Maker Faire is the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth — a family-friendly festival of invention, creativity, and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the maker movement.
Part science fair, part county fair, and part something entirely new, Maker Faire is an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors. All of these people come to Maker Faire to show what they have made and to share what they have learned.
Explore below to see the best of Maker Faire, and head to makerfaire.com for more information.
Jake Ketchum‘s Automatic Media Deactivation System attaches to a standard power strip and shuts off all power to a room’s electronics when its smart sensor detects that a person is no longer in the room. When someone re-enters, the system is switched back on. He demonstrated his invention at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011.
At Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, Ben demonstrates PhoneSat, a project in conjunction with NASA done to prove that a cellphone can serve as a viable CPU in an orbital satellite. The Nexus One on board uses the Android OS and is monitored by an Arduino that also serves as a rebooting device.
Our own Phil Torrone has a pithy survey of the maker movement recently published in Google’s posh advertising and marketing organ Think Quarterly. “On The Make” is written by one of MAKE’s ultimate insiders, for outsiders, and is a great resource if, like me, you’ve ever found yourself struggling for words to concisely summarize exactly […]
John Guy’s Rocking Horse Bike has a single horn and is inspired by Charlie the Unicorn. A galloping motion is created by the assymetrical mounting of the wheels, which John demonstrated at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011.
Artist Benjamin Carpenter explores interactions between systems in his mechanical kinetic sculpture “Higher”. At Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 he demonstrates the work, consisting of 3 vertically oscillating eyeballs atop springs. The movement is controlled by a single button the user presses which activates the piece’s mechanism.
Recently, I’ve had a chance to meet up with some of the people active in MakeIt Labs in Nashua, NH. This relatively new hackerspace was created a bit more than a year ago, and has undergone some happy changes. Over the summer, I carved out a bit of time to visit their new digs while at a three day workshop for teachers at UMass Lowell.
It’s been exciting to meet members of MakeIt Labs at the Cambridge and Rhode Island Mini Maker Faires, and see their projects shared with people at World Maker Faire where I chose them for an Editors’ Choice award.
With over 200,000 views, Hayden Parker’s YouTube channel has become a popular spot for watching home chemistry demonstrations. Hayden took his show on the road to Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, where he set up a basic chemistry lab, teaching the science of chemistry and wowing passerby with seemingly magic color-changing chemical reactions.
