Maker Faire Yearbook 2023
Projects
Found 28 Results
Handheld CNC Router
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Cameron Chaney
Home: California, United States
I'm showcasing my DIY Handheld CNC Router project! It's a portable CNC router for precise 2D cuts on the go. Users move the router roughly along a pre-set path, while the bit adjusts to compensate for user error. Sensors detect the router’s position and orientation relative to the workpiece, then shift the cutting bit as needed. Unique to my design, positioning comes from optical flow sensors embedded inside the device – like those in computer mice. This simplifies its use and enables precise machining without prior setup. I've also implemented advanced control systems for stability and precision. While this started out as my Mechatronics capstone project, I am still developing the technology and hope to eventually bring open source Handheld CNC Router kits to the public.
Homebrew Robotics Club
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Homebrew Robotics Club
Home: California, United States
HBRC is a club of robotics enthusiasts from families with middle school kids to retirees who like to experiment with all different kinds of robots. From small table top based robots to full-size humanoids, from rovers to robotic arms. We have some members who work for robotics companies but we see it as a hobby and a way to learn and educate each other. Some members have fun at competitions like RoboGames or the club also has a couple of exhibition meetings every year, where members can present their robots.
HBRC is participating in the BA Maker Faire for many years (and different members in other Maker Faires as well).
LED Costumes by Erin St Blaine
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Erin StBlaine
Home: California, United States
Come be inspired by the costume creations of Erin St Blaine. Erin is a light artist based in Northern California. She creates sculptures, costumes and artwork with programmable LED lights, often including interactivity and data visualization to bring her creations to life. Erin’s innovative creations explore the way LED lights and 3d printed objects interact with the human body in motion: onstage through dance and flow arts, connecting with audiences at events through interactive character costumes, or underwater with Glimmer, the world’s first fully submersible and swimmable LED mermaid tail.
A LoRa-based Neighborhood Emergency Communications System
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Harry Saal
Home: California, United States
Sudden events, such as wildfires or earthquakes inevitably lead to outages in electric power, cell service, VOIP telephones, etc. So when the 'big on comes', how will your family be informed to prepare to evacuate or be able to send a call for emergency help? This project comprises a series of outdoor solar powered repeaters and in-home battery-backed up small devices with touch screen color display to receive and send short messages (think SMS) to neighbors and first responders. LoRa is used as the radio communications link among as many as 255 stations. Network management facilities enable administrators to see who is connected (or not), check battery voltages, ambient temperature, etc. as well as performing remote OTA software updates to those devices that also are WiFi connected.
Chabot Game Lab – Interactive Video Games
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Chabot Game Lab
Home: California, United States
Chabot Game Lab is the game development lab from Chabot College in Hayward, CA. showcasing our latest 2D/3D games, interactive art, and hardware. We will bring our hardware and showcase various games, such as a hand-gesture ASL video game that runs in Unity with our hand-capture software, a tabletop Anti-Anxiety Card Game, various 2D games that we've made for the Game Boy, to touch-sensitive Fruit Simon Says using microcontrollers. We will also be able to sell merch and various little trinket projects (USB-powered projects) that funds our lab at Chabot College.
ProtoStax – Modular, Extensible, Stackable Enclosures
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Sridhar Rajagopal
Home: California, United States
ProtoStax Enclosures are modular, extensible & stackable plug-and-play enclosures. They help you easily transform your jumble-of-wires-and-boards prototype into an attractive & usable product.
They are modular and allow for easy assembly, with unparalleled access for mounting various components. They are extensible – our Extension Kits and Add-Ons allow you to add peripherals like cameras, display panels, fans, switches, etc easily by simply swapping out pieces. They are stackable – create bigger composite enclosures/towers as required.
And did we mention they are attractive?
Proudly display your creation on a coffee table, share it with friends and family, or even sell to customers! After all, while a prototype that works is great, a prototype that can be used is even better!
MicroBlocks Makes Physical Computing Fun!
