Maker Faire's Greatest Hits

fair and invention and d I Y and inventiveness. We we talked about this in our last podcast that we're really going to kind of concentrate on the fun, wacky stuff that you can see. Um, sometimes stuff that doesn't have any practical application, but I should that matter who cares? Yeah. Maker affairs really all about the spirit of do it

yourself work, and it's also all about expression. So it doesn't necessarily have to be Hey, I built this amazing robot that can climb trees, and maybe one day it'll have this practical application. It's more about look at this amazing idea I had and the implementation of it. Yeah, And one point I wanted to make in the video and I think we should make here also is that it's sort of an artificial distinction that between the like

just the fun inventions and the really practical inventions. On one hand, yes, in the moment, like you're not going to be able to use a fire breathing wolf for anything all that useful, but the process speak for yourself, Joe, Well, yeah, I mean, for for Lauren's robotic reenactment of Game of Thrones, a fire breathing dire wolf is key. I like that you specify it's a dire wolf and not just like a gray wolf. Well, yeah, very important. Uh what was

I saying? You're saying that the practical it's the same spirit. And as we talked about in our previous podcast, the two modes of invention feed into each other. Yes, tinkering around with stuff just for fun can can lead into some really terrific useful inventions, and the other way around. Yeah. So Maker Fair usually ends up looking like a really kind of crazy art festival combined with like performance space performance are There's a little bit of Burning Man kind

of going on there, and there really is. It's also very kid friendly. They also have a host a lot of like at the out in San Francisco and that they had like a soldering tent that you could anyone could line up and go in and learn how to solder stuff. There's usually um a lot of of work around specific emerging technologies, like three D printing really became

something beyond what just the hobbyists knew about. Through maker Fair, you know, you would see maker Fair hosting these these groups that we're making their own three D printers, which you know, I mean, I'm sure everyone who's listening to this they're familiar with the idea. But just in ace, a three D printer uses plastic and very very very thin layers to build objects from well the ground up is kind of a way I'm saying. It's added manufacturing.

You're only putting in what you need for whatever the final build is. And it's really useful for stuff like in manufacturing. It's useful for prototyping. Right, So you come up with a design, you design it on a computer. You don't know if this design actually is going to work in the real world. You need to make a prototype of it, so you send this three D model

to a three D printer. Yeah, if you do it with a three D printer, then you can get a model in a very short amount of time and you don't have to worry about h an error in the machining process. You know, it's engineering a sculptor or yeah. Yeah, you don't have to sculpt it first, and then you know, it cuts out a lot of steps and it also cuts down on waste, and then you can see if your prototype works well. In the d I Y sphere, people are using three D printers to build parts for

all sorts of stuff. So we've seen some really cool applications of that. Not to mention, we've seen some really interesting actual three D printers being built by people who show up at maker Fair and they say, well, you know, here's our three D printer. We designed it this way, and uh. There are a lot of people who are working on open source projects that with the goal being that ultimately you have a printer that can more or less print itself or at least most parts. Yeah, exactly.

It can't print itself assembled, but it can prints to the point. You know, in most cases, what we're talking about with three D printers is that you're printing out pieces that you would then assemble into a final overall piece moving parts. Yeah, or just as very inexpensive three D printers, some of them, you know, like around three hundred dollars or under run around there. Yeah, that's crazy three. Yeah, well we're talking about stuff that used to be in

the twenty thousand fifty dollar range. Yeah. Now, the ones I was looking at maker Fair that are three hundred dollars, these are the really basic ones. So they're they're small, and they're not going to get the level of size or resolution you get with a bigger, more expensive printer. Right, the layers that you can do it for that amount of money, that blows my mind, right, And there there

are a lot of different examples of stuff. Now I've actually been to a maker Fair event, but it was one that was hosted here in Atlanta at Georgia Tech. It's a much smaller scale than the ones you see in New York and San Francisco. There's even there's a big one that happens in Detroit and around the world too. They've got them globally now, right, yeah, so it's beyond

just uh, those those cities. The one here in Atlanta was again a smaller scale, but it was and it was mostly dominated by robotics, which not a big surprise. Georgia Tech. Yeah, that's an engineering school, so there was quite a bit from them, though, a lot of the cool stuff I've seen from maker Fair has been robotics oriented, right, the steel wolf that can blete fires, wireless control, robot giraffe, robotic bartender, mixed drinks for you. Yeah, there's the walking pod.

