Apparently a big project brewing for Lucas Ainsworth and Alyssa Hamel of Kinetic Creatures — check out this post over at MAKE for more details!
Despite having just submitted their application for Maker Faire Bay Area, Lucas Ainsworth and Alyssa Hamel of Kinetic Creatures are already hard at work on the project they have planned for their second appearance at the fair: an enormous, bike-powered, cardboard “Rory the Rhino.” At last year’s Bay Area fair, the couple had just launched a Kickstarter campaign to jumpstart the production of their Kinetic Creatures, a set of three cardboard animal kits that cleverly fold and slot together to yield Rory the Rhino, Gino the Giraffe, and Elly the Elephant.
The introduction of a handcrank or simple gear box mechanism allows the animals to move. Lucas, an industrial designer and researcher at Intel, and Alyssa, an art teacher and artist, had been toying around with the designs for a few years, and they finally decided it was time to make them a reality. The Kickstarter campaign was successful, netting double their initial goal of $22,000, and soon Kinetic Creatures were making their way around the world. For this year’s fair, though, they wanted to go bigger by literally enlarging the design of Rory. They plan to build a roughly human-sized version of the rhino, still out of cardboard, and attach a bike in front of the rhino as the gear mechanism, allowing fair visitors to pedal the bike to make the rhino move…
Rory the Rhino – Kinetic Creatures: Rory the Rhino is a walking cardboard animal sculpture that you assemble from pre-cut and scored cardboard pieces. Rory walks when you turn the included wire handle, or Rory can walk with mechanical and electrical additions, such as Lego motors or the Kinetic Creatures Motor Kit. (read more)
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: The latest on Raspberry Pi RP2350-E9, Bluetooth 6, 4,000 Stars and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
