DIY drones are the rage! Chris flew a quadcopter off the stage, and entertained droves of questions from how much weight the copters can carry, to FAA regulations, and announced that they would have a new ARM-based APM (Ardu Pilot Mega) by Maker Faire New York.

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It's that time again -- announcing the 2012 season of The Makeys, our way of celebrating mainstream companies that express some aspect of the maker spirit in the products. Nominate your favorites!

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Maker Faire Bay Area opened Saturday with an excited rush of the gates. Here are some of the favorite things I saw from the robotic orchestra to Christian Ristow’s metal face and the lock picking workshop organized by Christina Pei. There’s a solar oven popping popcorn and a village made from masking tape with a [...]

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Jasper Hugunin has always wanted to fly, and today on the Innovation Stage he got a shot courtesy of Aero’s flight simulator rig. The wings leverage Wiimotes to give the user a pretty awesome virtual experience of how an albatross gets around. Aero will be going from 10-10:45 on the Innovation Stage, so get here [...]

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If you’re walking around Maker Faire you may see a woman skating around with a strange looking instrument. That’s maker extraordinaire Jeri Ellsworth with her  bass guitar made out of a Commodore 64. And did I mention she’s playing it while on roller skates? That’s talent!

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Conor Landenberger will be spending most of Saturday building a bamboo bike in the TechShop Pavilion. Stop by and say hello if you’re in the Expo Hall!

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While walking around the Maker Faire grounds this morning I took a quick census all of the 3D printers. All told I saw 55 3D printers on the fairgrounds, 23 of which were unique designs. That’s not including the CNC machines or the stock of three dozen or so Replicator, Up! printers, and Printrbots for [...]

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IKEA for robots – lowest cost functional robots for everyone. So cute. Support them on kickstarter!

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Eeee! Making and space!

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Earlier today Gareth had the idea that we should run an image gallery of the great clothes worn by people who come to Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 (taking place now). So Gar and I went out and snapped some photos of folks wearing interesting outfits. We’ll post another gallery later, because there are so [...]

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Mike Hatalski will be exhibiting his “ORD-ish Bot” 3D Printer at the Maker Faire this weekend. Mike describes how he got into printer building: I was about to start ordering the parts for a MendelMax build when I saw a posting by Bard Dring about a prototype printer he built using MakerSlide. I was lucky [...]

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Rob Faludi, author of Building Wireless Sensor Networks, is bringing some very cool bots to Digi’s Maker Faire Bay Area Booth: Say hello to Troy and Abed! They’re Digi International’s brand-new XBee-enabled SumoBots and they’re ready to begin training for their debut at Bay Area Maker Faire 2012. They’ll be battling it out in the [...]

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Here’s Macetech’s prototype for a cool pair of LED shades! I can’t wait to get my own pair. It’s a wearable Arduino, so you can hack it to do whatever you want. Garrett Mace says it will be a while before I can buy my own.

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As part of their sponsorship with with Maker Faire, Chevy offered to loan us a Volt for a week leading up to the Faire. When I heard about this, I jumped at the opportunity to review it. So, here’s the first MAKE car review. Hybrid Chevy doesn’t bill the Volt as a hybrid, but rather [...]

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Young makers astound with an ambitious Viper flight simulator project for Maker Faire.

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Delta Faucet asked us to do something with them and their touch-faucet technology. Of course, our first thought was: Tell us how it works. We interviewed Bob Rodenbeck, director of research and development, and here’s some of what he had to say. -Gareth Make: Can you first give us an overview of the faucet itself? [...]

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ITP student Rose Schlossberg attached dental mirrors to an armature on a head strap to make the user able to stare at his/her own eyes. As Rose puts it, "fall in love with yourself all over again." It's an interesting project, but I wouldn't recommend trying to walk around with your eyes trained upon your own eyes.

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If you're headed to Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend, make sure you don't forget the essentials!

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Need a way to protect your wares from sneaky snoops? With some light soldering to a basic recording module, a small assortment of tools and components, some clothespin hacking (yes, seriously), and other parts you probably already have around the house, you can make your own Talking Booby Trap! Like all ambushes, you arm and [...]

