Making Toys

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  FluffyLeecy 1:43 pm on October 4, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Maker Faire   

  Maker Faire Highlight – My favorite 3 

  I have to say I enjoyed MF so much that I really want to bring my project next time. As I was also a volunteer on Sunday, I experienced the fun of both making and exchanging ideas and passion. Showing projects to kids made me so proud of myself even it was not my project.

  My 3 favorite projects were:

  1.  Kinect Fighting Robot

  Using Kinect to track movements is not news but still makes it exciting and fun. I was fascinated by its well-designed appearance and UI design which is very smooth, clear and easy to convey the messages like loading, fighter information, and etc. Kids can understand it, join it and play it, without any instructions.

  

  Here’s the video:

  2. Thunder Bear Board

  This is really old school stuff but truly impressed me. It’s designed by Stamati & Sophia, from a little lovely studio called “Almost Art House”. It’s pretty easy in designing but very meaningful for people who have dreams and goals. In despite of its low techie, it emphasized the willingness or motivation of doing things. I think this spirit is very important today as technology is making people’s lives more and more convenient, at the same time, making people lazy in thoughts, even subconsciously rely on technology. Design products as Thunderbear would bring back the motivation in people, making them do things only they are aware of. Setting goals by hand, fulfill dreams and enjoy being a champion.

  The most lovely part is it even designed a champion board for users to show their achievements.  How adorable!

  

  3. Lovely robots

  I simply like their appearance. I like the idea they are using daily-used material to design their robots. Look at the eyebrows they have!

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  Aneta Genova 2:39 pm on September 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Aneta Genova ( 2 ), Maker Faire   

  3 Things I loved at Maker Faire – Aneta Genova 

  The first thing that caught my eyes was the USB typewriter from Jack Zylkin. I provokes a nostalgic feeling for the disappearing typewriter and the art of typing, knowing that you can’t just delete and rewrite a whole sentence or rearrange the whole paragraph. I am also attracted to the overall design aesthetic of the old fashioned keyboards juxtaposed to the modern sleek look of the iPad or iMac. It’s not very portable, but it makes for an amazing display piece.

  

  

  The second project or actually product that I was specifically looking forward to see was the Conductive Ink form Bare Conductive. I am super excited about working with and creating products with soft circuits, so this was top priority for me. The inks are created by the team at Bare Conductive: Matt Johnson, Isabel Lizardi, Bibi Nelson and Becky Pilditch. The ink is quick drying and nontoxic, so it can be used by artists, hobbyist or serious inventors. Needless to say I am in love with this product 🙂

  

  Here is Isabel Lizardi showing me how you can draw on fabric.

  

  And last but not least I really enjoyed the simple bots by Randi Sarafan, at the instructables.com booth. I was fascinated by the idea that simple objects from your house can be wired and put together into fun little bots, that take on a life of their own.

  

  

  

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  josefayala 5:56 am on September 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: 3D printing, arduino ( 4 ), DoItYourself, Maker Faire, New York, New York City, New York Hall of Science, Open source   

  3 Things I Liked At Maker Faire by Josef Ayala 

  Going to Maker Faire this year made me realize how much I REGRET not going to Maker Faire last year in 2010. I had such a really good time all under the impression that I would look at it all and yawn. I will eat those words now, and most likely be at Maker Faire in 2012!!!!! It was not only great to see how people’s minds work but also how everyone attacked their tasks and executed assembly in a very unique way but also good to see a really nice and well rounded community for this sort of event. It was peculiar, interesting, entertaining and nerdy all rolled into one. It was also quite scary to see 8 year olds speaking to me using terms such as “open-source”. When I was 8, “open-source”  didn’t exist and I wasn’t playing around with sensors (See sling shot photograph from my first post)! The world might just have a bright future after all.

   

  That said, here are some of my favorite exhibits from Maker Faire: VIDEOS COMING SOON!!!!

  1) GetLoFi – Contact Mics:

  These guys were great, I am heavily into anything related to the sound field. Even though, people might have thought that this was a very simplistic setup and effect, I was still greatly surprised by the ingenuity and talent that goes into something like this. After all that they still managed to pull off a very nice aesthetic for these extremely awesome mics. I plan to try to build one for myself in the future. :

  

  The microphones are “piezoelectric” which essentially means is that they respond by in large to pressure. Piezo electricity contains the ability of some materials to produce a voltage when subjected to pressure—to convert vibrations into an electrical signal.

  2) Drum Machine/Synth TV Set:

  Again, music oriented Arduino projects win me over. I liked this set up because it incorporated what I believe was an Arduino set up to the television set which triggered an Animation on the adjacent television screen. The drum machine had a similar set up which incorporated what I believe was a light sensor which detected the absence of light and triggered different drum sounds based on how you marked up the projector screen disc. It was a fun set up and I got to play Fur Elise and The Entertainer.

  

  

   

  3) 3-D Printing:

  This never ceases to amaze me. It is growing on me more as I am now learning about “parametric design” for products in my Thesis section but overall, it’s nice to see how things are made and processed. Below I believe are examples of algorithmic product development.

  

  

   

  honorable mentions:

  aren’t these helmets cool !?

  

  
  

   

   

  
  

   

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