🤖 Robot Riot was a blast! Thank you to all the bot builders who came out to compete and to Team Witch Doctor and Team HyperShock for coming out to inspire the next generation of BattleBots engineers!
There have been some questions about Maker Faire Miami as well as the Mini / Maker Faires that happen throughout the sunshine state based on the news from Maker Media. We thought we would take a minute to assure you that Maker Faire Orlando (Nov. 9-10, 2019) and the Tampa Mini Maker Faire (Jul. 27, 2019) will continue moving forward as planned as well as a new Miami Maker Faire in 2020.
Here are some of the questions we’ve been getting, and the answers to go along with them. If you need further details, please contact us at Facebook.
Who is Maker Media, and what do they have to do with Maker Faires?
Maker Media published MAKE: magazine and created Maker Faire. They produced two Maker Faire events, San Francisco and New York, and they licensed the name to hundreds of community organizers around the world who produce more than 200 independent Maker Faire events.
As we mentioned, the production teams for these events license the trademarked Maker Faire name from Maker Media. There is brand recognition in the name and in the Maker Movement, and there is a collaboration between the organizations who run them.
Hang on, I still don’t know what a Maker Faire is. Can you explain?
Maker Faire events are an opportunity for curious people who enjoy learning to see what others in the community are working on. It’s a marketplace of ideas and experiments, where makers can show off their passion projects, hobbies, and more.
Maker Faire Miami, now in its Seventh year, is a two-day event and it’s one of the biggest volunteer managed Maker Faire events in the world. For 2019 we are bringing back many of our favorite past makers as well as welcoming new exhibits, makers and community groups.
Yes! Tampa is currently looking for exhibitors and is selling tickets. Orlando’s “Call for Makers” to exhibit will start in July, and tickets go on sale in August.
We love the Maker Media organization and the team that worked there. They helped us get Maker Faire Miami started, and they offered an incredible amount of help and advice to make it a better event year after year.
We need community support more than ever. Now is the perfect time to get involved if you want to continue Maker Faire in your local community.
Who runs Maker Faire Miami?
Maker Faire Miami is an all-volunteer event that is led by Moonlighter FabLab, a local non-profit. We’ve been involved in Maker Faire for years, and plan on doing it forever.
If you’re interested in getting in touch with us or any of the Maker Faire organizers, let us know at Mario@MarioTheMaker.com.
Why are there so many Maker Faire events around Florida?
Being a maker isn’t something new. Artists, hobbyists, entrepreneurs, and others are all makers, and the sunshine state has some amazingly creative people living here. Getting together and finding a community where they can interact and learn from each other is a natural extension of that creativity.
That led to Maker Faire events as well as makerspaces. Makerspaces are membership-based facilities that offer different services usually based on shared access to tools that normally would be difficult to get on your own. Laser cutters, 3D printers, welding equipment, woodworking tools, and screen printing are a few examples.
We have an incredible maker community in Florida. There are dedicated maker spaces, in Orlando, Tampa, Palm Beach and Miami.
And it really is a community. If you attend an event, Open House or “Open Make” at one of these places, you’ll find a lot of people who genuinely want to share what they know to help out with your project. The same can be said for Gainesville, Jacksonville, Orlando, Palm Bay, Palm Beach, and many other communities as well.
How can I help?
Thank you for asking! Tell your friends! Invite your neighbors! Yell from the rooftops! (But only during the day, please!)
Register for the call for makers or buy tickets for Tampa Mini Maker Faire (Jul. 27, 2019). Maker Faire Orlando is November 9th and 10th. If you want to exhibit, volunteer, or attend, please sign up for future news through their email updates.
All the proceeds from Maker Faire Miami go back into the local maker community, and we’re always looking for sponsors who value hands-on education and strong community-building events. We need your support now more than ever. The Greatest Show (& Tell) on Earth will go on!
Anouk Wipprecht is a well-known designer of robotic fashion. To her, artistic expression is not enough: She wants her creations to move and breathe and communicate. One of her gowns appropriately called the Spider Dress, senses and communicates quite aggressively if someone is invading the wearer’s personal space because robotic limbs embedded into the shoulder area of the dress will go into attack mode. She created another dress that addresses this in a less aggressive way, by emitting sensual plumes of smoke.
Another garment, created for Britney Spears, uses ink running through the veins of the dress to create artistic expression that is always moving and never the same. And the diva of the Black Eyed Peas wore one of Anouk’s creations, adorned with Swarovski Crystals and optic fibers that light up, while performing at the Super Bowl’s halftime show in 2011.
“I’m from the Netherlands … I didn’t know the Super Bowl meant 12 million watching,” she said. “It was fun but super scary.”
She also created a robotic cocktail dress that quite literally pours a drink for you, and she open-sources her tutorials so you can make one too, she showed a few examples of girls who posted their own re-makes of her designs using lego technic and vex kits.