Did you see? This is the walking pod? Was? Uh? It's it's a moving spider like device. It's essentially the pod is large enough to camp in, because that's what the guy was sleeping in while he originally took it to burning Man, but he also took it to make

it fair. Um. It has uh, I think twelve legs, so six in front, six in the back, and it moves fairly slowly, but it uses to ninety volt half horsepower electric motors to move its legs and it crawls along and looks like it's the stuff out of Nightmares. But it's pretty interesting. Um. I've seen also a lot of different sculptures and kinetic sculptures and flame producing sculptures.

Flames are really popular and Mega Fair. Anything that can shoot fire automatically gets a big response from the crowd. Can I tell you one of my favorite things I've seen? Please? Oh? I loved it the Architect act singing Tesla coil. I've actually seen these in person. Architect has has traveled around, They've they appeared on one of those, um like America's Got Talent type shows. I remember they were on one

of those as well. But Architect, Yeah, they used Tesla coils to generate this high voltage electricity and then they can create these audible frequencies of electricity and change the pitch of that based upon the voltage. Music. Yeah, what it seems like the key is that they're using solid

state Tesla coils, which you can manipulate digitally. Right. Um, So if you can program a synthesizer or any kind of digital music producer to communicate with that Tesla coil, you can get it to spark a note, and so you can program in any kind of song you want. Really yeah, and when it sparks, you hear the sound. Here in Atlanta, they appeared at a Dragon Con a few years ago, and uh, they quickly won over the crowd by playing famous sign fiction themes like the Doctor Doctor,

Yeah there's and if you wanted you get in the cage. No, they didn't have the cage that. They didn't do these versions right. Yeah, they've got a they've got a fair day cage that they'll put in the center of this. A fair day cage, of course, being something that will that will conduct electricity around an object rather than frying

it directly. Um, and that's an oversimplification, right, but yeah, that's the same sort of thing that people have suggested movie theaters installed so that you can't get any cell phone reception within a movie theater. That just could put the whole movie theater within a fair day cage and then you don't have to worry about people checking their phones all the time. Actually, yeah, I would totally approve of that, other than you know, in case of emergency.

But but yeah, so they'll have this fair day cage up on stage and they can let so let a member of the audience go up and stand in it and and have all of the electricity sparks from the Tesla coils going directly onto the surface of the case. They've also created special suits that you can wear that Now granted they don't let audience members volunteer and wear this, that they have had a member of architect wearing this suit where they it looks like they are shooting lightning

from their hands. I've seen them use that in particular for a moving rendition of the Imperial March from Star Wars. The Empiress tricks back, which makes sense, right, Yeah, I can show you the video after this. All this is on YouTube, by the way, Just go on YouTube and check out Architect. I'm sorry, I want musical Palpatine in my life so much. That's so, that's at I'll send you the link so you can at least move. Yeah, like the lightning, the force lightning, that's what we're talking about.

Joe's caught up. Uh yeah, No, you didn't mention before you were talking about force lightning. No, you're right, I didn't mention force lightning, but that was exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, just like I was like thinking about Palpatine. I was just thinking about the empire, right right, Yeah, I was. I was thinking of the Emperor in particular. But yes, that is that is the case. So but they they and I'm one episode, are not one episode.

One performance that Architect was at the had one of our distant colleagues join in, and uh and I remember that there their um profile shot up after this because grant Amhara of the MythBusters was on stage and he was the one put in the Faraday cage during the architect performance. And actually grand Amahara, he's a good example of one of the people who often participates in these kind of events. So does Adam Savage. He's actually done several like keynote addresses at maker Fairs to talk about

the spirit of invention and making and this idea of inventing. Uh. They both of them are known for their inventions. I mean, Granda Mahara is probably better known for building robots for robot battle type things, but Adam Savage has done. If you do an Adam Savage search for Adam Savage and Maker Fair, you're gonna see a whole bunch of different talks that he's given and are really inspiring about the spirit of making, the spirit of going like, I want

