“12FeetTall–AllLego!”: TJ Avery from the Texas LEGO Users Group showed this 12-foot-tall crane, with a structure made 100% from LEGO bricks! Even better it’s fully remote controlled and could move across the floor, raise and lower its boom and lift loads. TJ had been working on this model for almost a year and this was the first time it had been shown in full operational condition. “PercyPeacockArtCar”: Art Cars were invented in Houston, so no Maker Faire here would be complete without them. Percy Peacock, built by a team of middle-school students and maintained by Mark and Sherri Garrett, helped represent the Art Car community at the Houston Mini Maker Faire.
“EndermanSpeaker”: Alex Hahn was our youngest Maker at 8 years of age. In love with electronics and Making since he was just 5 years old, he designed and built an audio speaker system with embedded amplifier and wrapped it all up in a skin to look like an Enderman character from the Minecraft(tm) game he also loves. We can’t wait to see what he builds next!
“FunForAll”: this year’s Houston Mini Maker Faire featured participation by about 250 Makers appearing in 84 booths, offering variety, insights and activities that kept our crowd of attendees busy all day. Attendees enjoyed everything from crafts to outstanding examples of Maker technology throughout the day.
“GarageOfTheFuture”: Is this the garage of the future? From left to right in this photo, attendees saw a gas-powered quadcopter designed to lift a human-size load built by Peter McCloud, a personal hovercraft built by Ben King and an electric car with solar-power assist built by a team of Rice University students.
“HVRACrystalRadios”: Houston Vintage Radio Association showed many examples of one of the earliest Maker technology projects — namely, crystal radios. They also had another “hot” exhibit with their display of tube-based audio amplifiers and radios. “EndermanSpeaker”: Alex Hahn was our youngest Maker at 8 years of age. In love with electronics and Making since he was just 5 years old, he designed and built an audio speaker system with embedded amplifier and wrapped it all up in a skin to look like an Enderman character from the Minecraft(tm) game he also loves. We can’t wait to see what he builds next!
“Lissagraph”: Craig Newswanger turns complex math into beautiful art with his “lissagraph” machine.
“MakerBot Fan”: our event was held the day after Halloween, so many attendees came in costumes. This young man is obviously MakerBot’s biggest fan! How cool is that?
“PCsForMe”: another of our outstanding young Makers is Ethan Saadia, a Maker Faire veteran who started his own company “PCs for Me” at age 11. He designed and offers kits to build PCs, “by kids, for kids (and adults too)”.
“PercyPeacockArtCar”: Art Cars were invented in Houston, so no Maker Faire here would be complete without them. Percy Peacock, built by a team of middle-school students and maintained by Mark and Sherri Garrett, helped represent the Art Car community at the Houston Mini Maker Faire.
“ScienceInTheMovies”: Steve Wolf, a highly-experienced stunt professional from Stunt Ranch, lifts STEM education to new heights with his award-winning “Science in the Movies” program. This presentation actively demonstrates how fundamental science and engineering are regularly used to create stunts and special effects in movies and videos. Teachers from throughout Houston could attend our Maker Faire for free to see this presentation as well as all the other excellent booths.
“ThatsABigRocket”: Andy Berger, Harry Spears and their fellow Makers from the Tripoli Houston Rocket Club exhibited some amazingly-large rockets they’ve built and launched. They were busy all day talking to attendees about their projects and showed videos of some of their outstanding launches. Several of their displayed rockets exceeded 8 feet in height, with the tallest standing near 14 feet tall! And that’s a 5,000-lb thrust home-built rocket engine on the right! (Anyone have an old Honda Civic they don’t need anymore?… )
“VEXTournament”: Houston Mini Maker Faire featured a broad and active display of robotics, including a VEX Robotics skills tournament. One of the participating teams set a new world record score for the current VEX Skyrise game configuration during the day!
The Houston Mini Maker Faire was a huge success. please take a few moments to check out these pictures from the event. While they can’t possibly show just how great it was to be there, you might get a taste of fun the event was.
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