Over the weekend, Anouk gave a keynote talk about how she envisioned, created and iterated her fashions at Maker Faire Miami, which brought thousands of maker enthusiasts of all ages to the two-day event at Miami Dade College.
“Maker Faires are awesome, they create a meeting place to see all my fellow collaborators and artists. It’s a great place for people to celebrate the notion of innovation, and making and creating together. … Everything here — it’s the future,” said Anouk, who got into robotics when she was 17.
After the hour-long talk, Anouk’s fans crowded around a small table to ask her questions and get a closer look at some of the technology and prototypes of her designs. And that’s what Maker Faires are all about — creating a space for makers and aspiring makers to gather, share creations and advice, learn from the experts in the field and leave inspired to create their own projects.
Maker Faire Miami’s sixth edition, the third one being hosted at Miami-Dade College’s Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami, turned it up a few notches:
More hands-on activities for kids, more show and tell by some of the world’s best-known makers, more interactive booths and opportunities for inquisitive, creative minds to get advice. In all, more than a hundred makers and maker organizations participated with exhibits, and thousands of people attended the Faire.
Maker Faire co-organizer Mario Cruz wanted the Faire to be a place where kids would be inspired to learn more about technology and innovation to level up their skills for the future. Mission accomplished. And, judging by all the smiles, everyone was having a good time, too!
Entering the Faire, it was hard to miss Miami Coral Park’s team of robots who were zipping around the walkway and entertaining the Faire goers. One of them even plays some hoops.
Coral Park, which is a magnet school for engineering, has a very active robotics club with 90 to 100 student members who compete in FIRST Robotics competitions at the highest level and are competing in the World competition in less than two weeks. Coral Park brought its whole team of robots used during the past four years of competitions.
The school’s magnet program teaches all the necessary engineering skills, but the club is where students can really put their skills into practice, said Charlie Delahoz, a teacher who also advises the club. That’s especially true during the 6-week robot building period, said Alexis Cruz, a 10th grader who participates in both the magnet program and the club. They have 6 weeks to go from concept to design, prototyping and building, coding and beta testing.
Some people think robotics is all about the competitions and the fighting, but there is a lot of construction before the destruction part and it gets the kids excited about learning about building things that don’t break, said Andrea Suarez, part of the Miami engineering group behind Team Witch Doctor in the BattleBots television show. It’s about taking a project from start to finish “and doing what you need to do to get it done,” said Paul Grata, a fellow team member.
Paul, Andrea, and other team members gave a talk at the Maker Faire about the process leading up to the televised episodes. In the upcoming season, the shows will be twice as long and will include more behind the scenes color, they said.
As if all this wasn’t enough for this team that also has day jobs in technology, two years ago this Miami BattleBots team opened MakerMIA, a makerspace for the community with classes for kids 6 and up to learn how to build 1-pound robots.
Abby K., an 11 year old student at Pinecrest Academy South, said she didn’t think enough girls at her school were interested in robotics so she set out to
change that. Now she has an active Youtube channel, Vex iCutie, where she offers inspiration and practical tutorials in her videos. She exhibited at the Faire to share why she thinks it’s important for tech to be “Girl Powered.”
Exhibitors came from far and wide to participate in Maker Faire Miami, including A makerspace from Guatemala, a Mayan e-robotics club, and a Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics lab from FAU, Led by Matt Trask who showcased a physical Raspberry Pi Processing Capacity visualizer which won a Maker of Merit award and was featured on Raspberry Pi’s Blog!
MDC Wolfson Campus’ Maker’s Lab, an interdisciplinary makerspace, exhibited some student-led projects, including a vertical garden, a formula-one car, a fashion project, and an exoskeleton. They also engaged the audience with hands-on activities such as link-together takeaway toys and laser-cut models of current projects at the lab.
FIU Honors College’s EdgeLab, a student-run makerspace space on the FIU campus that is open to the community, also exhibited at the Faire. The goal of this makerspace and others, said Juan Lopez, an advisor for the makerspace and an IT manager for the Honors College, is to build a community of makerspaces to increase access throughout the community. People come in with a general idea of what they want to build but they don’t know how, or they are well along but just need a little guidance, said Honors College student David Rodriguez, a biology major who wants to be a dentist. At Maker Faire, they hosted a Make-A-Button activity so fairgoers had a keepsake they could take home with them.
The Girl Scouts, who were showing some of their STEM creations, particularly enjoyed the presentation of Estefannie Explains it All so much they couldn’t wait to take a photo with her and ask her more questions after the talk. John Park, whose long career in tech includes animation work with DisneyImagineers and hosting a maker show on PBS, says he now has a dream job as a full-time maker for Adafruit, which sells products for makers, so who better to give a talk about ways to share your maker knowledge? Engineer Mohit Bhoite explained how he unleashes his inner-artist by creating free-formed circuit sculptures.
