A couple of weeks ago at Maker Faire UK we sat down with some of the Makers there to talk not just about what they’d brought along to the Faire, but about what Maker Faire meant to them.
One of those Makers was Ben Pirt, the creator of Mirobot as well as a rather nifty Raspberry Pi powered bulk Arduino programmer. We talked to Pirt last year at Maker Faire UK where he showed off the original version of his robot designed to help children learn technology, programming, and maths. This year he was back with a massively overhauled version of the bot. While superficially the bot looks much the same as before, the new version has all new construction, and all new electronics.
Based on feedback after he went out and built the first version of Mirobot alongside children in schools, Pirt has overhauled the design and significantly reduced the time needed to build the bot, as well as getting rid of sticking points during the process that everyone seemed to be hitting.
Pirt also talked about the way he’s using Kickstarter as part of his development process, to build community around the product, not just to fund building it in the first place.
If you’re interested in a second-generation Mirobot, with all new electronics based around the ESP8266 Wi-Fi board for connectivity, the campaign still has a few days to run.
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