Monday, May 21, 2012

SF - Makers Faire

My dad heard about this and thought it might be interesting to go to.   I've seen the magazine, but didn't realize how huge a thing it has become.  It's a weekend convention at the San Mateo fairgrounds dedicated to making stuff.  They have another one on the east coast as well.  I really didn't know what to expect, predicting some mix of hipsters and nerds, with a spicing of Burning Man.  It is that, but a whole lot more and there were quite a lot of normal looking families there.  On the computer side, the hot things seemed to be 3-D printing and little mini kit computers like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino.  People are doing some really cool shit!  Below, an essay in Clap photos.











Anti-Zombie Weapon






This was one of the coolest things, an entire miniature city made out of tiny figures of masking tape.






Here's some examples of things made with 3-D printing.  Much of it was plastic-based, but there was one using concrete.


A consumer wireless router hacked to become a web-accessible sensor (temp, movement, light, etc.)


Part of the video game museum exhibit. Lots of old guys like me going "ooh, I finished that!"

This is a printout of the original Adventure! game.  It's amazing how small the whole thing is when as  a child it seemed like an entire universe to me.

These are 5 beagleboards, teeny little computers, that together are powering a hi-def display.


The Raspberry Pi, all the nerdrage right now, a teeny computer with all you need for $35.

Hard to see, but this is a manual machine for scanning books semi-automatically without cutting the spines off and running them through a feeder.  Quite clever, it had two digital cameras calibrated on the top and a mechanism to raise and lower the book.

The old computer museum.

Old freak with an Altair


That's part of Woz's signature on the upper left.

Talkin' 'bout the good ol' days!

















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