Episode: 1300
Title: HPR1300: Maker Faire: Kansas City
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1300/hpr1300.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:11:06

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Music
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. It is I, Mr. Jackson. It is the
brotherable son back on the AgriPublic Radio. I don't know. In fact, he will be listening
to this, but I like this element entirely for some, and there is a new one. But if I
really get right, it may be sooner rather than later. But I have decided that this would
be a good one to put on AgriPublic Radio, because it is about something that occurred
in a bit kind of a report. And it really doesn't matter that the events has already occurred.
It's just a give you an idea of what it would like to go to the event. And what kind of
events are around you that you could do this kind of report? So that would be my challenge
if you like this. Go to some AgriPublic Radio kind of an event. Go to some events that you
know hackers would be interested in. And you know, put in your report of how all of that
took place. And the event I'm talking about is MakerFair here in the Kansas City area.
And this is going to be kind of a take-to, I guess. I don't know whether you're going to
hear this one or the first time I try to call it in, but a lot of people say, go ahead
and I don't think it got saved properly. So I'm trying it again.
MakerFair here in Kansas City, this is the third annual full-size MakerFair that we've
had. And I have had the opportunity to attend all three and to actually more actively participate
in the last two. It's down in the central area of Kansas City by the old Union Station,
the Union River Road Station. And they use that space both inside for lots and lots of
different tables and groups and things with people showing things that they have made
or things that you can make yourself as well as outside. They got interesting attractions
there. And they even used space for lots of things that would be of interest to children
and activities for kids at the MakerFair this year in the Science City, which is the local
Science Museum, National History Museum, has a Science City that kind of is alongside
the old train station. It's not actually inside the train station building. They built
a new area right alongside of it that connects to the train station. So they had a lot of
things for kids there, activities that could participate in and things like that. Lots and
lots of things for kids and lots of children and their families that were coming by. This
was a little biker this year, that it was last year because last year it was one of the
hottest weekends of the year when MakerFair occurred, which it's been here for the last few
years. And I'm hoping we'll continue to be the last weekend of June. And last year it was so
very, very hot. One of the hottest summers we've had for quite a while and it was the hottest
weekend. These stuff until that point and they have been one of the hottest weekends of the summer.
So the people who were doing outside type of things, I really was worried about them because
it was just so impressively hot. Also last year since they didn't do the things in the
science city area and it was so hot outside and I think that's really made for everybody to
be staying inside in the air condition building as much as possible. And it was very, very
packed last year. It didn't seem as packed, although I imagine when the actual figures come out
that the amount of it can be both probably people or surpassed last year's. But it was harder
to actually get a real pulse of that because of the way it was spread out and probably more
efficient in a manner. There were several different groups that were there. I was kind of there
with the May KC group again to help out with that in whatever way I could. And there was also
another hacker group, you know, there's hacker space here in Kim City called HammerState.
Originally there was a group called CalTown Computer Congress and they never managed to get
there on India. They're nice. They were doing things. But then somebody else opened the
found this place, a slightly different part of town and opened up this HammerState site and
it had more tools and things like that or making physical things. A lot of equipment meant that
you may not understand how to run and they'd not be able to afford it. Your homework shop is
available in that space. And the CalTown Computer people have kind of moved down and co-existed
in that space. So you got your Peter guys, the software side of things, and you got guys
building things there in the HammerState. Lots and lots of interesting projects. They have
the biggest group of tables like things there with the HammerState people. And it was quite
interesting, all the different things that they had that hacker had worked on. Of course, the
unique maker fear is a lot about 3D printing because, you know, the maker revolution has a lot
of 3D printing kinds of elements to it. And there were all different types of 3D printers that you
could see. In fact, one day, the second day of the fair towards the middle of the afternoon,
I overheard a couple walking by with their children and the wife said, oh, look, it's a 3D
printer. And the husband said it's rare. And I was thinking to myself, really, I mean, you couldn't
swing a dead cat and not get 2 or 3D printers. You know, it was a very target rinse environment.
If you were interested in 3D printing. And I saw all different kinds of various designs
of 3D printers. And that was a fascinating aspect of things. There were guys outside who have
the 3D printers, as well as inside. It's considered the aspect of the head moving and the platform
moving up and down for the 3D printers. There were a few that had the platform being the best being
totally still. And the head being moved both back and forth in the X and Y axes, but also the Z axes.
In fact, one group came up from the Arkansas area, Little Rock Arkansas group of hackers.
And there was a company who is down there who came up and they had a person who came up
along with them who had built this kind of spider-like. It was like a three-legged spider that
looked like. And the three articulated arms would then move the head and the platform stay still.
And it would build up the 3D object. That was certainly an interesting one.
Although I told them that I thought that I would have dreams at my nightmares of the spider
coming off of its old-fashioned and hushed-year as I have. Speaking of harm, you know, there
was plenty of people who were talking about, you know, being able to have robots that, you know,
3D printers like the front robots that had been replicate themselves. And somebody else's
who was working on getting the robots to be more more intelligent. So like it's probably any
make sure that you don't see it. You're seeing those beginning points where the robot
looks like we'll end up just right at all. There was another group from the St. Louis area.
And that was a pretty substantial tip for both the students. Little Rock is probably five,
eight and six hours away. And St. Louis is at least four. And they came in there. There's
another young man outside who had all kinds of interesting projects. A lot of things in terms
of trying to aid people to have very specific abilities. And he lived in Nebraska. He said the
closest really hacker space to him is two or three hours away. And he had come in just to be with
people that could understand what it was he was talking about. Because nobody where he lived
in Nebraska can really understand when he talked about the project. I thought that was interesting.
