Sunday, July 03, 2011

The (Renewed) Tradition of Making Things

I'm still flying high from the great response and creativity we saw at Vancouver's first Mini Maker Faire on June 25, 26. My friend Tom created some nice metal & wooden stands for our various "less-than-an-hour-of-programming" Arduino demonstration projects.

- The Peak-a-Boo (less correctly called the "I Keeel You!" display) that had a picture of Jeff Dunham's Ahmed character poised to spin around at someone who approached too closely.

- TheRandom Color LEDerizer, which chooses one of 16 Million possible colors an RGB LED can create and used pulse-width modulation to fade it in and out.

- The Ultrasonic Theremin, which coupled a MaxSonar EZ1 sensor, and a Mac running Processing, to translate hand height to frequency.

Maker Faire is a coming-out party for creativity, for people who cross over the illusory creative/technical barrier.

Geeks abound, Athena rejoices.