nancydahlberg, Author at Maker Faire Miami

Whether you want to cheer on your favorite Power Wheels Racing car, meet the stars of the BattleBots television show, learn about fashion that combines the latest in science and technology, or solder along with your kids, you’ll find there will be something for everyone when Maker Faire Miami returns to South Florida April 6-7.

“Think of Maker Faire Miami as a giant science fair of tomorrow,” says Mario Cruz, a Maker himself who is organizing the event. Miami Dade College, in partnership with MANO Americas and in association with The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Maker Media, will host Maker Faire Miami at MDC’s Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami. The annual family-friendly weekend event will feature fun inventions and interactive exhibits by scores of local organizations in science, engineering, art, performance, and craft.

Emerging from their universities and schools, tech companies, maker spaces, clubs and garages, over 100 Makers will be exhibiting finished projects and works in progress – from VR to drones, 3D printers to robots – at the Faire, inspiring the thousands of fairgoers expected over the two-day event. About 25 Makers will be selling jewelry and other hand-made crafts, too.

Stars of the Maker YouTube circuit will be flying in from around the country to share their creative energy. And for kids (and kids at heart), there will be even more hands-on activities than years’ past.

“There will be more Makers than previous years, more high school and middle school involvement, and more women and girls participating as speakers and exhibitors. I want the Fair to represent that anyone can be a Maker. Let’s get people skilled up for the future,” said Cruz.

Maker Faire Miami celebrates the global Maker Movement, accelerated by the launch of Make: Magazine in 2005 and its first Maker Faire in 2006 in Silicon Valley. The original Miami “Mini” Maker Faire was held in 2013 at The LAB Miami and now Maker Faire Miami is part of an elite band of 44 featured cities around the world hosting the larger-scale Featured Maker Faires in 2019, including San Mateo, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Atlanta, New York, and Shenzhen.

To give you an idea of what you will find at Miami’s Faire this weekend, here are a few events not to be missed:

Learn from the very best, because Maker Faire Miami is flying them in as speakers. Visitors will have a chance to meet YouTube stars John Park and Estefannie Explains it All, who believe anyone can be a maker and you need to break things to make things. You can learn from Mohit Bhoite all about making circuit sculptures, which requires him to use a different side of his engineering brain. Meet the professional engineering teams at Witch Doctor, Hypersock and Rotator from the popular BattleBots television show. Check out the full schedule HERE.

Ready, set, go: During Power Wheels Racing, attendees will see five themed battery-powered cars compete in real races during the Faire. “It’s so exciting when you see people take what is basically a toy and make it go 25 miles an hour. They are building a mini-Tesla inside a toy car. One looks like a Star Trek ship, and these are all professional Makers” said Cruz. Next year, Maker Faire Miami will be an official circuit site for Power Wheels Racing, so show your enthusiasm by cheering these cars on during their premier exhibition races.

Give it a try, and let a kid help you out with that: A new hands-on activities area for kids (and kids at heart) will have the whole family making fun and exciting projects like vacuum formed plant pods, laser cut kits, soldering LEDs, RC car racing, making flying devices, photo prints, and more. Kids can win a prize if they complete all of the activities on their “maker passport.” (While supplies last!)

Speaking of kids, Little Makers will be everywhere. Among them, you can meet 11-year old Abby. She started her project, VEX iCutie, when she noticed there were not enough girls participating in robotics. At the Faire, she’ll explain how robotics is girl-powered. Also, The brother and sister team behind Kid Kreative – Alejandro and Gaby –and their elementary and middle school friends will show off what they love to create, from slimy concoctions to resin masterpieces, and show you how you can make your own. And a half dozen middle and high schools will have booths this year; Coral Park Senior High will be bringing all its Robots. The Girl Scouts will be showing their STEM projects – and so much more!

Fashion-tech that’s turning heads: Dutch fashion-tech designer Anouk Wipprecht combines the latest in science and technology to make fashion an experience that transcends mere appearances. Her “Spider Dress” is the perfect example of this – sensors and movable arms on the dress help to create a more defined boundary of personal space with fierce style.

Who doesn’t want to participate in an art project that saves the environment too? You can bring your plastic straws and used K-cups to local artist Cristina Serarols, who will create a mixed-media piece made primarily of donated straws. Read more about her in Miami New Times.

There will be lots to explore, with food trucks to satisfy your hunger pangs, lower prices for children under 16, free parking, and new exciting activities.

Come celebrate the Maker movement this weekend!

WHAT: Maker Faire Miami at MDC

WHEN: Saturday and Sunday, April 6-7, 2019

WHERE: MDC Wolfson Campus 300 N.E. Second Ave.

