This year, we were thrilled to explore Maker Faire with Jon, Lily, and Jen! We chatted with creative minds of all ages and sizes and types. We learned about the latest machines, gadgets, and doodads. We heard about projects that others are pursuing and picked up ideas and tips for our own. We even made some things right then and there during the faire. Most of all, we had lots of fun!

This is the first year we’ve participated in one of the most popular Maker Faire activities: learning to solder. Donned with Google safety glasses, we soldered a battery holder, pin, and LED to a printed circuit board in the shape of the Makey Robot. So easy and fun!

In the Maker Shed, we saw a vast array of innovative projects. One of our favorites was the circuits-in-a-bottle project by Kimio Kosaka. Incredibly, all the parts are soldered together inside the bottle. Unfortunately, this picture does not do this creative project justice! We were too busy marveling and asking questions. See more details on Kimio’s DIY video!

Maker projects spanned from fun at-home endeavors to commercial ventures. For example, we loved the MATRIX Creator, which is basically a Raspberry Pi add-on pre-built with a number of sensors and microcontrollers, powered by a proprietary (secret algorithm) operating system. Its capabilities are endless and clearly largely unexplored! Watch our video below to see one potential functionality: Face detection, tracking, and interpretation (also featured: our silly facial expressions :-P).

We tried our hand at single-pin lock picking. The instructions are much more easily explained than executed. Of our group, only Lily was successful! Here she is “supervising” Silas and Jon sweating away, hard at work.

Years ago, at our first Maker Faire, we saw our first 3D printer. In a shockingly short amount of time, after decades of utility in industrial fabrication, these have now become mainstream. The MakerBot Replicator and even Formlabs Forms are old news and companies are now striving to distinguish themselves. Nowadays, you can 3D print plastics, metals, clay, rubber, even chocolates. We saw many examples of great efforts: printers which used plastic waste instead of filament or resin, others which printed and mixed different colored plastic, etc. We were most impressed by the ONO, the first-ever smartphone 3D printer which raised over $1 million on Kickstarter in just 5 days! A tray filled with DLP resin sits over the smartphone. This resin hardens with exposure to normal visible light. An app displays patterns on the screen to harden the resin while a moving platform pulls the hardened resin up so that the next layer can be printed. It should be available in the U.S. soon!

Check out this Knitting Printer, an awesome invention brought to us by  Asbjørn Rørvik and Fredrik Fjellså from Norway! We were entranced by the process. So far it looks like its functionality is limited to making tubes – socks, scarves, and Dachshund sweaters… but who can have enough of those?! By the way, the component parts of these automated knitting machine were 3D printed, too!

Here are some other pictures of our highlights during the day!
1. Jon listening to knitting. Teresa Lamb wears a  harness and arm-piece which translates the movements of knitting into sound.
2. Lily jamming out on a ukelele programmed with Arduino.
3. Kathy May operating Shaper Origin, the world’s first handheld CNC machine. It’s totally portable and self-guiding!
4. Silas examining water bears AKA tardigrades (indestructible micro-animals that can survive in outer space) under the microscope.

Check out our gallery for more Maker Faire pictures that we couldn’t fit into the body of this post!

Until next time,
Kathy May and Silas

This year’s challenge, FIRST Stronghold, was reminiscent of medieval tower defense, castle takeover, albeit with a modern twist (i.e., ROBOTS!). The robots must breach their opponents’ defenses, weaken their battlements, and capture their tower. Watch a very short description of gameplay here:

The atmosphere in the arena was thrilling – booming music, suspenseful BattleBots-style announcing, and fans and press everywhere. The stands were jam-packed with cheering spectators, with included the general public and applauding sections for the individual teams.

In between watching matches, we donned safety glasses to tour the Pits, which was the staging area for the robotics teams. Here we got an up close and personal with the robots. The student engineers were excited to share their hi-tech strategies and talents with us and especially Yuri. We met a number of extremely intelligent and impressive young folk who explained the electronics and mechanics of their machines, as well as how FIRST Robotics and technology in general impacts their lives – in past, present, and future.

In addition to the high school robotics competition, the FIRST LEGO League Championship also took place at the Expo. Featuring 80 middle school teams that were selected from 190 teams across NYC, the LEGO theme was Trash Trek. The challenge was to build and program a mini-robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS to carry out prescribed tasks. The tasks of the challenge simulated solutions to environmental issues – reduce, reuse, recycle, and store.

As you can tell, there was plenty of fun, excitement, and learning for all of us, regardless of age! Yuri met a larger-than-life walking, talking, interactive robot. He cheered on his favorite robot in the battle arena and then visited the Pits, where he received a personal tour of the workings of champion bots by their makers. He even participated in a scavenger hunt, won a Rubik’s cube, and solved it on the subway ride home!

We thoroughly enjoyed the FIRST Robotics Competition as spectators, and it is impossible to have that experience without realizing what an exceptional challenge and opportunity the FRC is for students. Not only do the teams and competitions provide technical instruction and experience, but also they are an opportunity to creatively problem solve in teams, to network with peers and mentors and professionals, and to be enthusiastic about maker culture. FRC has a long-term impact  in the form of scholarships, leadership roles, and exposure to practical skills versus higher education. More important than the concrete opportunities are the intangible impacts: FRC and programs like it can instill confidence in knowledge and personality in youth.

Here’s to hoping that kids like Yuri and these robot makers change the world for the better!
– Kathy May and Silas