Maker Faire 2011 (Detroit, MI)

Maker Faire 2011, Detroit, MI (actually Dearborn)

I finally went to Maker Faire!  What a place! Its like a science, tech, art, show for everyone.  People of all different interests, as well as we more nerdy-types, get to bring in our projects to show off!  Seeing the creative projects from so many people really was quite inspiring.  I was also happy to see kids participating in the interactive projects, opening the doors to future creativity so to speak.

Here is a direct link to my official Maker Faire entry which was the modified RC that I detailed in my previous post [link to post.]  The car has had many modifications since then and can now has an Android cell phone that allows the car to be driven over WiFi via a PC or even another cell phone.  If driven by cell phone then the car interprets the transmitted values for the "client" phone's accellerometer.  I also brought my most recent Graphical Full Color Persistence of Vision project and my MP3 project which I will write full blogs about in the future.

Make gave each presenter 2 extra wrist bands so that you can bring assistants and they also provided two complementary tickets for other people.  Because I had someone to watch over my table, we all were able to still check out Maker Faire ourselves.  This was a very large event and you really need a good portion of a day to check everything out.  All in all, this was a good experience, one that I will definitely repeat at the next local Maker Faire.

Here are a few pictures of the projects that I brought to display and discuss at Maker Faire

RC Car that has been modified to be controlled over WiFi with an Android cell phone as well as stream back a video feed.		This is an improved version of the RC Car that I posted about in the blog post previous to this one.  The RC Car has been improved to allow control of it via WiFi which is provided by the attached cell phone in the front.  In addition to the WiFi control, the phone uses the Android IP Webcam program to display a live feed from the cell phone camera.  Control of the car was accomplished by using a Telnet program such as Putty.
This Persistence of Vision project displays full color graphics, not just text.		This is a Graphical Persistence of Vision display.  It uses 16 RGB LEDs to display full color, 24-bit bitmap files which were created using the MS Paint tool. This is a sample of the graphical ability of my P.O.V. display.  I mounted it to my ceiling fan.
This MP3 player reads data from an SD card and plays the sound through the attached speakers.		This is my MP3 player project.  It plays MP3 files that are read from an SD card.  It can be controlled with normal hardware buttons as well as my TV remote control.

Links / References:


RC Car Replacement Remote
http://makerfaire.com/pub/e/6343

IPWebcam - by Pas
http://www.appbrain.com/app/ip-webcam/com.pas.webcam

Android Scripting
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/
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