Meet the Makers
Robot spiders, Bluetooth bicycles, biometric fashion, and so much more at the world’s greatest show and tell.
by Goli Mohammadi
More than 145,00 people descended on the tenth annual Maker Faire Bay Area to celebrate the spirit of DIY creativity, ingenuity, creativity, and sheer fun. The maker mindset dovetails with Intel’s long history of fostering innovation from the inside out so it’s no surprise that many of the amazing projects at the Faire were powered by Intel® technology like the Intel® Edison module and Intel® Galileo development board. Below is a selection of fantastic projects from Maker Faire that feature Intel technology. Congratulations to all of the inspiring makers who delighted the crowds all weekend long!
Thud Rumble
When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, there’s no way he could have foreseen how pioneering turntablists Richard “DJ Qbert” Quitevis and Ritche “Yogafrog” Desuasido would transform it into a full-fledged musical instrument. In 1996, the two artists founded Thud Rumble, a media company whose offerings include Qbert’s Skratch University as well as a number of innovative tech tools for DJs.
Desuasido notes that the direct-drive turntable is one of the only pieces of technology that hasn’t changed since it’s inception in 1977. What’s different today is the pervasiveness of laptops in DJing. He says, “You go to a nightclub or a festival and you always see the DJ on their laptop, like they’re on Facebook or something.” Back in the day there was a simplicity and playfulness that is lost with today’s high tech gear.
Thud Rumble set out to bring DJs back to their original instruments with the help of the Intel Edison module. He adds, “We put the Intel Edison module in every possible piece of DJ equipment that we would use, like a turntable, a drum machine, a synthesizer keyboard, and the mixer.” The result is a plug-and-play setup where a child can walk up and immediately begin experimenting with the art of scratching. And that’s exactly what they did at Maker Faire, in droves. “It’s beautiful to see the spark in all the kids eyes when they see what we’ve built for them.”
Denny Bike
Originally built for non-profit group Oregon Manifest’s Bike Design Project contest, the Denny was a collaboration between the Seattle-based design firm Teague and Sizemore Bicycles. Hailed as the commuter bike of the future, their design took the prize and will be produced commercially by Fuji Bicycles. The bike is comprised of a number of different systems, from the Arduino that runs the lighting system to Bluetooth RFduino used to lock and unlock the handlebars that double as a bike lock. The Intel Edison module acts as the integration hub that ties all the systems together. With Intel Edison Bluetooth and wi-fi capabilities, the rider can remotely unlock the bike, turn on the lights, and gather trip data, all using a smartphone.
“Teague is a design company and almost everything we do is under NDA, so this was a really important piece for us,” says Warren Schramm, technical director at Teague. “It gives something back to the community: it’s about helping save the environment, it’s about keeping people fit, and we’re really excited about it. This is a passion project for us. We’re all avid cyclists, so this is something we really wanted to share with people.”
Two Bit Circus
Housed in Los Angeles’ Brewery Art complex, which used to be the Edison Electric steam power plant in the early 1990s, a tight-knit group of engineers, artists, inventors, developers, and performers are spreading the gospel of STEAM education. They go by the name of the Two Bit Circus, and they came to Maker Faire bearing custom-built toys that teach kids the wonders of science and engineering in the most irresistible ways. Their Hexacade, which runs on the Intel® NUC, features five different games and had a steady stream of kids around it all weekend. Nearby, their Intel Edison module-fueled game, Kings, accommodated 14 players at a time, each equipped with a wobbly LED-lit controller that they’re tasked with keeping as steady as possible.
By tapping into things that kids are already really excited about, co-founder Eric Gradman explains, “we realized we have an opportunity to use fun as a way of sharing the joy of engineering.” That joy was clearly conveyed judging from the squeals emanating from their booth. Gradman smiles and adds, “The most notable reaction from kids is them screaming at a frequency too high for me to hear. We’ve been getting a lot of that from them today.”
Anouk Wipprecht
Dutch tech couture artist Anouk Wipprecht has become known for her stunningly futuristic designs, many of which touch on explorations of personal space and biofeedback. Her site boldly asks, “What does fashion lack? Microcontrollers.”
In 2012, Wipprecht unveiled the first version of her Spider Dress, which has black robotic spider legs on the shoulders that react to movements in the environment. At this year’s Maker Faire, she shared Spider Dress 2.0, complete with its fully 3D-printed bodice reminiscent of an H.R. Geiger painting.
Wipprecht explained the difference between the versions: “This version is based on Intel Edison technology so it has better processing power. In my last design, it had latency, so if you walked up to it, the mechanical limbs were not reacting as fast. But now, it’s really on the split-second; you walk up to it and it’s reacting, so that’s a big difference. Also, I connected a respiratory sensor so it’s also controlled by my breathing.”
If someone walks up to the wearer quickly, the proximity sensors on the dress trigger the spider legs to react aggressively. Wipprecht has worked in 12 states of behavior for the legs, so the animations are always fresh.
