It’s National Robotics Week, and for us that means RoboGames!

BarBot 2011 gave us just a taste of what is to come this weekend at the huge international robotics competition in San Mateo. We rounded up some video links of Drink Making Unit 2.0:

• Singularity Hub Drinks at BarBot 2011 by singularityhub (from 2:40 to the end)
• Drink Making Unit 2.0 at BarBot 2011 by partyrobotics
• EMSL’s Drink Making Unit 2.0 from k0re on flickr

Lots of the BarBot partygoers posted photos to flickr too, including a huge set from Spaceman Sam and lots more from ekai, nicolecwong, ninaviss, hackmancoltaire, k0re, shifzr and amyr_81.

We’ll be at RoboGames all weekend, participating in the symposium and selling a few choice kits and components. So get your tickets now! If you’re not in the bay area check the National Robotics Week event listingsto find an event near you.

Photo from BarBot 2011 by Samuel Coniglio.

We just got word that the Maker Faire folks will be exhibiting at Yuri’s Night Education Day tomorrow at NASA Ames! We’ll be bringing a few projects to show off for part of the day to the kids and educators who will be attending. Yuri’s Night is an annual worldwide party to celebrate Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space. This year is the 50th anniversary. Even if you’re not in one of the classes attending the Bay Area Eduction Day, you can check the list of events to see if there’s one happening near you or register your own event.

We’re heading to dorkbotSF on Wednesday, November 17 with the Egg-Bot in tow. It looks like it will an interesting lineup of speakers. Hope to see you there!

First up: the last Electronics Flea Market of the year is tomorrow, Saturday, October 9 in the morning at De Anza. We’ll be there, and if you’re anywhere near here, you should be, too!

Coming up soon: Combots Cup V at the San Mateo Event Center on Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 24. Combots is the annual heavyweight robot combat championship.

“This event highlights the best combat robot teams in America and their 220 pound flame-throwing, blade-spinning, titanium shearing robots of destruction! Whether you’re a sports fan or techno geek, ComBots puts on the best robot events in the world! If you missed seeing fighting robots at Maker Faire this year, or are longing for RoboGames, here’s your chance to see them again.”

We’re thrilled to announce that ComBots is offering EMSL readers a 20% discount on ticket prices (adults normally $20, kids $15). Coupon is valid for advance ticket purchases until Oct 20th. Buy tickets here and use the coupon code EMSL-1337 for your discount when you check-out!

We’ll be there all day on Saturday, so come say hi!

That same weekend: East Bay Mini-Maker Faire is on Sunday, October 24 at the Park Day School in Oakland. We’ll be bringing our Egg-Bots and showing off a few of their Halloween related applications.

We hope to see you there!

Robogames 2006 photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under cc-by-nc license.

We’re out here in Queens for Maker Faire NY 2010, at the New York Hall of Science– which is also the former 1964-65 World’s Fair grounds. Amazing location, and it’s amazing to see everything coming together for this weekend.

You can see more pictures from today in this photo set. We’ll hope to see you there this weekend as well!

We’re very excited to be attending and sponsoring the Open Hardware Summit on September 23 at the New York Hall of Science. The schedule has a fantastic line-up of open hardware stars, and we’re looking forward to participating in this groundbreaking event.

At the very same location on September 25 and 26, we’ll be showing off Eggbot and LED Sensor Circuits at Maker Faire New York. The Maker Faire PDF guide is up now–we’ll be in Zone A, inside NYSCI. The schedule has also been posted, along with the list of makers. We’ll have some extra Maker Faire tickets to give away, but we’re not sure how many yet. Follow @EMSL on twitter where we’ll announce giveaway details when we have them. We hope to see you there!

We are helping to sponsor the 2010 Open Hardware Summit, which is happening next month, Thursday September 23, at the New York Hall of Science. That’s two days before, and at the same location as, Maker Faire NY.

The summit agenda has just been posted: it’s a full day of talks and discussions about open source hardware, its meaning and its implications. I’ll be part of the panel discussing open hardware licenses and norms which will also be taking questions online– so you can participate even if you can’t make it to the event.

Tickets for the event are on sale now and include a 1-day pass to Maker Faire. We’ll hope to see you there!

Maker Faire Detroit was a blast! It was held at The Henry Ford, which is a museum worth visiting in its own right. It is an amazing place we didn’t get to see nearly enough of and would love to go back and visit again.

In addition to providing a history of American manufacturing and a showcase of amazing vehicles, they have Mold-A-Rama machines!

As usual, one of the most exciting things about Maker Faire for us was meeting and talking with other makers. We got to talk to the participants in an aluminum casting demonstration, who were using foam that was carved onsite with a CNC router.

We also really enjoyed our neighbors at the faire with the Note Grinder, a machine that read player piano rolls optically and used door lock actuators to press the keys on a synth keyboard. We were impressed with how pleasant it was to listen to (even for two days straight!) especially with the rhythm accompaniment provided by the actuator motors.

The fine folks at Context Furniture were passionate about the renaissance of craftsmanship in Detroit and had great stories of reclaimed buildings.

We were tickled to see several Evil Mad Science kits integrated into Maker Faire projects: a Peggy 2 being used as a readerboard, Wes and Don‘s 3D POV display with a Peggy 2LE, and Matt Mets’ Meggy Jr Sr.

Our Eggbots performed like champs, and we even tried out engraving on glass holiday ornaments during the faire. The engraver scratched away the paint on the surface, and as you can see in the top picture, they were beautiful when lit from within by an LED.

We didn’t come close to seeing everything, but we’ve put pictures of some of what we saw in a set on flickr.

We hope to see you at Maker Faire New York!

This week we’re getting ready for our big trip to Maker Faire Detroit 2010, where we’ll be demonstrating the Egg-Bot, our forthcoming spherical-coordinate drawing robot, which we’re gearing up to release later this summer.

Our last Egg-Bot outing was to the California state fair a couple of weeks ago, where we had a blast showing off our machine, drawing on light bulbs and (yes) eggs:

What else is going on at Maker Faire? Well, lots– it’s hard to know where to begin –but for one thing Wes and Don told us about their cool project– a low-resolution 3D volumetric display based on a Peggy 2LE, rotated on a big box fan.

Embedded youtube video follows:

For those of you who can make it to the Henry Ford this weekend, we’ll certainly hope to see you there. (And further off and further away, we’re planning to be at Maker Faire NY in September.)

Yes, we’re venturing out of the lab:

Saturday, July 17, we’ll be demonstrating Egg-Bot at the California State Fair in Sacramento. We’ll be in the Industrial & Technology Education building.

Sunday, July 18, we’ll be taking Tabletop Pong (and maybe Tennis for Two) to California Extreme in Santa Clara, CA. California Extreme is an event with a terribly vague name that is probably your only chance to play Gauntlet, Orbiter-1, and Hyperball on free-play!

July 31-August 1, we’ll be in Detroit, MI at Maker Faire with Bruce Shapiro and Egg-Bot.

We hope to see you there!

EggBot photo from San Mateo Maker Faire 2010 by madichan (licensed under cc by-nc).