Photo of the Musical Tire Swing by Alasdair Allan.
Last weekend, Alasdair Allan, Kipp Bradford, and I attended Maker Startup Weekend as mentors; we taught the participants about Arduino, electronics, and other hackery, and generally had fun helping out and watching projects reach completion.
Our own Dale Dougherty kicked things off with a talk and some Q&A.
Sponsors including Inventables, Jameco, Sparkfun, and Maker Shed provided lots of components (and plenty of Arduinos) for makers to build with.
The organizer of Maker Startup Weekend, David Lang, will be familiar to many readers from his Zero to Maker column.
Jim Newton, TechShop founder, speaks just before the participants demoed their creations.
The Quiver team created removable pockets that could be stuck on the side of a tablet or laptop.
Cargo Stand carries your iPad and keyboard, but also keeps it at eye level when you are typing.
Relay Rabbits created some infrastructure and an Arduino-based hardware kit to make it easier to control devices (they demoed control of a lamp) over the Internet.
RoboRoasters prototyped a device that would roast your coffee for you, providing great coffee at a fraction of the price you’re probably used to paying.
The DIY Gel Doc system replaces hardware that costs $6,000 and up, for a fraction of the price (about $100).
Spinball, Jr. is a project to create a portable, modular, upgradeable pinball game.
Flink does one thing: it lets you push any button over the Internet.
Pictured at the top of this post: the Musical Tire Swing brings light and sound to a traditional way of playing and relaxing.
There’s plenty of information on the Maker Startup Weekend site. You can find more information on the teams, profiles of mentors, and a place where you can sign up to be notified of future Maker Startup Weekends: Maker Startup Weekend.
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