The group from St. Louis and not only some very interesting things with 3D printers and things
like that. But they also had a printing press where they were printing things. But they had hand
made a physical press with years of pressing down. And they have made one of those remote control
telepresence things that you're building with big gang theory. So you remember when Dr. Sheldon
Super decided he couldn't leave the apartment. And so he had himself a robot telepresence
device with a screen and a webcam. And they had built one of those. They were driving that around
and things like that. That was fun. One of the diets in Hammer Space have built tube amplifiers.
And that really really calls to me. He's got a very interesting design with text-shaped
enclosures that are connected together with a central shell that are his speaker enclosures.
And then those are made out of layered wood. And then he has on the sensor-wise shell
is where he has his free tube circuit for his amplifier. And it was kind of a retro 60-2
kind of thing that you could use to plug into your MPC player. And I just, oh man, that was really
really interesting to be. One of the guys in the Hammer Space area also had a, he had
recreationally the gearing mechanisms in parallel to like a lined up toy, this little bear
that he walked around him. He's made a giant plastic version of that. And he had on a
bed one day. I was really interested in this thing to be inmate. And he had a hand crank to be
able to operate all the gears and everything and move the articulated legs. So he also had
on this bed that have a tube on the bed. And I walked up to him and said, I'm really interested
in your project. But I also think I need to join your launch. Because I think I already know
one of the main chemons of your your launch brothers, which is that real electronic glow.
So I got into the back of my mind that I and I may have started to tackle. Once I start
building more electronic things, I'm going to have to tackle making myself a little tube amp.
That would be fun. There was an internal, because a guy that had one of the singing
Teflacoil outside. We had architect. The first year they tried architecture inside,
nobody could hear anything while they did their show. Last year they put the house side now
much better. This one you'd have a singing single small Teflacoil that he only did three things
with the musical Teflacoil. So it wasn't too bad in terms of interrupting
conversations. Metal Riddle, the interesting guy, his act, he does like Steve Trash, and he was
a magician using recycled kinds of materials and things like that. He had a really cool
cigar box guitar. And a really cool case, he had eight out there with the car box guitar,
met him early in the morning on Saturday. And it was talking with him about his case,
his guitar and everything like that. He had a really great act while him do his thing. And like
that all recycled materials, so he kind of integrated a design environment message along with his
act. And that was cool. Outside we had the amateur radio operators, which we had last year,
had them again, because last weekend of June is when the amateur radio operators around the world
practice their field day operations, which is emergency communication. So usually when you have
any kind of emergency happening, the first people to establish communications from those emergencies
are amateur radio operators. They're the first people to get the word out about how things are
going in that area. Before the telephone companies can get everything up and running again,
and the telephone companies can get the landlines going, the amateur radio operators can come in
there and get information in and out of those areas that have natural disasters that take place.
And this is kind of the weekend where they practice that. They go out and they work all off of
battery power. And can this, if they have put up just for the purposes of field day, which runs
from Friday afternoon until Saturday. And they do that overnight, even on the Friday night.
That was going on there. And all kinds of interesting things outside. Some guys had taken the
little electric kind of children's toys, the little ride-on kinds of things that are little
jeeps and other kinds of vehicles. And they run off of six-volt or 12-volt gel cell batteries.
And they had actually taken those and added more batteries and you know,
done some work on the motors to make those run faster. They were actually racing them on the
course that they set up. So, once again, we have the young people that were out. They make
foam rubber kinds of arbor and have foam-covered weapons. And actually, our whacking, if each
had a pretty hard one, could foam weapon. And it's not like at the A where you can get really hurt
all that bad. And so, they were, I was worried about that last year when they were out there in the
heat. This year was at least thankfully cooler for them. Every time they would parade through the
inside, I like a bunch of barbarians and make a lot of noise and let everybody go to the favorite
outside doing that kind of thing. And I think just overall, it was a great experience. It's my
third one and I plan on being at the maker fair every year that they have it. And I think it's
just a wonderful thing to get together with all these people who are interested in things that
they can make, things that they have made. There was candy leather there showing kids how to work
leather. There was another kid. I bought a print from him. Actually, I gave him a donation
for a print and he had a print of a vacuum tube with the word make on it. I thought that was
very, very cool. So, that little piece of art is going to go up at my cubicle at work.
And it was just a great time. There were, you know, I run or my Linux shirts both days and people
were commenting on that taking that was cool. There was even one group, a couple of young men from
Kansas State University at Manhattan, Kansas. And they think they have an idea of being able to do
3D printing with aluminum. Actually, using aluminum wire on a school. And I will be following closely
their progress in that regard. So, that's my little report on Maker Fair KC. Hopefully,
this time it takes. And you're listening to me talking to you right now. So, what kind of
things do you have that you can go to? There was one group that I found out that there was a
Comicon apparently here in Kansas City and they didn't even know it back in April. So, I'll probably
be attending the Comicon and I will be reporting to you what it is that I saw and what it is that I
did at the Comicon. And if you've got a Comicon or some other kind of geeky hacker interest kind of
thing that you go to, go ahead and submit a report like this and let us know what you're doing in
your particular area. But until then, this is Mr. Gettys and I will be signing off. And I'd like
to remind you, if I ever start out my open shorts broadcast, this is how I would in every podcast
making, you know, things out there and hackable hardware. And that is, I encourage you to go out
there and do something to make something to do something. So, let me agree. This is Mr. Gettys,
a B-0-Y-O, signing off and out here on the Technological Frontier by now.
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