Going to Maker Faire 2012

I’ve got a golden ticket…

This year, in a effort to see everything at the 2012 Maker Faire, hubby and I planned to go to both days of the event – May 19th and 20th. Full of energy and waiting to be amazed, we hoofed it to our local Caltrain station, and made the long walk from Hillsdale to the San Mateo County fairgrounds.

Here comes the train - choo, choo! Walking to Maker Faire

Are we there yet?

 

In the distance we could see what looked like a large paper plane soaring through the air above the fair. As we drew closer, it was clear that this plane was being controlled from the ground. Excited, we sped up our steps fueled by the desire to see what this year’s fair would have to show us.

Robot Crossing

Robots.

Lots of robots.

Robot costumes, robot sculptures, felted robots, robot kits, dancing robots, and dancing with robots too!

Cardboard Robot CostumeGiant Robot

 

Mr. Maker Faire  Instructables Boy

Robot Mascots

 

Robot Dance PartyIt’s a robot dance party!

 

Talbotics had found object robots on display – but not for sale. Tragedy! Jigsy, you need to run away from home and come stay with me!

Lots of wonderful crafts and crafters as well. Etchhpop let you print up a woodblock print from one of their samples. You can send them an image, and they’ll send you a custom woodblock. Add that to the must have list! The Woolbuddy folks had fantastic kits to make, or pre-made items to buy like this irresistible R2D2.

Etchpop print  Felted R2D2
Bottle rocket power  C64 Guitar

Want to be jet propelled? Make your own rocket pack out of empty bottles (Mom should have left them full for training a la Rock Lee from Naruto). Have an old Commodore 64 lying around? Clearly, it needs to be turned into a guitar.

 

Sleeping at Maker Faire

Tired yet?

But wait, there was so much more. Adam Savage in a cage with lightning bolts, Teslas and motorcycles that stand on their own (gyroscope-power), Lego cities with working trains and tiny cities made out of rolled up masking tape (Tapigami) and 8 foot space marines to hug.

Adam Savage Zapping Adam Savage Tesla ride
motorcycle     Tape City
 Lego TrainSpace Marine

and, of course, what would Maker Faire be without FIRE!!!

Fire breathing dragon

Can’t wait until next year.

Robots and knitting at the 2012 Robot Block Party

On April 11th I dropped by this year’s Robot Block Party at the Stanford Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab. Despite the clouds, the rain held off, which was great news for the kids running around chasing the robots. Probably pretty good for the robots too!

Robots live here
Robots live here!

Just as last year, there were military robots, consumer robots, and robots built out of Legos and various other bits and pieces by robot enthusiasts.

Big Robot
PRD from Willow Garage says hello.

There were robots from Nasa and SRI, robots doing push-ups, robots dancing to ‘Thriller‘, movie-making robots and cars that drive themselves.


Nao gets down with his bad self.

Robot apps
Robots. There’s an app for that!

Knitting and robots
Knitting at the Robot Block Party. Awesome.

Although there were no knitting robots present, one of the folks sitting near the Tech Museum display was knitting and attracting the interest of her fellow booth-manners.

Robots and knitting. Sounds like a great combination, don’t you think?