This weekend on September 26th and 27th World Maker Faire 2015 took place in New York City at the New York Hall of Science. The event was packed with makers, projects, science, and much more. Check out the photos below to see some of what was at World Maker Faire 2015!
World Maker Faire is all about makers showcasing awesome projects. Like SatNOGS who were showing their Hackaday Prize winning project to build a versatile satellite ground station:
Plenty of makers gave interesting talks too, like Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories talking about his book, The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory:
There were lots of interesting projects about biology and health too, like this robot to dispense chemicals:
These beautiful ties from Cerebella Design were printed with patterns taken from objects under a microscope:
There were plenty of tesla coils–some big, some playing music, or some that were small like this one:
The fixing session booth encouraged anyone to sit down and fix their broken electronics instead of throwing them out:
You could find fun components like LED matrices in many projects:
Or an articulating servo arm to aim and fire little plastic missiles:
Hackerspaces from all around the area converged at World Maker Faire to show off the fun stuff their members build. Hive76 from Philadelphia had great projects like an ASCII art camera, and a decision making computer called Clyde:
If you asked Clyde a question in the microphone he would beep, light up, and then give you a yes or no result:
The Wizrd of Fun and other amazing puppets from Steven Hanania were fully articulated and moved around as if they were alive:
Tess Elliot had stunning paper dioramas/theaters:
Triple Cities Makerspace had great projects on display like a motorcycle they converted to be fully electric, and a drink mixing robot (don’t mix the two!):
Safety Third Racing had interesting drones used for first-person drone racing on display:
This mobile sewing station could stitch almost any pattern and was powered by the sun:
Adafruit parts helped power many projects, like the ultimate GPS breakout here:
Larger companies had a great presence at World Maker Faire too, like Microsoft’s booth which was showcasing Windows 10 and its capabilities for maker projects, 3D printing and more:
Adafruit and Microsoft even collaborated to provide a kit for getting started with Windows 10 IoT Core on the Raspberry Pi 2:
The pack has a preloaded Windows 10 SD card and collection of sensors & components to get started making fun projects:
The Selfie Curtain used a camera to grab pictures and then display them on a bright LED matrix:
The slot car demo showed how to control a toy racetrack with a phone:
Google had a booth too that showcased a lot of science-related projects, like this CNC microscope that could move the microscope head around to capture a large image:
Also an eTape liquid level sensor spotted at the Google booth:
Hugbot could squeeze its fuzzy arms using a 3D-printed linkage, wires, and motors:
Atmel had a great presence too that showcased many Arduino projects:
The dark room inside the Hall of Science had beautiful LED displays, like this interactive LED wall you could ‘paint’ on and change its patterns:
Beautiful wearables with animated NeoPixels:
The Makers Italia booth had a display of Italian maker projects, like 3D printers and biotechnology:
Intact Healthcare was showing a wireless haptic feedback glove to help disabled people:
Inside the Maker’s Pavilion Cemetech were showing how they help kids learn to program using TI calculators:
The calculators are hooked up to devices like cameras, GPS receivers, etc. and can be programmed to interact with those devices using simple libraries:
They even had an awesome wooden case TI-82 calculator:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation had a great booth to raise awareness about the efforts they make to protect user’s electronic rights:
The 2600 Magazine van and crew were around too:
One of the coolest things I saw was the huge audience of people who wanted to learn how to solder. There was a line wrapped around the large learn to solder tent!
Other workshops taught things like electronics and crafts:
Makers doing things for education were another show highlight, like the Fairfield County Maker’s guild who taught kids how to build small robots powered by an Arduino:
Or in this case an Adafruit Metro!
Full Tilt STEM Pinball was another fantastic maker education project. Middle school children built pinball machines powered by a MaKey-MaKey and the Scratch programming language. Each pinball game was tied to a theme like history, and the results were fantastic!
There was a lot of great retro technology on display, like this record player and communication equipment:
And some great retro computers too, like an Osborne 1:
The Mid-Atlatnic Retro Computing Hobbyist booth had a fantastic collection of vintage computers for people to use too. They’re working on restoring a UNIVAC that was recently donated too!
Everywhere you turned there was something exciting and interesting to see, like this new years countdown clock:
Or a tower of littleBits components at their booth:
The Raspberry Pi foundation had a great booth with plenty of Pi’s to try out and learn from:
Lots of purple OSH Park PCBs powered maker projects:
Spinbot was a tribute to old video game consoles that used classic NES controllers:
NYC Resistor had a great presence too:
There was even some Radioshack memorabilia turned into an electronics project near the Atmel booth:
The atmosphere at World Maker Faire was filled with electricity and fun. It was a great place to show off an interesting costume, like this cool eyeball helmet:
Or drive up in the Bio Bus to teach about biology:
The R2-D2 builder’s club showed an attention to detail and level of craftsmanship in their projects that was amazing:
The sounds of World Maker Faire were decidedly electronic, like from this circuit-bent and hacked audio gear:
Some of the sights were out of this world too, like this orange suit topped with a computer monitor for a head:
And if it was a little too intense outside you could check out the Hall of Science and find fun stuff like this amazing arcade game from Todd Michael Bailey. He repurposed a vintage vector CRT to display a modern 3D action game in an amazing retro style:
More of the fun sights, like this great collection of yarn for knitting:
Honk NYC had an awesome drum line performing outside too:
Where else could you see a fire breathing robot flanked by rockets? World Maker Faire of course!
Or a cute metro card robot dog:
Thanks to media & community sponsors like Adafruit:
World Maker Faire 2015 was a fantastic experience and well worth checking out if you’re in the New York City area!
All photos in this post taken by Tony DiCola and released under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 license.