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: MicroBlocks
Home: California, United States
MicroBlocks is a free, non-profit, open-source software project that enables young and old alike to learn how to program microcontrollers. These chips are the brains of small electronics devices like hands-free soap and water dispensers, 3D printers, assembly-line automation, and even giant robots. MicroBlocks is the only blocks-based programming tool that is LIVE — it's like Scratch for physical computing. As an educational programming language for the 'real world', it lets learners of nearly any age learn and do things faster, in any area of interest or study. And for those interested in pure fun, making electronically enhanced Halloween costumes and a smart Christmas tree becomes a whole lot easier to create!
Maker’s Cafe
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Make:
Home: California, United States
Make: invites you to visit the Maker's Cafe for some hands-on learning, with a variety of affordable and fun Make n' Take electronics for purchase. Choose your kits, choose your add-ons and customize with Components a 'la Carte, then personalize your blinky creations at the Bling Bar. Things can get sticky at the Hot Glue Grotto and can really heat with some simple circuits at Solder Station! Easy to build and fun to finish, whether you are a seasoned maker, or just getting started, the Maker's Cafe is not to be missed!
Orthrus
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: SJSU Robotics
Home: California, United States
Our project is a three wheeled and modular mars rover. The rover is expected to complete tasks such as inserting USB's, picking up 10Kg, traverse terrain autonomously, detect aruco tags, avoid obstacles like rocks, goto set GPS locations set up by a map, traverse rough terrain, and be controlled from up to 2Km away in an open field. There are also some science tasks like detecting life on our rover that we will have to accomplish as well.
Make: Magazine
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Make:
Home: California, United States
Meet the Makers behind Make: and get a subscription to Make: magazine at a special event price! Sign up at the Make: Booth, in the Maker Shed or the Maker Faire Merch Tent. Join the Maker Movement and dive into the first magazine devoted to DIY technology projects.
RayLights – Audio Activated Lumiere
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Craig Newswanger
Home: California, United States
This dynamic artwork produces ever-changing, mandala-like light patterns that are activated by ambient sounds. The fluctuating, animated light rays range from intense spectral colors to subtle pastels. A sequence of patterns repeats, but when you make sound—talk, sing, clap—the preprogrammed patterns are modified as the lights respond with non-repeating, complex variations of the colors and patterns.
D-Box
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: The Smile Makers
Home: California, United States
The 'D-Box” is an oversized RC car made from a power wheels car overhauled with a 160 foot-pound torque electric motor powered by two marine batteries, a linear actuator for steering, reinforced frame, aggressive pneumatic go kart tires, and an oversized 1400 watt car stereo.
PictoPocket
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Cameron Nawosad
Home: California, United States
PictoPocket is like a Polaroid picture except you can change from your phone! Stick to to your wall, fridge, or give it to your loved ones. It has a custom circuit board with an NRF52 BLE chip, 3D printed case, and an iOS app to select and upload your chosen photo.
Boards are Back! 2023 Dev Boards in Review
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: David Groom
Home: United States
2023 has been an exciting year for makers, with supply chain issues giving way to new flagships from Arduino and Raspberry Pi, in the form of the UNO R4 and Pi 5 respectively. We'll take a look at our favorites from the 2024 Boards Guide with Editor David 'ishotjr' Groom and hear about how almost 200 dev boards were whittled down to 14 New & Notables, from beast to bijou, homunculus to hybrid, during the editorial process.
Foxglove Instruments
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Thadeus Frazier-Reed
Home: California, United States
A menagerie of handmade electronic and electroacoustic instruments including:
– meqanun: a robotic, electric, 12-string zither
– fluxharmonium: a digitally controlled, electromechanical synthesizer made from the guts of a Hammond Organ
Visitors will be able to interact with these instruments using:
– Pedestrial Activator: an organ foot pedal MIDI controller
– Bandy: a series of simple web based video games visitors play on their mobile devices which activate a machine learning algorithm to create musical phrases played by the instruments.
Topics covered by the project: Instrument building, wood working, MIDI, custom electronics and microcontrollers (Teensy/Arduino/RP2040/CircuitPython), and machine learning in music.
(Very Small) Robot Choir
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Crappy Happy Robots
Home: California, United States
Come visit the Crappy Happy Robots table and play with some of our robot friends. This year we will be bringing an armful of our silly goofy guys to flap and wave and spin around, and headlining the group this year the (Very Small) Robot Choir is excited to sing for you. They need your help to rock out though, by coloring in a paper grid you can program and direct your own unique tiny robot performance.
