In honor of National Women in Engineering Day, the Make blog is profiling women in the maker community this week, including me!
…this week we’d like to bring you profiles on women who are roboticists, artists, designers, programmers, and makers of all kinds over the next few days, and we’ll be making an effort to make sure that the women in the maker movement get their fair share of the spotlight as we build our maker community in the future.
For Lady Ada Lovelace Day, we are once again celebrating women in open source hardware. Pictured above are three key women from the 2013 Open Hardware Summit: Catarina Mota, from the Open Source Business panel and OSHWA board member; Addie Wagenknecht, Open Hardware Summit co-Chair; and Alicia Gibb, conference organizer and OSHWA president.
A number of women also presented talks during the summit:
In addition, the following women presented posters or demos:
Toni Klopfenstein, Erin “RobotGrrl” Kennedy, Gabriella Levine, Analisa Russo, Amelia Marzec, Anuja Apte, Nadya Peek, Tania Morimoto, Ayah Bdeir, Linda Karina Duran Bautista, Aisen Caro Chacin, Pilar Zaragoza, Alexandra Shuey, Christalee Bieber.
All of these presenters build on a history of excellent content within this vibrant community.
Photo courtesy of the Open Hardware Summit (CC-BY).
Editor’s note: Super Awesome Sylvia has been visiting Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories for the last week and is guest blogging about her experience and project.
Last year I got to go to RoboGames and watch the competitions. This year I wanted to enter a robot of my own. I looked at the different types of robots you could enter and found out you can enter in a drawbot!
I drew a few sketches of what I wanted my robot to look like. I asked EMSL if I could come over to their shop for a week and make this bot!
When I got there I thought that I would start immediately making the base to my bot but instead we worked in inkscape making detailed drawings.
For the first couple of days I worked on doing a great detailed model on what this bot would look like. This bot was going to be a Watercolorbot!
Also, we visited a FIRST Robotics team while EMSL helped out with their robot named Oddjob. Oddjob is a Frisbee throwing pyramid climbing robot.
Once we had a good set of drawings for my watercolorbot we used the router to create the basic pieces of the bot and laser cut the carriage that holds the paintbrush. We also used dowel pins, screws, nuts, washers, and string to make a cool amazing bot. I will write more about the robot later but it took four different versions of the carriage to fit it in, three different pulleys, and two different ways to tie the string.
I am so surprised at how fortunate I was to go to EMSL and build this bot. I had some amazing meals, great experiences and had a lot of fun. I hope to come back soon and build another revision or build another bot! I really liked hanging out and playing games during my free time. Thanks Evil Mad Scientists!!
For Lady Ada Lovelace Day, we would like to celebrate an area of success for women in science and technology: the open source hardware community. This vibrant community has many strong women it holds up as role models. The newly formed Open Source Hardware Association is well represented with board members Alicia Gibb (president), Danese Cooper, Catarina Mota, and Wendy Seltzer. In addition, the Open Hardware Summit has been organized by women from the start: Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir in 2010 and 2011, followed by Catarina Mota and Dustyn Roberts this year.
The 2012 lineup of speakers included women from all over the world and from an amazing variety of disciplines, including Leah Buechley, Ayah Bdeir, Shannon Doesmagen and Liz Barry, Katherine Moriwaki, Louisa Campbell, Liza Stark, Sylvia Todd, Erin Kennedy, Myriam Ayass, Amanda Wozniak, Meg Pirrung, Valérie Lamontagne, and Hannah Perner-Wilson.
In addition to the speakers, there were even more women presenting posters and demos, including Amelia Marzec, Cindy Harnett, Gabrialla Levine, Jennifer Jacobs, Joanna Cheung, Tesia Kosmalski, Analisa Russo and Jennifer Lewis, Margarita Benitez, Maki Komuro, and Sophi Kravitz.
All of these presenters build on the past two years of excellent content at the summit, and we look forward to the inspiring speakers of years to come.
Photo of OSHWA board members Windell Oskay, Nathan Seidle, Wendy Seltzer, Alicia Gibb and Catarina Mota at the 2012 Open Hardware Summit by Jacob Gibb.
One of the great things about building electronics projects is seeing what they inspire other people to do, and the 625 LEDs of the Peggy 2 can be pretty inspiring:
Mark at awe.com did some awesome scrolling text on Peggy 2 and has even shared his sketch for others to use. His video is embedded above or you can click on over to YouTube.
Phillip at peilipu’s posterous hooked up a Peggy 2LE and a Danger Shield to play Pong, a game we’re rather fond of.
Nick over at NJS Shredding wired up an off-board Peggy 2, neatly built into a wooden box and mounted to the ceiling. He also posted a video which shows the scale of it quite well.
Another ceiling mounted Peggy 2 installation was recently posted on the Make blog. This one, with an amazing array of ribbon cables connecting strips of LEDs, is entertaining visitors at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and was created by the late artist Rick Gribenas. Thanks to Matt Mets for sending us the picture!
Also at a museum in Pittsburgh, Deren Guler used a Peggy 2 in a kid-powered generator exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. Thanks for sending the picture, Deren!
You can read more about Peggy 2 on our store here, and full documentation is available on our wiki here and links to more projects are posted there as well.
I am one of the evil mad scientists from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. I am approximately 11.75 years old. I am also one of the co-creators of the LED dining table. I would like to tell of my experience at the Maker Faire.
Continue reading Maker Faire 2006
