Winners On The Road To Maker Faire Challenge!

The Vardo, Home on Wheels by George Crawford aka Paleotool

And the winner is… The Vardo, Home on Wheels by George Crawford! For his participation in the Road to Maker Faire Challenge, presented by Esurance, George will receive a $2,000 stipend to travel westward next month, and exhibit his gypsy wagon at Maker Faire Bay Area! Many of the entries to this first-of-its-kind challenge were very strong, and we at MAKE want to thank everyone who applied. I’d also point out it’s purely coincidental – given the name of the competition – that the winning project is also a trailer-hitched shack on wheels, and will literally be “on the road” soon.

So, congratulations to George and we look forward to seeing his wagon out west next month. Also, congratulations to our two Runners Up who each receive a Maker’s Notebook and a one-year subscription to MAKE Magazine. They are…

Plastic Injection Molding from Scratch by Scott Skroch

Injection molding from the most basic materials which are available at no cost. After the injection molder is complete only time and materials which are freely available are required to create new items. Any number if items can be created whether the items are an original design, replacement parts or parts from designs shared on the internet. All of the plastic used is from household items that have outlived their usefulness. Disposable food containers and broken toys can all be used to make new items.

You can see more of Scott’s project and process in this video.

I have built a set of 6 MIDI controlled lights, intended to look like fluorescent bulbs, for art installation, interaction design, and also for live performance.

These lights require NO COMPUTER. These are purely built from Arduino microcontrollers and respond to standard MIDI. The technology story here is one of minimalism, no computing means less to learn for an artist. The performance story here is one of novelty, while the lighting looks like traditional fluorescent bulbs, there is actually a set of RGB led strip lights built in that have the ability to produce any color (24 bit) and do animation such as color chases.