Personal Peltier-based tabletop air conditioner & tabletop cooler/warmer
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: AKIYOSHI KAWAGUCHI
Home: Saitamaken, Japan
Ever felt that mid-study or work slump and just wished for a warm drink? Enter our compact warmer box! Not only can it keep your coffee or tea toasty, but it's also a game-changer for your lunch. Bring it to work, and say goodbye to cold meals.
I was so stoked about the idea that I had to create one. But here's the twist: flip it over, and voilà, it's a tabletop air conditioner! Those little holes at the bottom? They pump out cool vibes, making summer desk sessions a breeze. And if you're the outdoorsy type, hook it up to a solar panel, and you're set for the comfiest camping trip ever, even in the scorching heat!
Building machines to explore cell behavior
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Wallace Marshall
Home: California, United States
We usually think of learning and decision making as something that only animals with brains can do. but even single cells can perform a surprising array of apparently purposeful behavior, and can even show basic forms of learning. We have been building homemade devices, controlled by arduinos, that use stepper motors to deliver calibrated stimuli to cells, allowing us to monitor their response. Using these homebrew devices, we can show that cells are able to learn, and do simple experiments to explore how they learn. In this demonstration, visitors will be able to operate the devices using buttons and switches, and see the effects on cells in real time under a USB microscope. This project shows that with a few electronic parts and an arduino, you can build equipment in your garage th
Raspberry Pi
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Raspberry Pi
Home: Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
Makers will be able to get hands-on with Raspberry Pi Ltd's newest computer, Raspberry Pi 5. Talk to the Raspberry Pi team and perhaps grab a little piece of Raspberry Pi swag.
Halloween Haunt…Maker Style
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Scare Makers
Home: California, United States
Our exhibit is a unique collection of DIY radio controlled animatronic props, compressed air driven contraptions and 3D video displays all with a Halloween theme. We present these props and displays in an interactive fashion, with the goal of providing all Faire goers young and young at heart with an entertaining, hands-on and educational experience. We hope to educate Faire attendees about our builds and then allow them to use hand held R/C units to control the multiple props themselves, providing an immersive, enjoyable, noisy (and sometimes scary) dark room event.
Boxbot
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: MARS Team
Home: California, United States
In our MARS (Making Affordable Robots for Students) program, we have developed a totally hackable, low-barrier to entry, fun robotics platform that empowers students to learn how to program and modify robots. We call it Boxbot. The cardboard chassis and extremely low-cost (features compete with $300 robotics products, but it's only $30 in parts) means that almost any school, student, or self-directed learner can do real robotics. This project was developed completely by the MARS team, students developing engaging learning experiences for students.
Drone Cage and Piloting
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Drones of San Francisco/ SF Drone School
Home: California, United States
We will have one netted area for drone demo and drone simulator training. A second for Q&A on how to become a commercial drone pilot or a professional drone racer. The drone racers will sign autographs and give pictures to kids.
Watercolor Plotter
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Matous Vana
Home: California, United States
I have a homebuilt and designed plotter that paints with watercolor. Fairgoers are able to interact with the project by mixing watercolors in a series of plots and then seeing my plotter turn their selected colors into a generative art piece! I exhibited at Open Sauce this year and I had a really fun time and people seemed to enjoy my work, I'd love to reprise that at Maker Faire! I also work with pen and I plan to have a variety of post-card sized works for sale at my booth.
Cardboard Robotics and Physical Computing with the micro:bit
Faire: Bay Area
Maker: Diego Fonstad
Home: California, United States
The micro:bit is a low cost entry into physical computing and making engaging and interesting robots does not always require an expensive kit. This workshop will show some simple tips and tricks for using recycled and low cost materials to build robotics projects. Borrowing ideas from the Robot Petting Zoo and projects by Cecilia Hillway (lip synching robots) and Natasha Dzurny (cardboard guitar) and others you will develop a toolkit for building low cost and engaging projects. This workshop is targeted to educators interested in providing open-ended physical computing projects to their students but can be valuable for home DIYers as well.
