Maker Spotlight: DJ Sures

Education Robotics Technology
Maker Spotlight: DJ Sures

By Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

View more articles by Dale Dougherty

Name: DJ Sures
City: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Day Job: Founder & CEO of EZ-Robot

dj sures
Robotics

DJ is not actually a DJ. He’s a roboticist from Calgary who founded the company EZ-Robot. He first wrote an article on hacking toys to make robots in Make: Vol 27, and we followed up with him for a Q&A back in 2011. Here’s a video of his early robots:

YouTube player

EZ-Robot is a robotic building system with an integrated development environment to program and control the robot in real time. It sells for about $300 and the primary market is education. At the Intel Developer Forum, DJ demonstrated a model that uses the new Intel Joule PC processor as its brain.

EZ-Robot is now a 50-person company with its own 6,700 sq. ft facility where all the components for the EZ-Robot system are manufactured. DJ said that he was unhappy with the quality of the components he ordered for the original version of the robot, so he redesigned the robot and began making all its components, including the servo motors. According to DJ, they’ve shipped about 20,000 units in 2016, and their biggest challenge is keeping up with demand. The software is incredible, allowing you to customize the development environment and immediately share to a mobile device as a controller.

Every day we highlight a different maker from our broad community. Meet all the amazing people featured in Maker Spotlight. Want to nominate someone, maybe even yourself? Send a note to makerspotlight@makermedia.com.

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By Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

View more articles by Dale Dougherty
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