Chicago Mini Maker Faire
- Details
- Published: Sunday, 28 June 2020 06:37
- Written by Super User
For several years I volunteered at the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire. The Faire is put on by the amazing Christina Pei and her army of volunteers. While I was working with Trossen Robotics, I would go to show off our robots and let people interact with them. I has a trick where I attached a leash to a Joystick mounted on one of our hexapods and would let people walk it around. We also had some fun Robot arm demos and sometimes Don from MadLabs would come over and show of his drones.
The Last year I was at the faire as a Trossen Representative was the best. I built an arena out of EVA foam and set up a game using Trossen's Budget Bots. The bots were modified with FPV cameras meant for drone racing and an Xbee for communication. On the other end was a monitor and a Arduino translating I2C communication from a Wii contorller into XBEE to the budget bot. The arena had colored 'goals' and was filled with balls I got at the Party Store. Each competitor had to play from their monitor - they couldn't watch the arena directly (thanks Mech Warfare!)
We had so much fun. And I'm so lucky to have Wade, Kat and Olga all helping me wrangle kids, bots, and awnings when the wind picked up. I took the arena to a couple of other events after that and one day I hope to bring it out of storage.