to put this thing together. How does it do? Yeah, he says. He says, I want everyone to go out there and fail big, fail better. The idea being that don't let someone telling you that you know the thing you want to do is impossible stop you from doing it, because you know you don't really know it's impossible until you've given it your absolute best, and even then, you know you might you could prove it wrong. So um

cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. For for the generalized record, the maker Fair debuted in two thousands six, I believe, and in San Francisco, and and as we have said, has gone global since then. It gets bigger every year. I know a lot of our colleagues out in San Francisco cover this every single year when when they three and uh like Texilla and all those kids have some really great, really great videos and coverage. One of my favorite things that came out of it was not really it wasn't

even a huge head turning invention. You know. It wasn't like a fire breathing wolf for a giant walking pod. It was a concept that really just encourages that whole sense of innovation and an invention, which is the nerdy Derby. So they the nerdy Derby. So, uh, Joe, were you ever a cub scout? Yeah? You do? You remember the Pinewood Derby races. I did not participate in those, but I know what you're talking about. You make a box

car that has no engine, rolls down a hill. It's a slot car race essentially, so, but it has very specific rules like your your your car has to fit within a certain set of parameters. It can't be too small, it can't be too light, it has to fit within a certain nitro no nitro yeah yeah no no no uh oil slicks or weird spy hunter technology, but no, mostly it's turtle shells or stars. I think we've covered all of the variations now. But it has. The point

is it has rules. Nerdy Derby does not, So nerdy Derby's like twisted metal up in there. Well not really, because it's still it's still not although there's no rule about I mean, it's still a slot car race, right, so it's still you're still putting it in a little, uh predetermined track. So the goal is still to get down to the end of that track faster than the competing cars. But you can use heat seeking missiles technically, I suppose so um. I don't know how you would

implement that in a way that would be safe. I think you can't do anything that would kill anybody. But anyway, it's called no rules manage your car building, Mr Semantics. So anyway, it's it's it's done out of n y u H, it's out of their interactive telecommunications program. Actually and UM, the you can either design and build your car and then bring it there to race, or if you really want to, you can just show up and build your car while you're there and then race it.

I saw some really interesting designs in a video showing it off, and uh and I like this idea because again, it's not like a huge invention that captures everyone's imagination. It's more like continuing to uh to to inspire this innovative spirit and others. UM, probably the best invention I saw, at least as far as I'm concerned. I mean, there are lots of great ones, amazing inventions, but the one that I saw where I thought I want to try this out was actually created by a bunch of high

school students, which already blew my mind. It was high school students who built a flight simulator that has two axes of movement and three sixty degrees of freedom within those two axes, meaning that you can rotate in essentially every direction, so you can do barrel rolls, or you can do loop the loops in this thing, and all

combinations thereof. And it's called the Viper. The reason it's called the Viper is it's inspired by Bell Star Galactica, so it's named after the ship, the vie, the type of ship in the Bell Start Galactica, the Viper, and so uh they developed everything about this flight simulator, including you know, they used tools that already pre existed. They used an open sore flight simulator to be the basis of the flight simulator part, but they had to program

their own skin on top of it. In their own uh. They had to to map the movements of this physical flight simulator to the game they have. Are all these are Dueno modules that are controlling basic elements of this, including uh, set dressing. They created set dressing of all these blinky lights to give you more of a feeling

that you're inside the cockpit of a spaceship. And they use three computer displays to be your your windows, so they're you know, it's like you're looking out into space and you have a joystick and a thruster that are your your actual physical controls and a control panel that lights up so it looks like again that you're inside the cockpit of a space spaceship. And uh, and they're high school students, like the guy who was talking about

the Um, the flight simulator was in eighth grade. You know, high school students who have built something that when I saw it, I thought I would pay good money to have a run in that point. I would love to take that for a flight. But that's the kind of

spirit we're talking about. Is this idea of you know, if I were back when I was in high school, if someone had told me that, you know, I could get with a bunch of my friends and build a flight simulator that had all these degrees of movement and everything, and I would have thought they were crazy. I would have said, I'm really busy watching cartoon sushi. Can can you get back to me later? Yeah, So my high school experience was different because I was thinking tiny tunes. Anyway,

