This live blog is no longer being updated. Start at the bottom and scroll up for a chronological virtual tour through Maker Faire Hong Kong!
5:30 pm
There’s a glass blower here! He’s letting people come and help with the creation of different items. You can see a couple women here taking turns shaping the molten glass.
The local DIYBio group has brought an interesting display. You can check stuff out in a microscope or extract DNA from different items. Below you can see a group of kids extracting DNA from strawberries.
I wanted to see if I could capture the view through the microscope on my camera. I was pleasantly surprised to find it worked!
There’s Nerdy Derby here as well. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention at other Maker Faires, but I hadn’t noticed a long jump track before! They were also taking pictures of the cars on some kind of turn table, I assume for rotating GIFs.
3:15 pm
In a pleasant surprise, I ran into our friends from Make Fashion. They were showing off a few pieces with embedded electronics. I got a sneak peek (and now you are too) of their new circuit for making embedded circuits in clothing. This little board is to make adding simple lights and sensors easier for fashion designers who don’t want to mess with even moderately complicated circuits.
The Hong Kong Green Designers Association was doing a fun workshop. They were having people take plain white shoes and paint them. This is one of the many events and methods they use to promote environmental awareness.
As promised, I returned to the 3D printed food contest. These are so great, it would be a shame to eat them!
3D Roundhouse is an interesting group. They want to bring families together through 3D printing. To do this they have easy lessons in all of the free 3D design software you can use as well as some example projects to get you going.
1:15 pm
These geometrically patterned balls were, put simply, stunning. I was walking by and saw a crowd around and had to investigate. Pretty much everyone was just in awe at the radiant colors and detailed designs.
The woman who made these explained that historically, there was a traditional Chinese art of making these woven balls from bamboo. Then, Japanese artists took the concept further with thread and the results are what you see above.
Robotics mixed with papercraft is an interesting concept. This backpack style set of robotic arms is mostly paper, with about 30 servos tossed in!
There are two Arduino Megas in there, and the artist controls the arms with a mixture of gyroscope and thumb stick.
12:40 pm
There is an electric car race going on here. While similar to our Power Racing Series, it is very different as well. There are two kits that are sent to schools. I’m not sure of the details, but I think the simpler, less powered kit is sent to younger kids. The younger kids are challenged to decorate the structure. The drive train for these less powerful kits is actually a drill, pressed tightly against a wheel. You can see it in a few of the pictures.
The other kit is a bit more powerful and I think it is sent to older students. It includes a drive train and motor and the students have to build the rest. You can tell this kit visually by the bigger fatter tires in these pictures.
I got to drive one of the faster ones last night, and even though I had it in its lowest speed setting, I nearly wrecked… repeatedly.
FPV drone racing is here as well. The course is very compact and twisty and frankly quite confusing. I don’t know how these pilots do it!
This is a very interesting take on paper construction. It isn’t traditional origami, nor what I typically see as papercraft. This gentleman has developed an entire system based around folding and securing these specifically shaped, business card sized, pieces of card stock. His projects range from artistic examples to radio controlled cars!
I always love seeing luthiers at Maker Faire. These hand constructed instruments were simply gorgeous. The lute in particular was quite interesting. All hand carved and finely detailed. The artist explained the renaissance style construction to me. I took particular interest in the cat-gut frets. I had never seen that in person before!
Even though he makes these incredible instruments that are quite simply works of art, he also has fun and makes silly things such as this “moon cake ukulele.” Behind him you can see pictures of him teaching children his craft as well as a “percussion table” which sounded really cool!
12:00 – noon
Ephemeral Bamboo is a group that makes interesting architectural structures using bamboo. This is a resource that is incredibly eco-friendly, it grows insanely fast and is very versatile.
People are using simple hand tools to create these intricate woven shapes. Standing back and looking at them, you’d think that they were very delicate but they’re surprisingly strong.
This racing group didn’t initially sound like it was going to be that exciting. However, as soon as I saw these crazy little cars in motion, I changed my mind. It was fascinating watching the custom 4 wheel drive electric cars zip along the tracks at speeds that were often too much. Pictures don’t do the speed justice. These little cars would fling around corners at breakneck speed and then climb, or descend, this bouncy incline, often launching into the air and miraculously recovering.
At the same area, people were paint dipping the bodies of their cars before the races.
11:20 am
There’s a 3D printed food competition going on! I hadn’t personally seen these printers in action yet. I was pretty amazed at how easy it was for people to load them up and print their designs. The teams — some with pretty amusing names — are coming up with interesting cookies that will be judged later. I’ll have to return when more are printed. The designs that I already saw were quite cute.
In the hallway just adjacent to the 3D printed food competition was this unique display. These are all toys that have been ripped apart and reconfigured into interesting sculptures.
11:00 am
I sat down and did a tiny bit of sewing at the embellishment workshop. This group from the Institute of Textiles and Clothing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is mixing the old methods of creating undergarments with new technologies such as laser cutting and digital printing. They explained to me how they design a custom fabric and cut shapes from it with a laser “like a cookie cutter” for their designs.
People were sitting down to design and sew these little bags. I laid out how I wanted mine but didn’t have time to sew it all (nope, not the sculls, mine has flowers).
Video coming next week!
10:00 am
Let’s get this party started! The makers are still setting up, but I just can’t wait to start taking pictures. Here’s a bit of a teaser of what is to come. If you want to know more about these un-labelled images, don’t fret. I’ll be returning to these booths through the day for more info!
It is bright and early here in Hong Kong and Maker Faire is just getting ready to start. The makers are winding their way to their booths at the beautiful Polytechnic University campus and setting up their projects. I’ve been walking around peeking at the things they’re unboxing and I am so eager to be able to share them once setup is completed.
Already I’ve noticed a trend that most things here are pushing for a professional end goal, but this may be swayed considerably by the fact that the event is being hosted at a technical university. That is not to say that there isn’t art for art’s sake, I see a few items such as that already.
Keep your eyes on this post and refresh often. I’ll be posting pictures as often as I can all day today (in Hong Kong time) and tomorrow.
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