James Brazil unveiled his new book, The Food Wheel, at the end of his talk about urban prototyping. It is the culmination of a project supported by Mano and Maker Faire Miami, in collaboration with university students at the University of Miami School of Architecture. The idea was to design a CNC millable mobile kitchen and urban farm that could simply roll out to different locations and pop-up in various communities. It was a great example of how open-source designs can be used to test changes in our urban landscape.
Maker Ian Cole presented a Magic Wheelchair project, where Maker organizations turn a child’s wheelchair into something magical. “It’s a great project for any maker group that wants to make a difference,” Cole said. In less than four weeks, 27 Makers with MakerFX in Orlando, MakeMIA and other Florida groups transformed young Alex’s wheelchair into Bumblebee of the Transformers. Made from a 60’s VW bug, it also featured an elaborate dashboard and keyboard. “It was pretty featured,” said Cole. Alex loves it so much his parents are giving him a Bumblebee-themed bedroom “so he can have the experience all the time.”
Ian also joined Andrea and other visiting makers in the first ever Power Wheels Racing event in Miami – A national circuit where engineers hack toy electric vehicles and compete for speed, style, and endurance. It was incredibly entertaining to watch a Star Trek Enterprise go head-to-head with a cookie monster, mystery machine, and Star Wars land speeder.
If you wanted to learn more about Quantum Computing, you could do that at a session given by Robert Loredo, Quantum Ambassador and Master Inventor with IBM. IBM put the first Quantum Computer in the cloud and Dylan Parsons, an 8th grader at American Heritage in Delray Beach who took part in the talk, said he incorporated some quantum computing in his science fair project. He gained his knowledge by doing his own internet research and by reaching out to IBM and wants to continue studying quantum computing. “I hope to bring it to a larger scale use like in chemistry and a larger problem,” he said.
In the STEMLab bus, you could learn about how Fairchild Tropical Gardens is trying to reintroduce a million native orchids into Miami. Miami-Dade middle school students are helping Fairchild’s botanists grow the orchids from seeds in a small safe enclosed environment and then over time introducing them to a greenhouse and then into the wild, the urban wild, anyway. More than 200,000 have already been put on trees around the Miami area. They also hosted a hands-on activity where fairgoers could vacuum form their own plant pod. They recently announced their new Innovation Studio in partnership with NASA and Moonlighter Makerspace – where botany and technology will be ever more accessible to the community to dream up and tinker solutions for growing edible plants on the International Space Station. This will be the first ever makerspace in a botanic garden – and will build on the successful research and educational outreach of their Growing Beyond Earth program.
The Maker Faire was all about inspiring the youngest of kids, including a four-some so engrossed in what they were building in MDC’s Lego 305 station they didn’t hear their parents saying it was time to go (or didn’t want to). Children were also contributing to Cristina Serarols’ public art piece made from plastic straws, designed to draw attention to the environmental impact of the plastic. Giovanni Martinez, 10, brought his creation, the “Cherry Copter” – a mix of a plane and helicopter – to the Moonlighter Makerspace booth to proudly put on display. He’s been learning about wood cutting and 3D modeling at Moonlighter, a STEAM Learning center and community Fabrication Lab in Wynwood. They also had projects on display from their after school and camp programs, including a 3D printed moon base for the Airbus Foundation design challenge. Their Summer Camps give kids a chance to build the skills they saw on display all weekend at Maker Faire.
And for kids of all ages, what better souvenir to leave with than an official Maker Faire Miami t-shirt that they made themselves. With the end of a successful Faire weekend, Mario the Maker is already thinking up how to make next year even bigger – bringing in more schools and makers to participate and getting local tech experts to mentor ongoing maker projects. So if you didn’t get a chance to participate this year, you’ll still get to join the movement for 2020.
Maker Faire Miami is presented by Miami Dade College and MANO, and sponsored by The Knight Foundation, Make:, Santander, Prusa Research, Microsoft and Particle. If you’d like to help support this showcase for local Miami Makers, reach out to mario@mariothemaker.com.
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.
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.
We’re hosting a Power Racing Series exhibition event at Maker Faire Miami this year! What is Power Racing, you ask?
Simply, teams build and race an electric car, with a $500 spending limit. You can start with any kids’ electric ride-on vehicle. The races are a blast, and how you decorate your car counts for some serious points, too. Glitter, feathers, lights, anything goes. Visit powerracingseries.org for more information and guidelines.
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.”
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
Volunteers will get a free ticket & t-shirt for their effort. We want to have enough volunteers to allow everyone to enjoy the Faire when they are not volunteering. Community service hours are available from a 501(c)(3) public charity.
