We featured the Snapit Screw story here in December and are delighted to welcome them to the Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire as a Commercial Maker. They’ll be selling their eyeglass repair kit and sharing inventor Nancy Tedeschi ’s inventive journey at our event.
Welcome,SnapIt!
The variety of Maker applications rolling in has inspired us to extend our application deadline to February 22. Why? Because we’re curious, and curiosity is good. And because we still have a little room left, and we want to see what other wonderful stuff you can help us fill our space with!
In addition to our fantastic Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire Truck Rally, some remarkable commercial Makers (to be announced soon!), our community Makers include:
The West Central Florida Section of the National Association for Amateur Radio is joining us – “Amateur radio operators (hams) were the original Makers and Hackers,” they tell us. “Using new, used and scavenged parts to make transmitters, receivers, and antennas capable of communication with other hams anywhere on Earth. From microchips and robotics to time and space itself, the Makers within the Amateur Radio ranks build and explore new way to play with the radio spectrum. The Core Purpose of the ARRL: To promote and advance the art, science and enjoyment of Amateur Radio. ” They’ll have some gear you can try your hand at!
The Tampa Bay Inventors Council is a 28 year old group in Tampa Bay that supports “the inventive spirit in us all”. They help educate new inventors about inventing and spread the innovation concept. Look for some innovative things at their exhibit!
The University of South Florida Robotics Interest Group , who will have on hand a variety of their robots, including four fighting robots from 3lbs all the way up to 220lbs, and an autonomous balance bot.
Our Young Makers with their NetBot invention – “ a generic open robot platform designed to be simple to modify to do whatever you want it to do. The goal of the robot is to be a cost efficient way for you to play with bigger robots. The main feature of the robot is the processor, which can be pretty much any kind of netbook or laptop you happen to have laying around the house.” They hope to be able to drive it around our Mini Maker Faire .
Plus cars, arts, and more! Don’t see something you do here – then join us and share what you Make with Tampa Bay!
Posted in Craftspeople, DIY, DIY Fun, Florida Inventors, Hobbysts, Inventions, Make, Makers, Mini Maker Faire, Tampa Bay inventors, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Young Makers
Tagged amateur radio association, Florida Inventors, inventors, NetBot, new technology, Tampa Bay Inventors Council, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire Food Truck Rally, Tampa inventors, USF-Robotics Interest Group, WCFS-NAAR
Want to be a Maker at the Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire? If you’re just demoing, it’s free! We welcome crafts, engineering, music, robots, workshop digital fabrication, energy, demonstrations, performances, projects and anything home made, innovative, instructive, artistic and interesting!
Our Tampa Bay Mini Maker application is now live, and we’ll accept applications through the end of January!
Applying
The first step to participating in our Mini Maker Faire is to submit an entry that tells us about yourself and your project. Entries can be submitted from individuals as well as from groups such as hobbyist clubs and schools. We’ll want a short description of what you make and what you will actually bring to Maker Faire, along with links to photographs or videos of what you make. We particularly encourage exhibits that are interactive and that highlight the process of making things. Here’s some of what we’re looking for:
Types of Makers
Makers: Individuals, groups, schools and organizations that would like to demonstrate what they make and/or how it works in an interactive environment. For Maker groups, schools & organizations, we ask that you have one point person to coordinate your group efforts. Makers do not pay a fee to exhibit at Maker Faire for non-commercial exhibits.
Commercial Makers: Individuals who would like to sell products along with demonstrating what they make at their Mini-Maker exhibit. If you are a Maker with a product that you would like to sell at Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, please let us know us that you are a Commercial Maker on your application. There is a $75 fee for commercial makers.
Please note, companies or commercial entities do not qualify as Commercial Makers. If you are a company or commercial entity, please see our Sponsor page.
The Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire is looking for robots! We’re going to have the NetBot we reported on earlier, but we want to see more robots!
We know there are a lot of FIRST teams in the area, and we know our Mini Maker Faire is being held right after the Orlando FRC Regional , and the Florida FTC State Championship and the FLL State Championship . The Mini Maker Faire is just before the VEX State Championship in April.
