Derby Maker Faire 2015 Roundup
30 Oct 2015On the 24th October, myself and my friends Ben Dunicliff and Will Bednall attended this year's Derby Mini Maker Faire, where we exhibited an assortment of projects under the title “The Three Makerteers.”
I was showing off my IoT project Socialights. Essentially, it grabs social network data from Gmail, Twitter and Facebook and when the logged in user gets notifications, a corresponding 'beacon' lights up. I was very pleased to finally exhibit it, as I was unable to in the past due to it being a GCSE exam piece. There was plenty of interest from the visitors of the Faire who were eager to see it in action and did so by sending me tweets and emails throughout the day.
Ben was running a sort of 3D printing workshop using his recently constructed Ultimaker printer. Using the very nifty Doodle3D router and a Raspberry Pi combined with the new 7 inch touchscreen, we set up a makeshift kiosk where people could doodle 2D designs on the screen (such as simple polygons, or their name) and watch the printer extrude them. This was particularly popular. Many people actually commented that it was the first time they had ever seen a 3D printer in action, so to be able to create something and take it home must've been a great source of satisfaction for them!
Finally, Will brought his fantastic work-in-progress, DIY pick and place machine with him. At the time of the faire, it only moved around its bed. Nonetheless, it was incredibly cool! Myself and Will hacked together a little script during the faire which moved the head of the machine to random coordinates on the bed. We then attached a pen and watched it create a drawing. Essentially, we made a plotter and the results were pretty damn awesome. Sadly I have no photos of this, so you'll have to take my word for it!
Outside of our stand, there were some really amazing projects on show. In fact, it would've been great if I'd had some more time to look at them all properly! One really cool project was Daniel Bailey's C88 computer.
Using an FPGA, he created an 8 bit, 8 address microcomputer, programmed in the most lo-fi possible way; toggle switches. FPGAs are fairly expensive, so Daniel has also created a JavaScript emulator of his project which is definitely worth a go if you're interested. It's really rather cool!
At the end of the faire, I was able to fulfil my lifelong ambition of riding in a human sized BigTrak. Yes, you heard me correctly. Hitchin Hackspace created a sit-in BigTrak, dubbed the BigHak, which they allowed me to ride in. Cheers guys!
It was brilliant to meet up with fellow makers, show the public what we'd all been working on and see some truly awesome projects. Overall, it was a really successful Maker Faire. A big thank you and round of applause to the Derby Museums team and all the volunteers! I'm very much looking forward to next year's faire.
Photo Credits:
Will's Pick and Place machine - Sheffield Hardware Hackers and Makers
C88 photo - Daniel Bailey