Category Archives: Field Trips

BAMF 2014: Racing Snail video from Hackaday

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Part of our continuing coverage of highlights from the 2014 Bay Area Maker Faire.

Mike from hackaday caught up with me at Maker Faire and got a bit of video of my racing snail, which I was showing as an example of soft circuitry alongside various projects of our friend Meredith, including her awesome StarBoard flexible circuit LEDs. Mike’s writeup points to the history and variety of Bristlebot projects. The racing snail is a personal favorite, with the nap of the fabric foot providing the direction to the bot’s motion.

A velvet bristlebot racing snail

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Highlights of the 2014 Bay Area Maker Faire

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BAMF 2014 77

The 2014 Bay Area Maker Faire was an amazing, amazing event. We took hundreds of photos, which we have posted in a flickr set here. Here are just a few of the highlights— both technological and artistic, and we’ll be featuring several more over the course of the next week or so.

(Above: Rolf and Abhishek show off the new Arduino Zero in the Arduino booth.) Continue reading Highlights of the 2014 Bay Area Maker Faire →

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Beautiful Drone Video of Maker Faire

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A Drone’s Day at Maker Faire gives a beautiful perspective of an amazing event. You can see me as the drone goes follows me into Expo hall near the beginning of the video. Highlights include overhead shots of the crowds around the large outdoor art pieces and a drone’s eye view of the drone battles.

We’ll be sharing more from Maker Faire soon!

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Maker Faire Bingo

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With Maker Faire coming up next week, @techninja42 suggested that Maker Faire Bingo would be a great way to get ready! With the help of some friends, he put together a site where you can grab a bingo card to play during your visit to Maker Faire. We tried it out with the WaterColorBot, but you can use your preferred automated printing method to make your own, or maybe even find a robot at Maker Faire to draw it for the ultimate Maker Faire Bingo!

Send your maker bingo suggestions to @mfbingo for inclusion in the bingo card generator.

This entry was posted in Art, CNC, Field Trips, Robotics, WaterColorBot and tagged . Bookmark the Permalink.

Open Hardware Summit 2014: Call for papers

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OHS
The Call for Papers is now open for the 2014 Open Hardware Summit. This year’s summit will be September 30 and October 1 in Rome, Italy.

The Open Hardware Summit is the annual conference organized by the Open Source Hardware Association and the world’s first comprehensive conference on open hardware; a venue to discuss and draw attention to the rapidly growing Open Source Hardware movement. Speakers include world renowned leaders from industry, academia, and the maker community. Talks cover a wide range of subjects from electronics and mechanics to related fields such as digital fabrication, fashion technology, self-quantification devices, and DIY bio. Workshops focus on, but are not limited to, education, manufacturing, design, business, and law.

The call is on a short schedule this year: Submissions are due by 25th of May 2014.

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OSHW Talk at 2014 Bay Area Maker Faire

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Maker Faire 2014
Wearing my OSHWA hat, I’ll be giving a talk about Open Source Hardware at this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire:

Best Practices for Open Source Hardware in 2014
In the past year OSHWA, the Open Source Hardware Association, has worked with the community to develop a modern list of best practices for designing, releasing and building upon existing open source hardware projects. Windell Oskay, Vice President of OSHWA, will discuss recommended approaches, touching upon open source design tools, documentation, hosting, licenses, and other current issues. Time permitting, we will also take questions from the audience.

The talk is scheduled for Saturday, May 17, 4:45-5:00 pm. You can find the rest of the center stage schedule for Maker Faire right here.

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Open Make at The Tech

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Open Make @ The Tech logoWe’ll be at The Tech museum in San Jose this Saturday, April 26, for an Open Make session with the theme of “Flow.” The event is in collaboration with the Maker Education Initiative.

Open Make activities run from 10 am to 2 pm and are free with museum admission.

Previous Open Make posts:

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Cameo on CNN Explains 3D Printing

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Our friend AnnMarie, who is an engineering professor, wrote to say,

I keep showing the short CNN explains 3D printing video in talks I have to give to students, and always love that you and Windell are walking through the MakerBot store in it!

We were highly amused as we had never seen the clip, which was published in 2013. The footage must have been shot just after the 2012 NY Maker Faire. Having been featured in Wired Magazine for our own 3D printer, it is perhaps appropriate that when the video cuts to us, the narrator says,

The people at the forefront of this movement, they say they want this to be as common in peoples homes as the toaster oven.

(We show up for about one second at 1:35.)

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Robot Block Party

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Silicon Valley Robot Block Party Banner

We’ll be at the Silicon Valley Robot Block Party on Wednesday, April 9 at WilmerHale in Palo Alto.

See the most advanced robotics research in Silicon Valley, the hottest robot startups, the coolest robot companies and all the just plain fun robots you can imagine.

The event is free and open to the public and runs from 1-4 pm. We hope to see you and your robots there!

This entry was posted in EMSL Projects, Engineering, Field Trips, Robotics. Bookmark the Permalink.