similar similar experience, just different different content. Uh. But there were a lot of other projects that I looked at that I like. I like the pancake Bought. Did you guys see this? I think that familiar Pancake Bought was made out of you guys know that. You know Lego makes these kits where you can get robotics. Yeah, it's got. It comes with a a programmable module that you can you can use. It has a very simple computer programming language that comes with it, or you can even use

more complex languages. If you want to think what tiny remote control planetary rover made from a Lego Mindstorms kit. That's pretty cool. We've we've actually saw some robot battles here in the office during a Christmas party that were run by these these um these modules. Well, in this case, Miguel Valezuela built a Lego robot that makes pancakes. And

what it does. What it does, there's a griddle that it is built around, so there's a griddle in the center, and then you have a moving arm that holds a squeeze bottle of pancake batter, and the moving arm can squeeze the bottle, uh with just enough force to get exactly the amount of pancake batter you need to make whatever kind of pancake you want. And you can program different patterns in so you can make pancakes of different shapes.

So there was a video where he was making them essentially in Mickey Mouse shapes, but then also in other more complex shapes, and it was really entertaining and that was just a cute little project that was the you know, again, no real practical use. You would be a way easier for you to make a pancake just by putting batter directly on the griddle. In a way, we're kind of talking about the same sort of spirit that we see

in Rube Goldberg devices. Right well, I mean some of these things though they seem kind of silly, but they have a surprising functionality. Like um, I mentioned the robot bartender earlier, So okay, you can make your own drinks whatever,

you know. It seems like it's just for fun. But one thing that's cool I noticed about the robot bartender is it can make you a drink with the correct proportions of everything in any size you want, right right, So you can have a one ounce Manhattan or a or a seven ounce Manhattan, and it's all the same to the machine. It's just you know, you're saying, you're it's plugging in mathematically the proportions of what it's serving to you exactly, so you can make yourself an extremely

tiny or an extremely large cocktail. Uh. And it does the same no matter what whereas people are using these like you know, oh and I have a shot glass, and right right, I need one part of this to four parts of that to two parts of this other stuff, whereas this thing can do all the math and make it, make it like the mathematically perfect cocktail, right right, And if you put that in say an industrial kitchen or or in some kind of chemistry lab, then that could

have definite applications beyond getting people drank. Yeah, oh no, no, no, I could see if people could even make a lot of money getting people drank off of it. Right. They put one of these in a t G I Fridays and it's serving up drinks three times fast. Well, you think about it, it's it's kind of it's kind of the alcoholic version of those crazy soft drink dispensers that you can get now, where you get the hundred different

flavors out of one soft drink dispenser. Um. Yeah, suicide machine, Yes, that's exactly, by the way, suicide For those of you who don't know, we're talking about the kind of drink where you just mix everything together to get whatever it was that the Yeah, but do they all because now when I hear suicide machine, I think drama and I think they're both joyful. Yeah, that's true. At least Binder seemed to get a kick out of both. Um, yeah,

it's there. There are other great examples. Oh there's one that was more of on the artistic side than on the them mechanical engineering side. And I wanted to get your your your reaction to this, although really to get a true reaction you have to watch the video to see how disturbing this is. I don't know that I can paint a picture of how creepy I found this particular exhibit to be. But it's called the I Want To Project by I Wu Kong who created this interactive exhibit.

And the exhibit what does is it pulls in Twitter Uh, well, tweets I guess you would say, uh that have either the phrase I want to or I have to included in them. So it just it doesn't search essentially on Twitter every so often and pulls in tweets that have these phrases in it. You get robotic voice that reads this out. There's actually a monitor that shows this in

really low resolution the actual tweets. So think of like a like nineteen eighties era computer where you get that really primitive looking text, you know, the low rest and it's a robotic voice that kind of hearkens back to that as well, and green text. No, it's actually light blue,

light blue text, um twit sure. But it also has this little army of tiny little robots that all look identical that are are on uh there, each on a stationary little pedestal, so they don't walk around or anything, but they all look kind of like, you know, kind of like a puppet would if you just let go of the strings and it kind of slumps over. So

imagine all these little slumped over figures. The machine reads out the tweet and then all the figures slowly move around for about ten seconds in kind of what looks to be a pretty random fast and then they stopped moving until it reads out the next one, and then