If you have any questions about volunteering at Maker Faire Miami, or if you have a specific skill-set (especially photography/videography), please message us.
Maker Faire Miami is a celebration of the people, tools, and technologies that are creating and reinventing the city. It’s a day to see the entire spectrum of creative energy that is pushing our city forward towards a better future. Be it a new civic project by professionals, a university research initiative, or the casual hobbyist just showing off some new skills — it’s a forum for sharing, learning, and creating new things.
After five years the Maker Faire has grown from a Mini Maker Faire in The Lab Miami to a fantastic international event at Miami Dade College and is one of the top featured Maker Faires of over several hundred across the United States and the world. This achievement is a testament to all of the hard work Ric and the team at MANO have done to date. As the Faire continues to grow and develop, I am proud to take on the role as one of the Producers and help lead the next five years. I decided to take on this opportunity because I see how the Maker Faire, and our local maker community, can play a vital part in shaping a more resilient, inclusive, and prosperous Miami.
As our world rapidly changes with exponential technologies, shifting climates, and new economies — we must prepare our society to harness these new tools to navigate the many challenges and build the right solutions. The digital divide continues to grow, and the cities that succeed in this new world will be the ones that best adapt and actively work on closing that gap — giving everyone the chance to play a role in shaping their futures through technology. Though many headlines may focus on the number of jobs that will be lost to artificial intelligence and robotics, there will be an abundance of incredible opportunities and job titles that we can’t even imagine yet — and if history has taught us anything, it’s that the best way to predict the future is to create it.
So why is maker culture important? Because makers come in all types and styles — they may be inventors, builders, designers, musicians, coders, cooks, etc. but they all share some core values: They are resourceful, lifelong learners, collaborative, problem solvers, and think systemically. These are the skills that will prepare us for a future with so many variables. That is why many companies have begun to prioritize STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics) fields to train their staff — and why STEAM professions are often among the highest paid salaries on average.
My focus in this next chapter for Maker Faire Miami is to spread the maker mindset across the city and to empower people and organizations across South Florida with the resources they need to join the movement. This starts with the students. I have already been hard at work putting together a team that represents a cross-section of these STEAM disciplines to bring their knowledge and expertise to the classrooms and inspire our next generation of Makers. Students will learn valuable skills through hands-on projects, real-world challenges, and with the latest technologies. For high school and college students, we will host meetups and workshops that create informal learning environments where skills can be shared, and projects can flourish collaboratively. For professionals, we will work on building public/private partnerships that include the community in the process for solving some of our cities biggest challenges like sea level rise, transportation, affordable housing, and sustainable urban agriculture.
So this is an open call to all creators — to the teachers, students, and professionals who want to learn, share and collaborate. Showcase your work at Maker Faire Miami. However, beyond the Maker Faire, I want to cultivate the necessary resources year round so reach out with your thoughts and needs. I will be working to connect the tech community and civic leaders in Miami and Broward to create an infrastructure for innovation to help mentor, teach and inspire future makers. Join me on this mission to spread the maker movement and to build the future of South Florida we all wish to see.
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Another garment, created for Britney Spears, uses ink running through the veins of the dress to create artistic expression that is always moving and never the same. And the diva of the Black Eyed Peas wore one of Anouk’s creations, adorned with Swarovski Crystals and optic fibers that light up, while performing at the Super Bowl’s halftime show in 2011.
better to give a talk about ways to share your maker knowledge? Engineer Mohit Bhoite explained how he unleashes his inner-artist by creating free-formed circuit sculptures.
and other Florida groups transformed young Alex’s wheelchair into Bumblebee of the Transformers. Made from a 60’s VW bug, it also featured an elaborate dashboard and keyboard. “It was pretty featured,” said Cole. Alex loves it so much his parents are giving him a Bumblebee-themed bedroom “so he can have the experience all the time.”
Ambassador and Master Inventor with IBM. IBM put the first Quantum Computer in the cloud and Dylan Parsons, an 8th grader at American Heritage in Delray Beach who took part in the talk, said he incorporated some quantum computing in his science fair project. He gained his knowledge by doing his own internet research and by reaching out to IBM and wants to continue studying quantum computing. “I hope to bring it to a larger scale use like in chemistry and a larger problem,” he said.
And for kids of all ages, what better souvenir to leave with than an official Maker Faire Miami t-shirt that they made themselves. With the end of a successful Faire weekend, Mario the Maker is already thinking up how to make next year even bigger – bringing in more schools and makers to participate and getting local tech experts to mentor ongoing maker projects. So if you didn’t get a chance to participate this year, you’ll still get to join the movement for 2020.
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!
music. Little gingerbread people danced via tiny motors.
3D Printed Daft Punk Helmet and dozens of other projects will be speaking at 
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