TICKETS: A multi-day ticket is $20; children 6-16 are $10 and children 5 and younger are free. One-day tickets are $15, youth tickets are $7.50 for youth and free for children 5 and younger. Buy them here or at the door.

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John Park was a Maker long before the term was ever used. And he’s here to tell you anyone can be a Maker, inspiration is everywhere and it’s easier than ever to learn what you don’t know.

John is quite well-known in the Maker Movement. He’s shared his projects with millions of people around the world, and now he will be sharing with the Miami community. You don’t want to miss his keynote talk at Maker Faire Miami April 6-7 at Miami Dade College.

His career is almost as interesting as his creations. John works for Adafruit Industries, creating a weekly project and corresponding video tutorials as well as other video content for the company that makes products for Makers. No day is typical for him, as he hops around between breadboard prototyping and 3D modeling, photography, video editing, 3D printing, electronics, carpentry and answering questions on social media for Adafruit. After hours, he might be tinkering on his own creation or helping his daughter with one of hers.

John also writes for Make magazine, Boing Boing and Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools. In addition to a 20+ year career in computer graphics for the likes of Disney (we’ll get to that in a bit), he hosted the Emmy-nominated Make television show on Public Television, where he taught viewers how to make a VCR cat feeder and air cannon Burrito Blaster, among other creations. He also co-founded a company to design and build hacking/prototyping kits and contributed to an excellent kids’ project book called Unbored.

You don’t have to be an engineer to do any of this stuff, he says. And he should know.

As a kid, John was always taking things apart around the house and putting them back together and soon he was modifying things, such as joy sticks for the Atari 2600 in the 80s. He went to college to study acting, not engineering. From a starter job working in a warehouse for a cool gaming company, he learned his way into a career in computer graphics, including as a character technical director and supervisor with Disney Animation Studios and Disneytoon Studios.

A highlight of his career was being involved in building computer graphics used to inform Disney Imagineers who were designing park attractions. “I was involved in research and development for the upcoming Star Wars land…. It was an incredible highlight to be involved with a group that was taking the skills from a number of disciplines and trying to work quickly and creatively to fail fast, fail often — to be involved with a scrappy R&D group that was doing very difficult things.”

But he also missed building things with his hands, as opposed to in the computer, and the launch of MAKE magazine inspired him to go back to his roots.

These days John has been building musical instruments, mostly hand-held synthesizers, drum machines or samplers. “I built a joystick the other day that I can use to input filter sounds and sweeps and whooshes into the synthesizer and it literally took me less than an hour to build it. It was super fun.”

Big Arduino

It’s also a testament to how accessible tools for this technology have become, he said, noting that an open source software for micro-controllers developed by Adafruit called Circuit Python helped make it all possible.

He also likes build big, quite literally.

He built an Arduino, a micro-controller popular in the maker community, that was six times the size but functional. “It was a lot of fun because it involved a lot of graphic design, laser cut acrylic, really big LEDs, really big motors.”

Repurposing vintage gear is one of the hallmarks of a true Maker. A friend lent him an old school TNT detonator (think Road Runner-Wile E Coyote) and he turned it into a really elaborate on-off switch for his coffee grinder.

Repurposing vintage gear

His wife, who raises guide dogs and is a very active mom of two, “accepts that what I do is my weird thing that I do.”

John’s advice: “Find places like a library maker space or a club where you can collaborate with people. There is something so exciting about working together and you tend to find ways to complement each other’s skills or interests.”

Take on projects that interest you, he continued. Start small or take on crazy, ambitious projects — you will learn a lot and help is a click away on a YouTube video. Get inspired at the Maker Faire Miami.

“Maker Faires tend to be so inclusive of all different types of people and projects and interests, and there is something really optimistic and encouraging about that. Collaborations can come from that,” John said.

To learn more about John’s crazy projects and celebrate the show and tell that is the Maker Movement, come to the Miami Maker Faire April 6-7. Buy your tickets here.

By @ndahlberg

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When Estefannie traded her knitting needles for a soldering iron, well, watch out world.

It’s likely you once made a gingerbread house and you probably helped eat one, too. But if you’re Estefannie, you made one with a solar powered roof and colorful lights that blinked in rhythm with the Christmas music. Little gingerbread people danced via tiny motors.

“I could control it with my iPad,” she said. “I was building more and more on top of the little house and that was my favorite project.”

One of the latest projects for this Houston Maker is a pair of glasses adorned with 88 LEDs. Imagine how you’d feel after you 3D print the glasses and then soldered the 352 tiny joints of those 88 lights and then discovered the glasses don’t work. If you are Estefannie, you keep working at it until they do. It took her weeks.

“These glasses have a lot of abilities. I want to program a lot of patterns and colors and it’s an ongoing project.”