But we’re inviting teams from FIRST and VEX and robotics hobbyists to join us for a special Robot Makers Round Up, at the Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire on March 31.
If you can join us, email us at info@learningis4everyone.org by the end of January, and let us know! Robots ROCK! And there’s no better place than our Mini Maker Faire to show everyone why!
Chris Willingham and Andrew Remmers, both 19, are former FIRST robotics team members turned mentors, turned inventors who have teamed up on the development of the Netbot. The Netbot got its start as the Skypebotabout a year and a half ago, the brainchild of Chris, who wanted to see if he could create
The Skypebot
his own remotely operated robot. Tinkering with Vex parts and a Netbook computer, Chris wrote the rudimentary code that allowed anyone using Skype to drive the computer. Beta testers included a friend in California and his sister, who was studying abroad in London at the time.
Eventually, Chris teamed up Andrew, who he knew through the FIRST community and the Skypebot blossomed into the NetBot, “ a generic open robot platform designed to be simple to modify to do whatever you want it to do. “
“The goal of the robot”, says Chris, “is to be a cost efficient way for you to play with bigger robots. “
The NetBot
The main feature of the robot is the processor, which can be pretty much any kind of netbook or laptop computer, bringing costs within reach of the everyday hobbyist, but also enabling the creation of a powerful, adaptable machine. The basic platform consists of a 3-wheeled omnidirectional drive system controlled by an Arduino, with a two foot diameter frame topped by a telescoping center laptop holder that will extend at least four feet in height. The developers’ goal is to make the robot available for under $1000.
“Since this is a sandbox robot,” says Chris, “you can program it however you want. We’ll provide an API for a variety of languages, but the main framework will be written entirely in JavaScript — that’s right, a full HTML5 robot!– and the Cloud9 IDE will probably be bundled into the software making it easy to write software for the robot from a web browser.”
If the robot owners don’t like the framework, Chris says, it’s a simple matter of reprogramming the Arduino as needed or desired.
Chris and Andrew, who plan to debut the Netbot at the Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire in March, shared a little of their story with us, and some of their hopes for the Netbot.
TBMMF: Tell us a bit about yourselves.
Andrew: I have been involved with FIRST since 2007 and through the great 
mentoring of multiple people have become very good at what I do. I first became interested in mechanical engineering in 2009 (my second FIRST FRC game) when my FRC team collaborated with another team here in Florida. I had been on a mission to learn CAD and more about mechanical engineering and a mentor on that team showed me how to do very basic CAD, ever since I have been teaching myself CAD and actually do it professionally part time for a few companies.
Chris: I’m also a former FIRST student. I currently attend St. Petersburg College and mentor Team Duct Tape, a successful FTC robotics team. I have been involved in FTC for 4 years and before that participated in FLL for 3 years. Throughout my participation in FTC, I taught myself a variety of programming languages, ranging from Java to C/C++ and Python and a couple of years ago, interned at AnyBots, a Telepresence robotics company in Mountain View, California. For the last few years I have been playing around with building a laptop controlled robot. I eventually showed Andrew a prototype I made out of Vex parts with a laptop strapped to the top. He liked the idea and came up with a good drive system, and we eventually it turned into a collaborative project. I work on the software, electronics, and budgeting (and a little PR) and he works on the mechanical side of the robot.
TBMMF: Give us some ideas of ways the Netbot might be used.
NB Team: The most practical application we have come up with so far is your basic Telepresence robot. Even though the robot is capable of far more, we have managed to control robots through pretty much every major video chat system including Skype and Google+. We will have Telepresence capability built into the robot so that no programming is required to use it as a Telepresence robot. With a basic Netbook or laptop strapped to the top, it is pretty much the most affordable Telepresence robot you’ll find.
However the robot is capable of far more. With a decent computer strapped to the top, it is possible to do advanced image processing, object tracking, face detection, or even SLAM algorithms . Or you could have it tell you the weather. The API can be accessed through almost any programming language, so pretty much anything you come up with, you can probably program the robot to do.
TBMMF: What’s your ultimate hope/goal for the Netbot?
