Bristol Mini Maker Faire

Today I took my 6 and 2 year olds into town to look around the Bristol Mini Maker Faire. It was really good and highly recommended.

We saw the Nao and Baxter robots from Active8 Robotics, a laser cutter from Just Add Sharks in action making press-out catapults, Raspberry Pi-powered wheel and track robots from Dawn Robotics and plenty of other things.

The kids were particularly taken by a couple who reverse-engineered childrens’ electronic toys like the Furby or basic motor-controlled toys and had them rigged up to simple push buttons to make them work.

We also liked seeing how Is Martin Running? works, and playing on the Makey Make.

They were sadly a bit too young to make their own shonkbot or get a Petduino (needs soldering) but watching the RepRapPro in action was a novelty, and we came away with some printed robot figurines which they treasured!

Many thanks to the chap from Ragworm who valiantly tried to explain how circuit boards are printed to my 6 year old 🙂 it will no doubt be easier to comprehend when our Flotilla kit arrives!

There was lots of other homebrew displays from people who used the Bristol Hackspace and I’m only sorry I can’t remember the names of their projects, but we all enjoyed it thoroughly!

Here’s looking forward to the next one!