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Check out these Cool ALAVs (Autonomous Light Vessels) by Jed Berk! Tight! It uses Sun Microsystems SunSpot microcontroller, which can be programmed in Java. I like this idea since there’s a lot of Java embedded processors out there but this ones from the creators. Jed tells me that all the pieces were 3D designed on the computer and laser-cut, kinda cool~

Jed says, Make Store will have these cool DIY ALAV kits soon!

Internet is kinda slow here at the Maker Faire. (That’s why our posts are slow too.) We even switched to a Sprint Broadband but with live video streaming, it’s still too slow but we will keep postin’~

You can come and join us to chat here to while watching our live video.

You can also check out our Flickr photos from Maker Faire Day 1 and Jed’s Flickr for more ALAVs.

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Check out the Light Orb. Remember we had a post about the Light Orb way back? It’s cool to see it in real life. Maker faire rules.

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Wow, there’s so much cool stuff here at Maker Faire such as this cool balancing bot. It’s so big and there’s so much stuff, I don’t think you can see everything in one day. Phew…

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Cool, here’s a little preview of the 2009 Porsche panamera, kinda reminds me of the Porsche 928, my favorite.

At least three different Panameras are visible in this video — one blue example and two black copies — and they were filmed in various locations. One feature that may not have been apparent before is the Panamera’s hatchback, which is clearly visible as the car is being loaded up

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Here’s a very simple wireless keyless entry DIY using some relays and stuff, very similar to the Wiimote Door Unlocker.

The mechanism is simple enough, just a momentary button on the panel in my apartment, but the mess of wires in the wall is a little unsettling. I took some meter readings of the terminals and sorted out the door button wiring. You can see where the door button is soldered through the PCB, which made it easier to identify the proper terminals. This panel has a “Door”, “Talk” and “Listen” button. The “Door” button is normally-open and the circuit is about 22V. In the following steps we’re going to effectively bypass the button with our own circuit.

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Cool, we are looking forward to Maker Faire for cool steam tanks like this!

So what do you do after you’ve made a bunch of steam powered r/c tanks? Well you try making a steam turbine tank of course! Making a steam turbine r/c machine has sort of been one of my Holy Grails, but there are many issues with steam turbines, that made it difficult for me to tackle on the project.

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Check out this Automatic Color Sorting DIY that uses some DC and stepper motors from an old HP printer and uses Parallax’s new 32bit processor as the brain. Brilliant!

This could be great to low budget project requiring color sorting.

Once the Sensor was figured out I started to build everything. Most of the parts including the DC motor and stepper motor were taken from an old HP 712c Printer I had laying around. The carriage system for the ink head was my main platform for the sorting process to occur on. I then had to design a way to control the flow of m&m’s, this was accomplished with the idea of using a system that is commonly found in gumball machines and a coin sorting machine. I then made a CAD drawing for it to be milled by my father using a CNC machine.

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Check out this cool human built UFO!

Here’s a really cool DAT backup tape loader robot that being worked on. This might be a great way to automate your server backups especially if you own a hosting company.

Thanks to D. Wilstar for the link!

This is another cheap project, useful to those peoples too lazy to change backup tapes every night (If You said “What’s Backup?” please stop reading! )
This project is less “art attack” than my homemade CNC. There is, indeed, a plan (well, sort of…) drawn with Google SketckUp (actually drawn BEFORE construction, and not AFTER, like I usually do ).
Almost all mechanical components used can be salvaged parts, or can be bought in a hardware store.