Lisa Pongrace’s cupcake cars are powered by electric motors, and evolved from a costume idea for Burning Man. After building the first prototype, her friends wanted their own mobile muffins and helped create a fleet of confectionery art cars, now known as Acme Muffineering.
The Uira Engine is a part of the guts from the Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship, which now resides in San Francisco’s Embarcadero. For Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, the engine was displayed by its designer, Alan Rorie. The engine consists of a series of cylinders that slowly rotate while emitting capacitive discharge that’s pleasing to the eye. Parts of this were handmade as well as produced from a CNC, and provided an important visual component to the rocket ship.
Jon Cox shows the Nor Cal Mars Rover Project at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011. This group of enthusiasts is dedicated to furthering the cause of making manned missions to Mars with the possibility of colonization in the future. NASA approached the group to design and build a prototype for a future Mars mission.
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The R2D2 Builder’s Club brings one of the world’s most beloved fictional robots to life. Steve Simmons and his hobby roboticist club use fabrication, programming, and remote controls to build exact replicas of R2D2. Their R2’s are quirky friends who roamed Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 delighting everyone they encountered.
Randy Sarafan started Simple Bots on a bet. A coworker wanted a simple introduction to robotics, so Randy set out to prove that he could build a functioning robot in ten minutes. This was the impetus for a family of bots shown at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 that can be easily made from a variety of parts that are on hand for the average DIY enthusiast.
David Simpson was contacted by MAKE to create a spying device for MAKE Volume 16, so he came up with the Bug-In-A-Book project, a hacked together wireless listening device embedded in a hollowed out book. As Simpson explains at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, a project using scavenged technology has flowered into a product with a kit that DIY folks can build and experience for themselves.
Dawei Lin studies DNA at UC, but also started building Lego models of DNA as a teaching tool for his young daughter. At Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 he displays the various DNA models he’s made, while explaining that the act of construction can often be the most valuable learning tool for many different topics.