NB Team: We would love to see this robot used in Maker Projects. While the robot still costs a bit more than we would like, it is one of the most affordable robots of its size and capability. We would also like to see this robot used in businesses as Telepresence robots, and colleges, as a low cost platform for robotics projects. We are developing this robot because we see an enormous potential for it, and we think others will, too.
TBMMF: Will we see a working model at Tampa Bay Maker Faire?
NB Team: You bet! We hope to have a prototype of the robot finished by the end of January and the API finished by the end of February. We are planning to have a fully programmable prototype of the NetBot running at the Maker Faire drivable through a web browser (and maybe it’ll be able to tell you the weather too). Keep an eye on our site . We will be posting updates as we continue to develop the robot.
TBMMF: We can’t wait to see what the NetBot Team brings to Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire!
Posted in DIY, Florida Inventors, Hobbysts, Inventions, Makers, Mini Maker Faire, Tampa Bay inventors, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Young Makers
Tagged Andrew Remmers, Anybots, Chris Willingham, FIRST robotics, FRC, FTC, inventors, Maker projects, NetBot, Skypebot, SLAM algorithms, Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, Tampa inventors, telepresence robotics
83 Degrees media reports today on a cool invention – literally! While the weather has been seasonably pleasant in Tampa Bay in recent days, our more usual clime can trend towards hot and sunny with a 50% chance of heat stroke. Florida dog lovers who enjoy hauling their canine companions along know the risks of overheating, especially for certain breeds.
That’s why long time dog lover Brian McClish, of Tampa, developed the K-9 Koolee, a portable cooling dog bed. McClish experimented a while before coming up with a medical grade polymer that holds its temperature over a long period of time – in the case of the K-9 Koolee, up to 8 hours – just right for a day at the beach!
Laurel Barnhart is a Tampa Interior Designer turned Inventor, who recently developed Top of the Boot , a patent-pending “boot sock” that enables instant customization of any boot. Simple, elegant and fun – Nothing like DIY fashion!
Posted in DIY, DIY Fun, Florida Inventors, Tampa Bay inventors
Tagged boot sock, inventors, Laurel Barnhart, Tampa inventors, Top of the Boot
Steve Velte is a game developer. No, not those kinds of games – the interpersonal , face to face, game board on the table kind of game. And he was honored at the recent Chicago Toy & Game Fair with a commemorative card in a speciality deck featuring the mostly unknown inventors behind some of the world’s most popular games.
A former electrical engineer with Hewlett-Packard, Velte founded his North Tampa company, RSV Production, 20 years ago, where its first product, plastic cactus cowboy car antenna decorations. Sounds humble enough – but he’s sold more than 20 million of those little cactus cowboy dudes in the last two decades.
Today, Velte holds seven patents, including one for a magnet based game called Jishaku , which was named one of the top 10 games of 2009 by the Chicago Tribune that year, and was named Game of the Year by Learning Express.
You can learn more about Steve Velte in this recent Tampa Tribune article.
Tampa Bay Inventors Council president, Wayne Rasanen, of New Port Richey, is hoping for a kick-start for his chord keyboard Input Terminal.
“The “It Types” keyboard has only ten keys, one for each finger and by taping one or by holding one and pressing another, you can create 100 keystrokes. This reduces the footprint of the keyboard to about the size of a credit card, ideal for mobile technology. The design is very versatile & can be used with one hand or two, and for a wide variety of uses.”
Read more at Kick-Starter and at Mr. Rasanen’s website In10did .
The Bloomingdale-Riverview Patch reported recently on Valrico inventor Ryan Chavis’ iPad bag, the iBackFlip, a strap-on pack to make the iPad easier to carry and use while on the go.
“I just didn’t like the fact that you had to carry it on your hand all of the time,” Chavis told the Patch. “It needed more functionality for people that want to take it out into the field at work so I started working on a way to make it happen. Now we’re working with several different retailers to sell the iBackFlip. Our customers have said they would like more storage, so our 2012 version of the bag is going to offer that too.”
Read the full story at the Patch, and visit ibackflip.com to learn more about Chavis’ product.
Posted in Inventions, Tampa Bay inventors
Tagged iBackFlip, iPad carrier, Ryan Chavis, Valrico inventor
