The “call for makers”, for The Vancouver Maker Faire has been released. We need a single person to volunteer to lead the VHS table and a army of volunteers to help. We also needs to figure out what we are doing for this year and submit the application.
Who wants to help or lead with VHS’s Maker Faire table?
What should we do at the VHS Maker Faire table?
Give away (or ask for donations), stickers, buttons
Button maker
Allow people to sign up on site. This might be a logicistal nightmare but would be useful. I think there was talk of adding a coupon code system to nomos @Jarrett and @laftho
Other workshops ?
A table of things that are made at VHS
Selling other laser cut and 3d printed items made at VHS.
A random idea would be to make our own village this year… instead of a single set of tables make the VHS Village where our members can all join together to make one large area… I know of at lest 6 people that are planning on submitting applications this year, instead of doing it all separately we could do it as a village.
I emailed the organizers of VMMF and asked if we could become a village instead of a group booth.
Hi Steven!
Sure! We can put together an larger section for VHS. I think you guys did that one year, and then decided to opt for separate booths because organizationally it was less confusing. I’m happy to put together whatever works best.
The best thing for you guys to do is put together a list of participating VHSers and then appoint one of them as point person to liaise with us and to organize your booth set-up. You can use that as a starting point for to fill in the application, and then I can get in touch once I have those details so that we can plan what you’ll need.
Who would like to be part of the VHS village at Vancouver Maker Faire ?
I don’t mind taking lead on the VHS Booth. @KevMacD and I did it last year and based on that I think we should change it up somewhat for this year depending on how many people want to help.
However if anyone else has a burning desire to be lead on this we are a do-ocracy
Larger booth or “village”, last year when it was busy we were very cramped for room.
VHS booth/village next to the soldering booth. I asked too late last year for this to happen and I think a scout group got the space which would have suited us. It would also help people swapping between the info booth and soldering booth depending on how busy each one is.
More volunteers, and if you volunteer please show up - last year I went to a lot of trouble ensuring everyone who said they would help on the booth got a free pass only have have no shows.
After talking with a couple of members last night some random thoughts.
We need interactive displays as well as static displays. Last year kids (& adults) had a great time playing the simple Makey Makey game that Janet setup. I would say most figured out or got to learn how silly putty can make things move.
Another example would be the LED wall, rather than having it display a message it would be great to make it interactive, so if there was a laptop with questions and people typed the answers then the LED wall would do something. Or have joysticks controls the colours, or as was suggested have a giant pac-man game
Kevin will bring down his recently completed MAME arcade machine. Maybe have a smaller Raspberry Pi mini-arcade running on a 15" lcd monitor
So we need people to come up with creative interactive ideas for the displays - they don’t have to be new projects
We do also need other projects members have done at the space to show the public what’s being created there.
I think anyone volunteering on the booth(s) should be wearing a VHS t-shirt. I propose that where needed VHS fund 1/2 the cost of the t-shirt.
In the village we should have several different areas. Each area should have team lead or people that are in-charge of that area. Each area will have its own equipment and requirements that need to be fulfilled.
Volunteers for each area shouldn’t be working more then 3-4 hours strait unless they really want to. Each day is 6 hours so there will be two shifts a day.
Below are some possible areas, These areas will only happen if there are people to support them.
Learn to Solder, and workshops - At this booth people will be putting together learn to solder kits and other kits that we sell. People: 4-5 people at any given time, 20 shifts to fill this area… Equipment: Soldiering stations, soldering kits.
Kits sales booth - We would be selling kits and anything else that we can sell. All the sales would be via cash or square, this makes it so we don’t need to have many people handling cash. See below for a list of ideas of things that we could sell. People: 1 person at a time, 4 shifts,
Info booth - We talk about the space, what happens there, how it works, what people make, what tools we have, how people can get involved, How different groups get help each other. these people will be talking a lot. etc… 1-2 people. 4 shifts. Equipment: TV with slide show for the space. business cards or take aways, etc…
A radio controlled helium blimp, with a big VHS logo on the side, and maybe some LED matrix action.
Construction ideas:
Lift: 2 or 3 36" diameter helium balloons. Roughly 400g of lift capacity each, $1 apiece from Aliexpress.
Envelope: Strips of ripstop nylon, sewn together into a “cage” pattern (i.e. not a full bag, just enough material to snuggle the balloons into a cigar shape, and support the airframe, $cheap
Airframe: Foamcore, $Free
Propulsion: 2 brushless RC motors (one front, one back), enclosed in 3D printed shrouds so the props don’t take out anyone’s eyeballs, $Free
Guidance: 360 degree servos for yaw control, ~270 degree for pitch control. Motors mounted on gimbals. Need heavier-duty servos than I have lying around, probably $60 worth
Helium: a $100 tank should cover us for 2-3 days
Foamboard Airplanes
Find a simple design for a foamboard “chuck glider” (i.e. free flight), laser cut the pieces, have some glue guns and instructors around so people can build them right then and there.
Those Air Swimmer things use a hilariously, ingeniously cheap mechanism for pitch control, they just move a little weight fore and aft to adjust the balance angle. I’m thinking active thrust vectoring is probably good enough for this project.
How about esp8266 projects?
Show how an esp8266 and temp sensor can upload data to a website - this could be shown in real-time on a laptop, or where a sensor is triggered and a text sent to a phone, or…