She is currently working on new designs that go beyond reacting to the environment and further leverage biofeedback reflective of stress on the body, like EEG signals, muscle contractions, and heartbeats.
“The Intel Edison module processes all of that super quickly and really well, so for that reason I like to use it for the more complex designs that I’m creating,” Wipprecht says.
Robodub
Out to revolutionize gaming through the use of intelligently designed hardware and live action, the team of engineers behind Robodub brought their vision to life in an intense four-month period of late nights and multiple iterations. Inspired by the video game World of Tanks, they wanted to create a real-world version. Their tanks feature 3D-printed bodies, mounted cameras and IR emitters, omnidirectional wheels, and the Intel Edison module.
One of the team’s lead engineers, Hemant Tanwar, recalls, “When we initially wanted to start this project, we went through many different kinds of microcontrollers. Since Intel has this powerful microcontroller that uses Linux, where we can go down to the C programs and control it better. That’s what motivated us to use the Intel Edison module.” Their booth was constantly surrounded by a crowd at least two deep all around. Team member Nick Stacey explains, “We wanted to make sure we got this game and these robots in the hands of as many people as possible. We wanted them to feel the real gaming. We’ve had people lined up to grab a hold of the stick and go toe-to-toe with the CEO [Parminder Devsi] all weekend long.”
Hackster.io DeLorean
While the DeLorean has become synonymous with 1985 blockbuster film Back to the Future, a lesser-known fact is that it has an amazingly comprehensive owner’s manual, which makes it a perfect platform for makers to mod. That explains why folks at Hackster.io, the world’s largest hardware creation community, decided to buy one as a focal point for the hacker series they’re running across the U.S. The tour, which involves visiting 12 cities in four months, is aptly named Hack to the Future.
At each location, the community has added Intel Edison module-based mods to the iconic vehicle, including the Hack to the Future radio, which you tune by year instead of frequency, and the flux capacitor with the lightning sensor that flashes LEDs on the vehicle whenever it detects a strike. Hackster.io’s hacker advocate Alex Glowaski notes, “The Intel Edison technology is one of the most popular platforms at our hackathons. It’s so versatile.”
Another clever mod is the automatic starter, a button that triggers a countdown from 10 followed by an audio track of Doc Brown saying, “When this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious sh*t.” As for other nods to the movie version of the vehicle, it does shoot flames out of the back, but the time travelling capabilities have yet to be perfected. Glowaski says for now, “It’s constantly travelling forward, in one axis of time.”
Hexapods
Originally developed as a class project by University of Arizona robotics PhD student Matt Bunting, the fluid motion of the robotic spiders known as the Hexapods stopped Maker Faire attendees in their tracks. While Bunting’s original design featured an Intel® Atom™ processor-based PC, the newest version swaps that out for the Edison, dropping the weight of the robot’s brain from two pounds to a mere few ounces. With the additional substitution of 3D printed body parts and less expensive motors than the industrial ones first used, the Hexapods went from costing roughly $5000 each to $500.
If sparking imaginations was this team’s goal, they succeeded. As the Hexapods danced and gyrated for fairgoers, project engineer and synthesizer Suresh Golwalkar noted, “First, when people are walking by, they just stop, thinking, What’s that creepy thing doing? So then they walk closer and soon there’s a big grin on their faces. They pull out their cellphones and start taking pictures. And then they ask each other, ‘How did they do this?’”
Sprout
Touted as “the world’s first immersive computer,” Sprout by HP is out to create possibilities in the realm of “blended reality.” With a 3D camera, touchscreens on two axes, and a projector, the system, powered by the Intel® Core™ i7 processor, is intended to let the creative process flow seamlessly from 2D to 3D. And fittingly, at HP’s Maker Faire display, there was no product demo or tech spec slinging. Instead, there were three stations set up to let makers do their thing. The 3D station invited attendees to place any object on the Touch Mat and do a 3D scan of it. They also showed how after a quick process, scanned objects could be printed on a nearby 3D printer. HP’s Sheau-Lan Reed said they were curious to see what makers would do with Sprout at the Faire. They saw many heads, hands, and stuffed animals scanned, and she notes, “3D seems highly technical, but we’ve been finding that it’s really personal.”
An adjacent station featured an origami program that sequentially showed the fold steps on the vertical touchscreen as well as projecting them onto the Touch Mat, where users could line up paper with the projection and follow along. The last station was running their beta Light Stencil app, and makers could choose a design, project it onto the material of their choice (T-shirt, wood, masks), and trace. As Reed said, “Maker Faire is the one event where people really understand and appreciate a beta app or work in progress.” Needless to say, all the stations were consistently filled with makers young and old. Reed was not surprised and noted, “The maker movement is blended reality incarnate.”
Goli Mohammadi is a writer and editor who worked on the first 40 issues of MAKE magazine.
Photography by Jason Henry
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