I’ve thoroughly enjoyed attending the last couple North Carolina Maker Faires. This year, I felt that I’ve finally built enough interesting gadgets to host an exhibit of my own. “The Creative Contraptions of Jeff Highsmith” will be a small table or two containing a few of my more interactive builds. The idea of the Faire is to engage visitors and inspire them to keep or start making fun stuff of their own. My projects are well-suited for this because they are original enough to be cool, but simple enough for most people to make, especially if they’re willing to learn a little.
I’ll borrow back my climbing game from the break room at REI.
Dispatchatron Senior has been in storage but will be ready with a little dusting and a few more toy fire trucks.
Dispatchatron Junior is always ready to travel, being smaller than a gallon of milk.
Additionally, I’ll have two more projects on display, a race track toy that I seriously enhanced and a scratch-built, multi-piece play set inspired by a Dr. Seuss book. These projects are complete, but I haven’t gotten the videos published yet.
I’ve also been working with a few fellows that are going to be launching a balloon into near-space from the parking lot of the Maker Faire. I’ve been writing code for the telemetry system while others are working on the other (harder) aspects.
The Faire will be awesome, I’m sure.