:

"Do you like what you see here? Then go home and make your own Maker Faire."

Are you ready to remake America?

June 7, 2009

WoodenBikes at Maker Faire

During Maker Faire, people of all stripes were riding these crazy junkcycles around. I took a moment to speak with Tom Kabat, their creator on Sunday.

Tom and his bikes were a mainstay of Bike Town, an area of Maker Faire that featured many bike builders and their projects.

A former serious cyclist who still loves bikes. An engineer, 30 year bike commuter and bike tourer (Trans America 1976), Tom was inspired to build bikes after seeing other great home built pedal machines at Kinetic Sculpture races and a wide variety of antique bikes on display in museums. He says, "I enjoy Maker Faire as a festival of inspiration and idea exchange."

On his site, he shows many of the bikes that he has made over the years and explains some of how and why they were built:

My epiphany came when was trying to make a large castor wheel for a parade float. I drilled a hole in a scrap of redwood 4x6 lumber and mounted an old Campagnolo bike headset in it. I installed an old bike fork through it and attaching a wheel to make a BIG castor wheel. But many other possibilities emerged. I was also immediately captivated by the incongruous look of an old piece of lumber sporting a fine headset and supporting a fork and wheel.

You might check out Wooden Bikes on Instructables, where there are lots of tips on how to recreate some of these hand crafted vehicles, like the Wooden Wedge.

You can build unusual and useful wood bikes without welding. I think wood bikes should become poplar again. :-) This is a simple one speed wooden bike with coaster brake, fits everyone from little kids to TALL adults. There are no metal tubes in the frame. Wooden' you build with wood if you couldn' weld? I wood.
It's got a 4" Razor scooter front wheel, so it's only safe on smooth roads without potholes or bumps.
Bike is designed so there is not much weight on front wheel. Bigger riders have center of gravity closer to back wheel.

WoodenBikes captured a lot of people's attention at Maker Faire. Kids rode them around, adults tried them out, and many people had their eyes opened about how they could take back bicycle design.

Prong your Prius

If you have a Prius, and want to go more than a mile in battery mode, then you might want to check out 3 Prong Power

3Prong Power is delivering enhanced Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) conversions for our customers. Our goal is to meet and expand the demand for PHEVs that has been seen nationwide, starting in the Bay Area.
This technology enables using two distinct power sources and enhances fuel efficiency. Take it to the next level, make your car a true Hybrid...Plug it in.

This sounds like a neat system. Certainly it is not free, and the conversion costs fall in a lump onto the consumer's bank account, but in the long term, it appears to save fuel costs and have environmental benefits as well. Refueling with electric takes a few hours, and costs about as much as the equivalent of $1 a gallon of gasoline.

June 6, 2009

Make your own games with PlayCrafter

Playcrafter is a site where you can create your own game. Accounts on the system are free, and allow you to make and save your own games. There is also a paid level of account that will let you make games with more than 10 levels and some other features.

Games made with Playcrafter can be embedded into web pages, and can also be run on devices that are Flash 9+ friendly.

If you try this out with your students or kids, let us know about it in the comments.