What? Maker Faire Derby

        

   

   

    

I recently exhibited at Derby’s first maker faire, joining my mate Simon Jelley to show off a few of our projects. First challenge was what should we take? Simon and I both had many unfinished projects on the go when we first heard about the Faire (mid March), so it served as good motivation to focus on a few of them and get them finished. When we filled in the entry form in April, we had settled on, for me: my PrintrBot, (ordered in February) and my balancing robot (balancing, but no body work (youtube video)), from Simon: Peggy based station clock (working but didn’t show the right time), live magic eye on an old tv using data from a Kinect (roughly working on a pc at the time), high performance night vision (working but shoddily housed) and a Nixie clock (unstarted). In the end my printer didn’t arrive in time (and still hasn’t arrived), I barely got the balancing robot finished, Simon managed to make a stand for the Peggy but didn’t fix the timing error, got the magic eye working on an 80s tv (youtube video), didn’t manage to rehouse the night vision and couldn’t get his clock working, although he did get a cool Nixie tube name badge working. To replace the Printrbot and add a bit of interest to our stand we built a Kelvin’s Thunderstorm over a couple of evenings at work (youtube video of it working) (wikipedia explanation).

Overall event:

What worked:

+ The behind the scenes tour and was an interesting addition for exhibiting makers

+ The old Silk mill was a pleasant, stimulating space to display in

+ Derby city centre was a good location with the canal, shops and grassy area

+ The event staff were cheery and helpful

What didn’t:

- It was a shame the event was so small, it didn’t take long to look at all the exhibits

- There was no café/food available on site (other than crisps/muffins)

Our stand

What worked:

+ The moving/cute robot was a great attraction for kids

+ The small labels we added to each exhibit looked good and helped people get them

+ We had a wide variety of stuff on show

+ We had an average quality of finish compared to other projects on display

+ having 3 people supporting the stand helped enormously

+ Having a bowl of jelly and marshmallows J

What didn’t:

-  Generally our projects required too much explanation for the general public to understand

- Some of them were quite high maintenance, requiring constant supervision (robot & thunderstorm)

- In general they were not very interactive (other than the robot turning to face people

- Not having everything working was disappointing for us but most people didn’t get what any of it was for anyway!

- The hardworking, late night, last minute push was very demanding and left me exhausted

What’s next:

We’ve applied for Brighton Maker Faire

Finish/refine the projects

Get the PrintrBot working, once it arrives