Maker Faire 2014 - 01

Setting up at Maker Faire NC 2014

Maker Faire happened again at the Raleigh Fairegrounds, this time in the much larger exposition center - just big enough to contain the crowd that came through to see all of the great inventions, crafts, gadgets, DIY-projects being shown and shared for many to see and play with.

Poplocks were there as well, along with my friends from Splat Space, Durham's hacker and maker space.

So many parts and colors

A large group of children and adults came by to make some really impressive original designs. It was "make and take" so everybody who built could bring their creation home with them, no charge! As you can see above, the chaos was controlled with some handy parts organizers, made from double-side laminate paper I was lucky enough to find at Scrap Exchange, Durham's giant warehouse of upcycle-able materials.

Thanks to Joe, Sarah, John, Cate, Geoffrey, Shaw, Jeff, and everybody at Splat Space for their help! In addition to Poplocks, we also had a ton of fun stuff to show off, including the Bullitron Indie-Game Arcade Cabinet, a glowing rainbow-lit cloud, Squishy Circuits, Moog music, a tech-junk Dissemble station, vinyl stickers, 3d printing and a giant silver Poplocks Flying Saucer. Check out @splatspace on Twitter to see more pics.

Below is a small sample of the creative builds that took shape (more to come in a second post):

Best Dino

A Delightful Dolphin

This figure came stomping through when done

A mechanism of supreme complexity

We ran out of Dodeca-spheres early!

PUMA King

Puma King is combined and ready for you to make. Jame's Fritzler's exceptionally-detailed ultra combiner starts out as five ferocious Puma vehicles that join together to fight... well, we hope they work to fight evil!

Visit Netroid Universe to download and make yours!

Fantastic Facebot

Facebot, one of the larger robot templates on this site, is usually excited when he is built in new places. Yohan made this Facebot, and it was only the third paper toy he's ever built! Facebot was clearly excited, as you can see:

Thanks for sharing, Yohan!

Apex Band Carnival

Apex Band Carnival was a pretty cool day! Paper Poseables was invited to bring Poplocks toys and host an arts and crafts table for anybody to walk up and start building. This was our first outdoor event and was quite exciting.

Sharebot was there too, allowing builders to take photos so we could share on the net later. You can check out the flickr gallery of some of the photos right here.

Thanks again to Joe Diver for helping prepare and run the table. Also thanks to Pete Soper and Terri Pisasecki for inviting me to participate at the carnival. I'll see everybody there next year!

Skorpod

Skorpod has emerged from the most fearsome of robotic Netroid desert environments... to be downloaded and printed inside your home!

Phase Bots Wave 2

Phase Bots are James Fritzler's loving tribute to our favorite transforming robots. Now the population of these robots are doubled with Wave 2 of the Phasebots. The basic design of these bots is also pushed to the limit, with all new transformed vehicle shapes -- A-Train has 2 vehicle modes, train and starship!

Swave, A-Train, and S-Scream are here and ready to be built. You can download these remarkable paper toys from the Phasebot Google+ page!

Poplocks Snakebot

Snakebot is back and is now easier to make! Poplock Snakebot is a single template that you print over and over again to make longer and longer snakes!

Click "Read More" to see how to download, cut-out, and assemble Poplock Snakebot!

Poplocks Community on Google+

POPLOCKS PAPERCRAFT on Google Plus

Visit the Poplocks Papercraft Community on Google Plus to see and share more about Poplocks toys, designs, how-tos, or just talk. It is a publicly view-able message space, but in order to post, you will need to to be a Google Plus user and to sign up for posting privileges.

I'll be sharing images of prototypes and other sneak peeks before they get released here on the blog. Posts like this:

If you have something fun to share, or just want to see more ideas, give the community a quick visit!

Poplocks Pre-Cuts

While showing off Poplocks at recent events I've had people ask me if they could purchase some pre-cut pieces to take home. I am now offering Poplocks Pre-Cuts to fulfill these requests!

Each pack contains 10 sheets:

5 sheets of Basic Shapes (13 pieces on each sheet)
3 sheets of Extra Shapes (20 parts on each sheet)
1 sheet of 128 Poplocks (good for 64 strong connections)

Right now, there are single-color packs and a random rainbow pack. Each pack contains enough parts to build many small toys or 2-3 larger toys. This pack saves you roughly 90 minutes of hand-cutting time for the same number of print-at-home Poplocks pieces.

Check out my shop at paperposeables.bigcartel.com!

Sharebot

Sharebot is a photo-taking mini computer, powered by a Rasperberry Pi and a Raspberry Pi camera and assembled and programmed by my friend Joe Diver. We've taken Sharebot to Engineer's Day at the Durham Museum of Life and Science and the Burlington Mini Maker Faire. We let parents and children take pictures of themselves or their Poplock creations and the pictures are then shared on a flickr album for everybody to see!

One of the coolest user features is that the picture-taking is triggered with a Wii Remote. The Raspberry Pi receives Wii Remote input using a Bluetooth adapter and an open-source program call CWiid.

See the pictures Sharebot took at the Burlington Mini Maker Faire! Check out the album.

Some custom creations photographed by Sharebot!

We will be bringing the Sharebot to SPARKcon in Raleigh on Sunday Sept 15th. More info on which tent we will be in soon!