they all move and then they stopped moving. The idea behind this was actually that cong was saying, when you say I want to or you say I have to, how much of that is an internal thought versus the kind of pressures you received from external sources like society and culture, like I want to get married. How much of that is from actually you, like you as a person,

as opposed to what society expects you to do. And so this idea was every time it says I want to it's or it says, I have to you have this crowd of robots that all move together, suggesting that maybe this isn't something that actually originates from within yourself, but rather is something that is influenced by and that and and uh boy, you know, I know it sounds like the nightmares of Day McKean. I mean, honestly, that

sounds terrifying. As you know, my sister is a professional puppeteer, so I've seen some really kind of in a native crazy theater that's all puppetry based, and some of the stuff is really effective, especially the things that kind of make you feel disassociated with what it is to be human. And it's just a sort of odd, uncanny valley kind of feeling. This is what that that kind of gave me this feeling here. And the robots, by the way, they don't look like people. They look like little robots.

I mean they don't you know, the heads are more rectangular than round, you know that kind of thing. Humanity is an illusion. Yeah, yeah, so, but it was, but it was an interesting kid. It was. It was very much more of an artistic expression than um, you know, this is a feat of engineering, not that it can't be both. No, that's interesting. So what is the future of stuff like this, the sort of the home design,

the d I Y, the hobbyist inventure and inventor mentality. Well, I think it's it's interesting that um a year after maker Fares really got off the ground. Um, And in two thousand seven, indie go go was founded, and a couple years later, in two thousand nine, Kickstarter was founded. Yeah. And these organizations are businesses, I suppose are are very much into promoting the work of people like this and and making it financially feasible. Yeah, promoting or enabling. Yeah. There.

I have a couple of stats here just about the kind of amazing success people can have with crowdfunding. One of the things I found on Kickstarter was one of their highest earning things, the Oculus Rift. I've talked about that before. That's the the headset that allows you to get sort of a three D first person view of virtual world. So it's kind of like what we think of when we hear the phrase virtual reality. And Jonathan, you've used one of these, and I did. It was

pretty cool. It was really cool. I mean, it was amazing there. And the Oculus Rift is One of the things that the promise is that it will be able to work with multiple systems, so that it's being talked about being used for gaming. Yeah, mostly for gaming, Like you could see it being used for other applications as well, but as a gaming element, I could see it being really cool. I mean, I had fun playing in a

in a fairly primitive world. It was. It was designed so that it would give you this experience of being in a you know, this first person perspective, but it wasn't like a um like a graphically rich world. But the Oculus Rift can do that, so you know, imagine

being able to run around. One of the top games like the one I want to play in is Skyrim I wanna or LD Scrolls I want to run around and gorgeous if yeah, if you ever play any of these these games on on the current generation or the next generation systems, the level of detail and the artistry that goes into level design and world design is really impressive.

And it's one thing to see that from you know, a third person perspective behind a character, or even a first person perspective, but you're still looking at a screen. It's another thing to feel completely immersed in that world, and you develop a level of appreciation for the skill of the artists who designed this thing that goes well

beyond just wow, that's a pretty game. So the Oculus Rift on Kickstarter crowd crowdfunded right, asked for two dollars, got two million, four hundred and thirty seven thousand, four hundred and twenty nine dollars. Another another simple, little little tech project, the pebble E paper Watch Minds on order, huge hit. They asked for a hundred thousand dollars, got

ten point two million. Yeah, part of that was that, you know, the way Kickstarter works is you know, for for someone who creates a project, they're supposed to create rewards that go along with that project. So if you contribute at a certain level, you should expect to receive a certain reward for your for your investment, your contribution. Really it's not an investment. They're very careful that they

call it that um. So one of the things we started to see is that for for groups that are putting together an actual product, not just some sort of project, like you know, I wouldn't say that a play for example, if you wanted to produce a play, I think of that as a project, not a product. People fun stuff like that, ye, music and theater. And but if it's if it's anything that's a physical product of some sort or even a digital product of some sort, then generally

