Maker Faire festivals are a beautiful showcase of what modern technology makes possible. The whole maker world feels like a big playground for both kids and adults. It’s incredible to think about what anyone can create at home today, on a small budget, using programmable controllers and online resources. And there’s no need to be especially handy anymore—you can leave most of the work to 3D printers or home CNC machines.
Maker Faire is a celebration of tinkerers, inventors, makers and creators of all age groups who share a curiosity, enthusiasm and love of technology. Amateurs and professionals, students, community members, crafters, manufacturers and vendors come together to discuss what they’re having fun with these days.
Post-war Czechoslovakia was a nation of tinkerers, but it was more out of necessity. Even though times have changed and conditions have too, some of this has remained within us, and we still have the desire to be inventive and not to be satisfied with just what the stores offer us. Even today, you can’t always get exactly what you would like, and even if someone happens to make it, it may not always be affordable to mere mortals.
With today’s technology and all the resources available online you can create anything you can think of at home. Even if you’re all thumbs. You can create a design on the computer and thanks to small CNC machines, engravers and 3D printers for a few hundred bucks you can easily produce sophisticated devices, robots, toys or smart home devices.
The components will arrive at your door and you can assemble the various boxes and appliances capable of connecting to a smart home network for just a few bucks. Countless tutorials and nowadays artificial intelligence can help you with their wiring and programming, and you can leave the dirty work to small and affordable home machines, or you can use the services of “fabs”, where you can find professional equipment that you can’t just get for your home.
In the Czech Republic, the Maker Faire series takes place in many cities throughout the year. The biggest event in Moravia is the one in Brno, which took place a week ago over the weekend. Makers gathered for the fifth time at the Brno Exhibition Centre in Hall A1.
Alongside the Maker Faire, the GameDev Connect event was held in the other wing of Hall A1, aimed at current and future game developers from large and smaller development studios in the country.
Right at the entrance to the rotunda, visitors were greeted by a demonstration of a creative use of computer fans. The Duck race project is the work of a Belgian, Hans Maes. Four bicycles with generators are powering four rows of fans that serve as propulsion for the ducks in four directions. And the team’s task is to pull the rubber creatures through the water maze by taking turns at pedaling.
To assemble and program something functional, you only need under a hundred bucks for some microcontrollers and motors and you can program it even using your mobile phone. OMG Robotics wants to help schools and education programs with teaching in this direction. They organize project days and training for students and teachers and run a website omgrobotics.com with educational materials and an e-shop with kits and parts for various projects.
The totalitarian robot Karl has already been replaced by real robots in the teaching of computer science and programming in schools. The exhibition center was full of them too. The Mindstorms series has been discontinued by LEGO, but they still offer the Education line for teaching, including the SPIKE Prime robots. You could also play with them at the First LEGO League Czech Republic stand.
At the Wunderwuzzi Robots booth, Erkin Bayirli offered perhaps the simplest “tiny robot” that you can put together at home for a few pennies. And you could have bought and built it on the spot. The idea is trivial – you attach a vibrating motor and a button battery to a toothbrush with curved bristles. Once you start the motor, it starts to rattle and the robot starts bouncing forward against the direction of the bristles. You don’t even need a printed holder for the battery and motor, just a thermal adhesive will do. If you want something better and you have a 3D printer at home, just from one photo and the building instructions it’s obvious how a holder for the battery and motor works. And you can get the motor on Aliexpress for one euro including shipping.
You can’t control the robot, but it willingly adapts to the barriers you set for it..
