Maker Faire Detroit Planning Meeting This Friday

This Friday, May 11th, at 7:30pm, we will be having some guests from The Henry Ford museum over at i3 Detroit to answer questions about exhibiting a project or volunteering at Maker Faire. Please come with ideas and questions you might want to get answered about our favorite event of the year!

This event is open to the public, so we expect plenty of other makers in the area to attend. What a great chance to meet new makers!

Note: Parking in front of the building is likely to fill up, so please consult this map for overflow areas.

Also note: Open Shop Friday will be taking place as usual, with the caveat that loud tools shouldn’t be used until the meeting wraps up, perhaps 9:00-ish.

TechShop Grand Opening & People Mover Design Challenge

Hans, Micho, Kristine, and Belvedere next to the Puppy Powered, Steampunk Chariot!

TechShop Detroit held their Grand Opening Celebration this weekend on May 5–6, 2012.

For their People Mover Design Challenge, they generously offered use of their makerspace, classes, and the help of their very knowledgeable staff to a joint i3 Detroit / District VII team composed of Kristine Diven, Micho Detronik, and Hans Chen.

Working out of all three spaces—i3 Detroit, District VII, and TechShop Detroit—they created a puppy-powered, steampunk chariot that wowed the judges and won first place!

President Matt Oehrlein was also invited to speak at the panel “Putting the D in DIY”.

A big thank you to TechShop and all its Detroit and out-of-state staff for their amazing hospitality, generosity, and making us such an important part of their opening!

Parts and potential: Vehicle interface bits

Top: Male OBD-II connectors and pins.

Middle: STN1110 multiprotocol vehicle interface IC.

Bottom: MCP2551 CAN transceiver IC.

(Note: We also have the female version of the connectors, female terminals, and the appropriate crimpers.)

None of this stuff is particularly expensive or hard to find, but in i3′s electronics lab, it’s already been picked out, ordered, shipped, and sorted. With this potential within arm’s reach, what will you build?

Robot Knife Fight Development Day

Tomorrow (Sunday 4/22/2012) from 10am until 5pm I will be at i3Detroit with my Robot Fight Club cohorts making the arena python code better. If you like Python, OpenCV, Microcontrollers, or Fighting Robots bring your laptop and lend a hand! We can use all the help we can get.

Arena Python code on github

i3 Detroit Power Racing Series 2012 Teaser

We’ve been putting blood sweat and tears into our most advanced power wheels racer yet. Here’s a little video we took during our latest benchmarking test. We’ve reduced our drag coefficient by over 40%! We can verify this because we have fancy expensive equipment which measure this!