they include that as one of the reward levels. Right. Well, in the case of pebble, uh, and in the case of most of these, you would get at a certain level, you would get a a one of these products, right and uh, usually it ends up being a discounted price as to compared to what the suggested retail ice will be of the finished product. So it gives an incentive

to people to back a project. You know. Not only do people get the satisfaction of backing something that they think is really awesome and they want to see it happen, but then they can also get paid basically, yeah, pre order of something for less money than what it will be when it's out, you know, on store shelves. Yeah. So I think crowdfunding has been a big hit and is going to continue to make UM designing technology, especially

for the little guy, UM an easier thing. Now, one thing I do want to comment on is that I think there is started to be and you all might agree some backlash against crowdfunding because of things like people funding projects and then not getting the stuff that they

were promised. There are there are a lot of reasons it's been abused, I think a little bit, and and abuse is maybe a strong word, but um, you know, by by the kinds of people who could easily get funding for their project X from other sources and it winds up flooding, you know, kind of kind of artificially inflating the market in a way that I think takes attention away from there are smaller people who might not

be able to get their funding out. There's some people who, let's say that you're a person who has an unsuccessful campaign. I'm one of those. I I did a campaign on Kickstarter that failed to fund. Uh. There are some people among that group who say, who blame large like high profile projects that already have a crazy following for taking away money from smaller projects, as if it's a zero sum game. I don't think it's a zero sum game.

Complicated than that. Absolutely, I don't blame I don't blame the fact that my Kickstarter project didn't take off on the fact that the Veronica Mars movie was funded. Like I don't. It's Kristen Bell's fault. And if if I ever run into her, that's fine. You'll like miss Bell. Your success has has made it clear that my failure is even greater than I think. No, not at all, not at all, um. But you know that's one one aspect.

Then they're there are other ones like uh. One that was a little controversial, which is not a big surprise because these guys deal in controversy all the time is the Penny Arcade Kickstarter. They're only Kickstarter campaign in order to uh run Penny Arcade ad free for a year. I think was the full like if they hit all their stretch goals. It was a full year of Penny

Arcade with no ads on the page. And there there were people who said, that's not really what kickstarters for now that's that may be true, but Kickstarter has to approve every project before it's it's featured on Kickstarter, or else you don't get a project. So ultimately, someone at Kickstarter said, this is a perfectly acceptable use of our service.

And and whether that's because having folks like Penny Arcade, an Amanda Palmer and Kristen bell Um promoting Kickstarter or whether it's really the most appropriate project for the site is an argument that I will not make here because it would You can also if you're if you're really cynical, then you say, well, the white Kickstarter makes its money is by getting a percentage of however much the person raises, and if it's a high profile project, they're going to

possibly raise way more money, which means more money for the company. That's if you're being cynical criticisms aside. I do think crowdfunding represents a lot of potential develop Yeah, we wouldn't We wouldn't have seen the game console, which as we're recording this podcast, it's gonna be a couple of weeks before this comes out. But as we're recording it, it's just now hitting retailers and has already sold out. But the reason why that exists at all is because

Kickstarter funded it. And that's another example of overfunding where I think they got like eight million dollars from Kickstarter and they were asking for a hundred thousand. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah, As of right now on indiego Go, the skin of doo Scout, which is a non invasive biofeedback um It can take your temperature, in your heart rate, and a whole bunch of other bio signals from you within ten seconds from holding it up to your forehead with your

thumb and forefinger. Um. And and it's it's being funded on Indiego go right now. And I think it's you know, it's being called a triquarter. How crazy is that? Like? How and it's you know, it's it's definitely along those lines. Here. Here's the question, if you've got a triquarter, why do you really need a doctor? Well, you know, because you can you can diagnose yourself from home, or you can you can say, oh, hey, I'm totally sick from home, and then you need to go to a doctor. That's

kind of like asking. That's asking like if you've got web m D, why would you ever go to a doctor? Joe web MD. I'm gonna have to start saying this every every podcast. You gotta go on the corner and sit out the rest of this one. Um, Lauren take the axe away from him. Uh X, it's not that's just a joke. Lawrence had the X the whole time. Um. Yeah, So, I mean I agree that cloud funding is definitely definitely something that will enable future tinkerers to really kind of

