The Makerspace program is a joint effort by O’Reilly’s Make division and Otherlab to put dedicated space and tools for hands-on making into high schools. They describe their aims on their about page:

By creating makerspaces in an educational context, students can have access to tools and equipment that they might not have otherwise; they can collaborate on projects that are driven by their own interests, and by doing so, develop the capacity and confidence to innovate. We see making as a gateway to deeper engagement in science and engineering but also art and design.

On Monday, September 10, we’ll be attending the Makerspace launch event at the College of San Mateo. We’ll be demoing a few kits and are excited to have the opportunity to meet educators interested in bringing making into the classroom. If you’ll be attending, please stop by our table and say hi!

Our friends over at ITP are putting on a brand new event at Maker Faire NY called Nerdy Derby. It’s like Pinewood Derby racing, but without any pesky rules*. They’ve listed track specs on their site, so check ‘em out and bring your own car to race, or build one on-site at their workshop. They’ll be giving out prizes in several categories, including “The Underdog,” “The Tricked Out,” “The Delicious” (for edible entries), “The Not-So-Pretty” and “The King of the Hill.” Watch their introductory video embedded above or click over to see it on Vimeo. We’re looking forward to checking out these races! We might even have to enter a car of our own…

*The Nerdy Derby site states: “While there are technically no rules for the competition, we ask that participants exercise common sense when it comes to safety.” Gotta love a common sense approach!

This Saturday, May 12, is the next Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market, at De Anza College in Cupertino. The market starts before dawn (for the iron hard-core) and runs until noon.

We’ve found some amazing stuff at this event, so if you’re in the area it’s definitely worth checking out.

The 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire will take place May 19 and 20— just 9 days away — in San Mateo, California.
This is the big Maker Faire, and the best. If you’ve never been to Maker Faire, or if you’ve only been to one of the little ones, it’s an experience not to be missed.

Today (Wednesday, May 9) is the last day to buy advance discount tickets for Maker Faire. If you don’t have your tickets yet, this is a great time to get them.

This year we will again be bringing the Giant Digi-Comp II— our supersized binary digital mechanical computer —to Maker Faire. You can read all about the Giant Digi-Comp II here and see a video demonstration of it here. We will also be doing an Egg-Bot demonstration in the Maker Shed.

Finally, we’ll also be participating in Maker Faire Education Day (Thursday, May 17, for K-12 students).

We hope to see you there!

Guayaquil (often pronounced as “Gwy-a-keel”) is the largest city in Ecuador. It’s a sprawling metropolis of some 4 million people, located just south of the equator and just inland from the pacific ocean.

In downtown Guayaquil, next to a little cathedral, an unassuming city park block features trees and benches, grassy areas behind knee-high fences, coblestone walkways, and gaggles of kids playing with their families. And also, green iguanas. Hundreds of green iguanas.

While formally known as Parque Seminario (Seminary Park– again, it’s next to the little cathedral), the park is better known to the locals as Parque de Las Iguanas, or Iguana Park, and the resident population of iguanas is as people-friendly as they come. The iguanas are not kept behind fences or cages; they roam freely and seem to live in the park entirely by choice. (Of course iguanas are native to the region, and the surrounding city streets are a lot less critter-friendly than the park.) Continue reading →

National Robotics Week is April 7-15 this year, and there are tons of activities happening to help you celebrate. Locally, Instructables is hosting a Robot Block Party at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco on April 9, and Stanford is hosting another on April 11. You can search the event listing for an event near you.

The FIRST robotics regional competitions are continuing this weekend, followed by district championships and championships. Many of the FIRST events are being webcast, so you don’t even have to leave your home to watch, although robotics events are way more fun in person.

All of those events will just be getting you warmed up for RoboGames in San Mateo April 20-22. RoboGames has a competition for almost every type of robot: combat robots, fire-fighters, LEGO bots, hockey bots, walking humanoids, soccer bots, sumo bots, and even androids that do kung-fu. They will also be having a symposium again this year, with speakers on a wide range of robotics related topics. You can get your advance tickets now.

We spent the day yesterday in the pits with the teams participating in the 2012 Silicon Valley Regional FIRST Competition and brought back a whole heap of pictures. Thursday is fix, check and test day at the regional competitions. Each robot has been sealed up since the end of the build season and the teams bring them out and get them certified for competition and run them through practice matches.

The pits were extremely busy for most of the day, getting the robots ready for their practice rounds and repairing them afterwards. Team Gatorbotics was one of several local all girls teams. There were teams present from Mexico, Brazil, and several US states.

Safety was emphasized at all times, and no one was allowed in the pits without safety glasses. Volunteers checked each team’s safety plan and made sure they had all the required safety equipment and information.

Some pits were more organized than others. Team 115, Monta Vista Robotics had a beautiful hinged tool cabinet and storage rack with interior lighting. Tools were loaned freely between teams, and whiteboards were used to keep track of loaner tools and practice match schedules.

Robots were made from all kinds of materials and with all kinds of tools. Waterjets, CNC routers, laser cutters, mills, lathes, bandsaws, drill presses, welders, soldering irons and every imaginable hand tool were used to shape plywood, steel, aluminum, PVC, polycarbonate, acrylic, and rubber. The Cheesy Poofs had some of their powder coated spare parts on display.

There was a mobile machine shop just outside the pit area. The teams could bring their materials over and have them machined to their specifications. The operator lamented that there aren’t enough volunteer machinists to help out with this service.

Some teams put a lot of effort into decorating their robots. When not in autonomous mode, the robots were controlled wirelessly through a D-link router, which was a popular place to put stickers.

The logo for the Space Cookies looked great on their router. They were another of the all-girl teams.

Seeing the robots put through their paces in the practice matches was good fun. They’re competing Friday and Saturday at San Jose State University, so go and check them out! There are more regional competitions before the championships at the end of April, so check to see if there is one near you. You can also see many more pictures of the robots in our flickr set here.

BarBot 2012 was a blast! Drink Making Unit 2.0 behaved like a champ, as usual. Our friends over at Make have posted some pictures from Friday and more pictures and video from Saturday. Thanks to all the people and robots who came out for the fun!

Photo credit: Kipp Bradford

This Friday and Saturday we’ll be at BarBot 2012 with Drink Making Unit 2.0.
The event is March 2-3, 8 pm to 12 am at PariSoma and is for ages 21+. Get your advance tickets soon as they are nearly sold out!

This Saturday, we’ll be at the Exploratorium participating in the Open Make event focused on the theme “Time.” We had a great time when we participated in the very first Open Make event, and are glad to see the program continuing with a great lineup of themes this year. This time, we’ll be bringing several clock and time related projects.

The event runs from 10 am to 2 pm, Saturday, February 18, and will feature workshops, maker displays, and Dale Dougherty interviewing several makers on their time related projects. We hope to see you there!