There was a little interest in Graham’s 3D scanning probe, but this is what he is normally using his tiny CNC machine for: manufacturing components for a tiny RC ornithopter. The scale of this thing is amazing. From the tiny gear train to the 0.5mm carbon spars the frame is constructed from. The rudder control only weighs one gram and the entire device comes in at 17 grams.
The people from the Monome project are out in full force at the Faire. They’ve got five of the 8×8 pads hooked up for people to play with. The first two pictured above actually work together as a 16 step loop system. There’s also one hooked up as a mixer and another as a drum machine. The fifth one is showing pixelated video from an iSight. The box is really well built. The $500 price point has shocked a lot of people, but it’s really unavoidable since they’re only doing a 200 device run. Something I hadn’t realized before is that the buttons are unique to the device, not off the shelf parts. The button is really a rubber cap that sits over the LED and has a conductive ring at the base. I hope they post a schematic for their 8×8 matrix controller so that anyone could build one. Here are a few more pictures: one, two, three.
I know a lot of you can’t make the Faire this weekend, but there’s still hope. The videos from the CCC hacker con in Berlin last December are now available via bittorrent which should provide plenty of nerdtainment this weekend.
The nice thing about Maker Faire is all of the fun projects you can try out for yourself. Trevor Blackwell brought his balancing scooter and electric unicycle for people to ride. We’ve got more photos from the Faire on Flickr.