The self-taught Maker of the smart gingerbread house, the glasses, a 3D Printed Daft Punk Helmet and dozens of other projects will be speaking at Maker Faire Miami coming to Miami Dade College April 6-7. Estefannie’s message to Makers-in-the-making: “Don’t give up. Don’t feel like you don’t have it in you. There is no such thing as you aren’t born with it.”

Estefannie’s talk will be titled Makers Gonna Break.

In making, breaking things is part of the learning process, she said (she once burned her kitchen island — oops). And about that helmet: “I broke a lot of things, I made a big mess, but I was able to make it,” Estefannie said. “My talk will be about hopefully inspiring people to start making things or continue making things and not being afraid of making mistakes along the way.”

By day, Estefannie is a software engineering lead for a tech company developing a self-driving drilling rig. “It’s a very cool job and very hard on its own. I needed some outlets for my creative self.”

After hours Estefannie goes into her Maker zone – Estefannie Explains It All – and unlike for her day job, no degree required. She taught herself with the help of Google and YouTube. She’s also learning about video, staging and lighting because she shares her projects and processes with the world. On weekends it can be all-consuming, but it’s her passion.

“I think I always had something in me, I’ve always liked to do things with my hands. I used to knit, but when I learned how to solder and learned more about electronics I realized I liked it more than knitting, I find soldering as soothing as knitting.”

What’s her next frontier as a Maker? “Bigger and scarier” projects. “I would like to keep going with what I’m doing — but more.”

Estefannie won’t give up the goods when asked about her current project: “Let’s just say it’s a project I have never done before, it’s one of the biggest projects that I have made, I can bring it to places with me, it involves a lot of woodworking I have never done before and electronics stuff and it’s part of the music industry. That is all I am going to say.”

Stay tuned to her YouTube channel and Instagram for more on that and come hear her talk at Maker Faire Miami April 6-7. Buy your tickets here.

by @ndahlberg

Can walking down the aisle of an Ace Hardware inspire art? If you are a Maker, you bet it can.

Mohit Bhoite, an engineer, was doing just that when he came across brass rods. He had been following the work of others who were making circuit sculptures and he decided to dabble. Since then he has created more than a dozen sculptures, even a robot that paints with light.

The impressive senior hardware engineer with Particle will be flying in to speak at Maker Faire Miami about techniques, tools and tips for making these circuit sculptures, how a community of these sculpture makers has been growing and how it can be a form of artistic expression for any maker.

Mohit’s favorite sculpture is his Xenyan, a play on Nyan, the cat that shoots rainbows from his butt.

“I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to make that as a robot? So I made this sculpture with a tail light. But if you take the long exposure picture, he can literally paint with light. You can paint characters or graphics in the air. It can shoot rainbows out of its tail. That was a perfect project for me because I could use my background in robotics, my brass sculpture techniques and then I could draw with light. That was the most fun.”

This one was an Insta-fav.

He’s been making these sculptures actively over the last year or so. You can see some of them on his blog and his Instagram.

Mohit is a big proponent of Maker Faires. “It’s almost like going to church but for makers. You feel part of a community with people around you all making things. There wasn’t anything like it before and now it has a massive following.”

He says it is important for kids to see things being made that are not part of a factory or industry. “These are people just making things out of passion. Not everything has to have an occupation. You can be a maker just for the sake of being one.”

Mohit grew up in India and worked for a startup that made robotic kits. He moved to the U.S. in 2009 to get his masters in robotics at UPenn. A highlight of his career has been working at San Francisco-based Particle, which created the only all-in-one IoT platform, for more than 5 ½ years.

“I was the fifth employee and we have grown to 100-plus. It’s an amazing group of people; most of the engineers are remote. We have an office in Shenzhen, China. It’s the mecca of electronics with skyscrapers full of companies selling parts.”

Sculptures give him an artistic outlet, but it was difficult at first and took some unlearning. “As engineers, you are taught to make things efficient, cost effective – just the right way. Creating art is the polar opposite. You are not doing things because it is the right way; you are doing it for the artistic expression.”

When he is not building sculptures, Mohit is building skills in photography, carpentry, machining metal, 3D printing and 3D design. “I feel like in today’s world it is so easy to access tools and knowledge and explore any field of your liking.”

His advice: Get out there. “Now is the best time to be a maker. You don’t need to be solving a problem. Just take up a project, start building it, fail, learn from it, ask questions, join a local maker space if you can – and just keep building. It is the best way to learn.”

Mohit will also be available all weekend at the Particle booth with an amazing technical team from Particle to answer any of your IoT questions

For inspiration, visit the Miami Maker Faire April 6-7. Buy your tickets here.

By @ndahlberg

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