Ft. Wayne Regional Maker Faire

Things conspired against me for my trip to the Maker Faire in Ft. Wayne. The weekend before my basement flooded and I had to completely tear down my entire electronics studio. This left me without a lot of opportunity to finish the integration of the pen up/down mechanism in my drawBot prior to taking it. I got it working and managed to successfully draw one .svg file before having to tear it back down for transport. Needless to say when I got there on Saturday morning I spent several hours of show time trying to get it to work again and never succeeded. So I fell back to drawing Hilbert curves again, like at Detroit. I tried and failed to get it running again Sunday. Then my laptop became grumpy and decided it had had enough. So, I packed it in early and left about 11:00.

Even with all the problems I still really had a good time. I managed to con my 11 and 13 year old kids into coming with me. That meant I had company, and they got to see their first maker faire. They hung with me all day Saturday, and didn't complain once about being bored. The folks from TechVenture did a great job putting on the Faire. I will come back next year, and recommend the event to all Makers.

See the few pictures I took here.

Successful Trip to Maker Faire Detroit

Well, I'm back from my premeir at the Detroit Maker Faire! It's the first time I've ever exhibited at a Maker Faire and it was great, and terrible. Here are some things I learned for next time, in no particular order.

1. I went to the faire, and manned my booth by myself. This it turns out is far harder than I ever imagined it would be. Saturday I was "on stage" just short of ten hours. Sunday I packed up early to avoid the rush, and because I was exhasted, but it was still a seven hour day. It takes a lot of energy to project enthusiasium for that long. I was totally unprepared for that aspect.



2. Given the chance, knowing what I know now, I'd do it again in a second. Exhibiting at the faire was really rewarding in two distinct ways. One, when I could have a long conversation with another adult who "gets" what I'm doing and understands what I'm saying when I explain it. I don't get the opportunity for conversations like this often, and the faire was great in this way. Two, seeing kids' faces light up when they'd interact with one of my machines and be surprised by what it did. I would very often have to coax them into touching something, while at the same time reassuring their parents it was okay, and I'd get rewarded with a big smile and an involuntary breathless little "cooool".



3. Damn the rules, eat, drink, and go to the bathroom at every opportunity.



4. Be nice to the folks in the booths around you and they'll be nice back (Paul and Mary were great!) Go mad dog robotics!



5. Don't expect to see the rest of the faire. I only got the chance to see about five percent of what I did last year when I wasn’t a maker. I was planning to walk around a bit after packing up Sunday afternoon, but I was way too tired.



6. The crowd has great ideas, listen and learn. I brought about six projects to show. One was my drawbot, and one was my electronic organ. Several times people played the organ expecting it to somehow control what was happening on the drawbot. GAH – what a cool idea!



7. Sometimes lame is cool and cool is lame. I worked really hard before the faire on an enclosure for my electronic organ. It’s made from walnut, brass, and ash, is very precisely made and has a really swanky finish. I just didn’t get it working quite in time, so instead I brought the lego keyboard I had working. Turns out the organ was the biggest hit with the kids – mostly because it was made from legos.

Drawbot makes its mark

This evening I got my drawbot up and running for the first time. The mechanics are still pretty shakey, but the electronics have been burned in for several hours now and I'm pretty confident they're solid. The 'bot is based on an Arduino with a dual axis opto-isolated unipolar stepper motor driver shield that I designed and built myself. As soon as I can figure out a place to put them, I'll post the Eagle files for the shield.




I'm writing a PC application in Python to do some image manipulation and drive the 'bot. When I get it further along I'll post again.

New Year - new projects

It's hard for me to believe it's been a year since I last posted anything here. Lots has happened which will go untold. Suffice it to say I've wakened from my tech involved slumber and have some cool stuff going on.

If you're looking for an update on the NetLogo project, I had to let that one go for now. My personal journal is still open on the subject but progress is quiet and reflective.

What I've got going on now is much closer to my roots as an engineer. I'm currently working three projects:

• Building a low cost cnc mill
• Developing a small robot
• Learning to hack on the road

I'll be writing about and posting pictures of each project as time allows, and as interesting things happen.

Stay tuned...