indulge in this, in this innovative spirit. And not all, not all projects are going to be ones that are going to require crowdfunding. But I think it's a good tool. I think it's going to enable a lot of stuff. And then I'm sorry, go ahead, Well, I was going to mention another thing, but did you have something I was just gonna say that you made the point in our video that also that that the information on just

the basics inventing and tinkering are out there. You've got all sorts of websites that tell you how to do various projects, and they can go all the way from beginning to you know, the basic elements of soldering and and and electronics and welding and all this kind of stuff, all the way up to advanced techniques where you're talking about fine tuning a really intricate project. Even software online and also products like the Raspberry Pie are making things

like this very easy for people. In fact, that the whole purpose of the Raspberry Pie was the guy who created that he saw that there was a decreasing amount of understanding around basic programming skills because our our technology is getting more and more sophisticated and complex, which means that there's a higher barrier to learning how it works. Right, when you had a very simple computer, relatively speaking, it was easier to learn how it worked. It still was

not like, oh, well, you know together. It's also cheaper to build your own in those days than it was to buy one pre made, so well, depending upon how you're what you're shopping for, that can still be true today. Another way of saying it, I would say it's probably easier to learn basic than it is to learn C plus plus or you know. Well, sure there's that too, but so so the Raspberry Pie. As you developed complexity

and power, you also developed difficulty, right and well. And the Raspberry pies purpose was to create a very basic computer on a chip that people who were interested in programming could play with and learn the basics. Uh. And it would be a very uh easy entry level way of getting into programming. And I've seen some crazy mods for Raspberry Pies, like you know, the basic ones, just a chip that you can then hook up to a display and then some other things like a keyboard or

a mouse. Uh, and that's it. But there are people who have made their own custom cases for it. There are people who are using them in robotics. The same thing is true with the Arduino micro controllers, which have been used in a lot of different really cool d I Y projects. So yeah, the the the tools have become uh much more accessible for a much larger audience. So I expect the future of tinkering just to go crazy.

We're gonna see some really creative projects. Yeah. The big tool I think here really is three D printers also, and the reason that's a big tool, and I want to be careful to say what I'm not saying. I'm not saying three D printers are going to turn everybody's house into a factory that where you're just not going to be printing around clothes and food and tables. Johnny Johnny put a scratch on the table, so let's just print a new one or especially more complex machinery. But

one thing that I think is really interesting. I was watching a video is somebody made uh for maker Fair, and they were selling a very cheap, very basic three D printer that they've made that was a new low cost option, And what they said was they wanted to make tools for makers. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting because a three D printer is kind of the perfect tool for a maker. It allows rapid prototyping, like we were saying earlier, in a way that that other

things don't. You know, if you need a a specially shaped molded part to go on the thing you're building, well, how would you get that before? I mean you'd probably have to like send off to somewhere to make you a batch of these. It take longer, be more expensive. With a three D printer, you can prototype rapidly in your own home, right, Yeah, which is which which makes designing that much easier, right because then you know, Adam Savage, like we said, you know you say fail big and

fail better. Well, part of that is this the fact that we have created we being you know, engineers have created these amazing tools that allow us to try lots of different stuff in quick successions. So if you do a design and you realize after you've created it and you've you've got all the parts that it doesn't quite work the way you intended, and that you need to tweak that design, it's a lot easier to do that

now than it was before. So you don't have to worry about going through the whole prototype process from beginning to end, still not knowing if it's going to work, and going and making a very wasteful amount of of byproduct in the process. So I mean, all of that is really pointing towards this amazing future of tinkering and expression that I cannot wait to see. Well, that wraps up this discussion about maker fare inventing d I y, if any of you guys out there have amazing projects

that you've worked on. I know that I've I've encountered listeners before who have really gotten into this sort of scene and they've made some phenomenal stuff. If you have participated in these sort of projects, let us know. We want to see it, we want to hear about it. We'll we'll be happy to mention you on on forward Thinking because we've got a real healthy interest in this

and respect for everybody who really participates. To get in touch with us, bunch, you send us an email the addresses FW thinking at discovery dot com and go to FW thinking dot com. Check out the blogs, the videos, the podcasts, and all the articles that we've linked to. There's some great stuff out there that I think you guys will find really entertaining and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com, brought

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