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Minne-Faire ReCap


Minne-Faire

It’s been a busy past few weeks, and I never got to recap my visit to Minne-Faire and The Hack Factory in Minneapolis.

Red Lotus

Our original plan involved Vishal and Matt W. from Milwaukee Makerspace taking Red Lotus to the faire for a demo race of the Power Racing Series. We certainly did bring the car, but with only one other car there, which was non-functional due to a bad charger, we ended up just doing a few demo runs and show it off. I also managed to get it up on two wheels, though without any video proof, which means I’ll have to do it again at some point.

Laser Kaleidoscope

The other thing we brought was my Laser Kaleidoscope, which people seemed to enjoy. (I was also shamelessly asking for votes to get me to Maker Faire.) We had a table but really didn’t fill it with too much due to lack of space to bring anything big. We did give away stickers and buttons and showed some Power Wheels videos. It’s always fun talking to people about the maker movement, so that was cool.

I also got to meet John Baitchal, Adam Wolf, and lots of other awesome TC Maker folks including David and Laura and other members, but I’m not great at remember names. Oh, and just as we were going to leave on Sunday, Steve Hoefer from Grathio Labs. (He was in Iowa so drove up for the faire.)

The Hack Factory was a great space, with great people, and it was awesome checking out all the exhibitors and meeting many of the members. Hopefully some of them can make it down to Milwaukee Makerspace in the future.

Oh, you can find some photos over on Flickr, and yeah, I still have more to edit and upload.

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Lasers to San Mateo

Road to Maker Faire

Remember my Laser Kaleidoscope project? Well, I entered into into the Road to Maker Faire contest, and now I need your vote!

Help send me (and my laser!) to the Bay Area Maker Faire. Use the big bold button below to vote for my project. (You’ll need a Facebook account, but 98.483% of people who use the Internet seem to have one.)

But why should you vote for me? I’d like to explore making this thing into a kit that would teach people about things like basic electronics, lasers, engineering, and fun. I’m hoping a visit to Maker Faire will give me the opportunity to talk to knowledgeable people and learn more about building it into an actual kit you could purchase and build yourself. That’s the plan!

So yeah, vote… vote now, not later. And then ask your friends to vote. Did you vote yet? Thanks! I appreciate it!

Vote Now!

Note: Voting is over! Thanks to everyone who voted for me… now we wait!

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It’s a Minne-Faire!

Minne-Faire

If you’re looking for me this coming weekend, don’t look in Wisconsin, because I’ll be in Minnesota at the Minneapolis Mini Maker Faire commonly known as Minne-Faire!

Since we’ve finally got Red Lotus working, we’ll bring that along for some Power Wheels fun. We’ll try to find some interesting projects from other Milwaukee Makerspace members to show off, and of course I’ve got a bunch or robots and lasers and weird things in my basement I can bring.

You should also look for Joshua of Brown Dog Gadgets, and while you’re at it, check out the Kickstarter campaign he’s running for a Folding USB Solar Cell. (I’m not sure, but it may be the most successful Milwaukee-area Kickstarter campaign yet.)

And hey, if you see me there, be sure to ask for a special prize.

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Banana Pong Time Lapse

Time Lapse

Time Lapse

I built this crazy Banana Pong thing with a MaKey MaKey for the Art Jamboree that Art Milwaukee does… here’s a time lapse video from the event…

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MaKey MaKey Banana Pong

My last MaKey MaKey project was the Apple Piano, which I created for Milwaukee Makerspace‘s participation in a previous Art Jamboree event that Art Milwaukee put on…

The Apple Piano was about sound, as that’s been something I’ve been toying with in Processing for some time. With another Art Jamboree on the horizon, I set my sights on a classic video game… and bananas.

As usual, when I need a nice piece of clip art I head to OpenClipArt.org. This time I found a sweet looking bunch of bananas. I only needed one banana so a quick edit in Inkscape got me what I needed.

Wait, but why did I need these banana images again? Because a game of pong is pretty boring… unless it’s Milwaukee Makerspace Banana Pong! Controlled by real bananas.

I found a nice one-player Pong sketch written in Processing, but it was your typical vertical paddle movement, and I needed a horizontal paddle movement. I ended up rewriting the game a bit to turn it all 90 degrees so the left/right of the banana controller would make more sense.

(Disclaimer: If you know anything about me, you know that I believe in crediting people for their work. We’ve got a problem this time. I went through so many Pong sketches that somehow I lost track of the one I started with. I’ve searched for more than an hour and could not find my starting codebase! If I do find it, I’ll update this post to point to it. On with the story!)

Banana Logo

Once I got the game working, I needed to add some fitting graphics, so what better than a take on the Milwaukee Makerspace logo with… bananas. (We’ve got a history of weird/wacky logos.)

One thing I learned was that bananas are not very tough! If you let people pound on your bananas for a while they get really mushy. I should have brought a lot more spares so I could swap them out more often.

Here’s a few photos from the event:

Banana Pong Player

Pong Player

Pong Player

Pong Player

Pong Player

Pong Player

Update: The code is available.