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NYC Resistor’s Nick Vermeer is working on conductive ink: I’ve recently had success in making a conductive ink using a fine copper powder suspended in an acrylic airbrush medium. This paper on conductive epoxies was really the key to getting this ink working. The paper shows that etching the metal filler slightly before mixing it [...]

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What do you get when you cross a hoverboard and a DeLorean? A Delorean hovercraft, of course! San Francisco grad student Matthew Riese has built just that.

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Honey, I Shrunk the Maker I built this 6x larger than real life, fully functional Arduino GRANDE. Why? There was talk among the Make: editors about how Arduino is really big at Maker Faire, and I thought, why not make it even bigger? Literally. After modeling it in 3D software, drafting it for laser cutting, [...]

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Our centerpiece sculpture is Brollyflock by Flux. It looks beautiful all lit up at dusk.

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Two pieces new to Maker Faire Bay this weekend area will be Light Trikes and Crowd Connect. The team from Frog made digital games physical and physical games digital. They explain the hardware and software behind their epic builds. Come play at Maker Faire Bay Area, this weekend, May 19th and 20th.

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Once upon a time, there were two serpents, Jormungand (Midgard) and Julunggul (Rainbow), who slithered between two worlds, “the old world that needed and revered them and the present which has shunned such monsters as fears metamorphosed into mythical form.” Dark and with the power of fire, Jormungand winds it way through the landscape.

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Getting the motorized mushroom ready for action!

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Here are crates of gear ready to be picked up by Maker Faire station managers. Gareth and I are coveting the black toolboxes.

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ArcAttack! does some amazing experiments with kids at Maker Education Day today.

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There will be a lot of people showing off their 3D printers at the Bay Area Maker Faire this weekend, including Jeffrey Lipton representing Cornell’s venerable Fab@Home project. We previously posted about some of the food printing exploits of the Cornell Creative Machines Lab on the CRAFT blog last year. Food is just one application [...]

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Tested takes you inside Adam Savage’s man cave where he keeps amazing movie props and collectibles, as well as works on his own projects. Today, Adam tells the story of his Zorg Industries ZF-1 replica from The Fifth Element, which he’s been working on for over 13 years.

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Thomas Poulsom’s British Bird Series explores the loveliness of the British ornithological scene, in all the glory of Lego! Even cooler, you can help these models become an official Lego model through the magic of Lego’s Cuusoo platform, where amateur builders can post models, and those creations which receive enough votes actually get m

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The first MAKE Hardware Innovation Workshop wrapped up this evening. Featuring over 30 of the most well-known innovators in the MAKE space, the event found a perfect home in the storied garden-roofed research facilities at PARC Xerox. As one of the speakers commented, this was probably the first time that all of these amazing alpha [...]

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We’re merely two days out from Maker Faire Bay Area, the Greatest Show and Tell on Earth, with over 700 makers of all stripes coming out to the San Mateo Fairgrounds to show what they’ve made. One thing all these folks have in common is their immense sense of passion for whatever it is they [...]

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The wooden pattern of a ship propeller is used to create a mold in the foundry. Huge! [thanks, Adon!]

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There will be a lot of people showing off their 3D printers at the Bay Area Maker Faire this weekend; the nifty little Up! printer will be there as well, printing gnomes, cathedrals and whatnot. If you make 3D Printers (or know someone) who plans to attend, feel free to drop me a line at [...]

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Time to Change is a towering 13' tall clock made from reclaimed bicycle frames and mechanics, by artist-maker Gregory Degouveia.

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When I visited the Open Source Ecology farm in Missouri earlier this year, I met an impressive young Canadian named Yoonseo Kang. I wasn’t quite expecting to meet an 18-year-old who would tell me that “the heart of economic democracy is decentralized productive power spread throughout the populace.” Kang had finished high school in Mississauga

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Ben Light has really been getting into working with the CNC machine, and it shows with his latest creation the Turn Table Lamp. The user simply spins this plywood lamp to adjust the brightness. At first I thought there were some electronics involved to achieve this, but it's actually done with a pair of polarizing lenses -- a simple technique that y

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I’m sure you’ll see more than a few MakerBot Replicators when you come to the Bay Area Maker Faire this weekend. You’ll kick yourself later if you don’t check out their Robot Petting Zoo. If you make 3D Printers and will be at the Maker Faire, feel free to drop me a line at swallace@oreilly.com.

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