Giant cardboard structures have become the signature for almost all Singapore maker events. This time we are welcomed by a friendly LED T-Rex.  Interested to see the making of it? Do watch the time lapse video by it’s creator Bartholomew Ting.

The presence of Sustainable Living Lab in the Maker faire had been growing each year. I give my personal “best project” award to the Mech Pong by David Teo and team. Watch the video to see how well it is constructed.

For the first time Colin of the Destruction Squad put up a non-stopping live tear down show. Kids love it. Remember I first took grandpa’s drawer locker apart, and trying to put back… What a mind-opening exploration… (~~ don’t turn it on, take it apart ~~)

Maker Leon Lim a.k.a circuit board man brought us a Christmas bag with bling bling electronics. Check the “double layer” construction.

Of course circuit board man always comes with circuit boards. He is also doing live demonstration of PCB etching using household products. And he just wrote a very nice guide!

Another project which has particular interest to me is the “Synesthete’s Music Machine” by Benjamin Low and team. The machine captures images and synthesis sound based on the colour. Listening it for a while and gradually you can imaging the colour just from the sound. Sorry it may sound dull from engineer’s description. “Art Makes Us” is Ben’s slogan, and yes designing such a project is art, and implementation is just minor engineering efforts.

I like two types of projects, that are particularly complex, or that are particularly  clever. The Homopolar Motor is the later. Originally invented by Michael Faraday almost 200 years ago, it still amazes me.

More amazing founding is from the Centre for Quantum Technologies of NUS. Mr Nick Lewty shows us Magnetic levitation of superconductor.

Just like previous two years, 3D printer takes a huge stage of the exhibits. While I’m a bit tired of the stereotyped RepRap derivatives, this year we have a locally designed 3D printer AMaker3D. This is a totally production level printer with well designed enclosure, nice touch interface and superb output quality (0.2mm resolution). Both mechanics and electronics are redesigned. And most impressively all the work are done by two lady engineers Shu Fen and Siew Hong within one year’s time! Please check their website and their successful KickStarter campaign. Support the local initiatives.

And let me have the shameless self-promoting in the end. This year I finally participated Maker Faire as a Maker. Together with Ridwan, Astrid and See Tho, we put up a project named B.en.G – Bicycle Energy Generator. We use a traditional bicycle dynamo and transform the output into a handphone charger. We also collect statistics data such as power generated, rider’s speed and total travelling distance. After two days of exhibition our bicycle has travelled more than 300km, and generated about 10wh of energy for charging. Although the amount of power is barely enough to charge 2 handphones, we wanted to deliver the message that energy is precious resource, and harvesting energy from routine activities is both necessary and convenient.

I don’t know how you feel, but I feel Maker Faire is like a new year’s day to me. This is the time when I look into the past and check what I’ve achieved. I would say the best thing I did last year was to step out of my room and participate in many community events, also made a lot of friends. For the blog site I wrote 6 new articles, of which some are quoted directly or indirectly by Hackaday, Dangerous Prototypes, freetronics, or other sources. My site has accumulated 36,942 visits, averaging 105 visits/day as of 2014, increased from 55 visits/day of 2013. This year is of tremendous fun.

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This is the second year of the event and the venue was relocated from the remote (to me) Science Center to Singapore’s busiest Orchard area. And it is free entry for all

If anything would dominate the theme of the whole faire, that is 3D printer. This year we see less MakerBots, more self-built devices.

The huge printer “B.O.B” by romscraj (http://romscraj.com). Its gigantic metal frame makes every other printer looks like a toy. But it is not printing by the time I reach there. Printing huge object will take a long while, I guess…

An unfinished wooden 3D printer (mill? laser cutter?) silently sits beside a MakerBot Replactor 2, but certainly catches more attention. The wood framework is as sturdy as it looks. The booth is within the Sustainable Living Lab (SL2) platform, nobody was there at the moment, pity

This is the first time I saw the “Rostock Delta 3D” driving mechanism. Watching the three step motors running mad to keep the extrude platform flat == nerd porn.

Singapore Academy of Young Engineers & Scientists (SAYES, wonderful name) brought us ultrasonic water purifier. It (supposedly) uses high power ultrasonic wave to break dusts. The water in the photo may not look clear at the moment but half minute before a handful bunch of sands were just dropped in. BTW it effectively cleaned by glasses as well

Mood indicator by Media Lab LASALLE. It aggregates twitter messages and trying to detect sender’s mood by indexing keywords. A map is then plotted showing the mood of the people around the world. Is Singapore the world’s unhappiest nation?

Temperature recorder by the same Lab. It has integrated temperature sensor (of course), a GPS module and a dial letting people to choose if they feel cold/cool/perfect/warm. The data are then aggregated to map the temperature across the island. Very practical crowd sourcing application.

This Soundscape application (available on Andriod Market) creates 3D sound effects. Its bigger speaker brother (to the left side, sorry for the truncating) further demonstrates highly directional capability, definitely great for public events so the neighbours can stop complaining. These young startups has a website http://www.immersivesoundscape.com/ Please do checkout their cool inventions.

You will never see shortage of Arduino on a Maker Faire. This Email prank thingy contains an Arduino and a WiFi shield. It sends out an automated email when the button is pressed. May I have email notification when my coffee is ready?

Talking about coffee, these two coffee machines brew super strong coffee without electricity or hot watermark. Everything back to nature (future?).

This piano staircase leads up to the stage. But the sound is too weak to attract much attentions. How about a 100W Class-D Amp next time?

For the Arduino community 3E gadgets has brought in the little lovely TinyDuino board. Within the tiny 20x20mm square a full Adruino Pro Mini (ATMega328P/8Mhz) equivalent circuit is setup. There are also bunch of tiny shields available so user will have no difficulty to deal with the miniature connector. Another good news to the Makers here in Singapore is that 3E Gadgets is now an official distributor of Adafruit Industries. That means we do not need to pay the $8 mailing fee and wait extended days to get hands onto Adafruit products!

This is the second year I met Mr Jolyon Caplin. He is demonstrating a remote controlled toy excavator. With his modification this $80 toy almost became a robot dancer!

And as usual his signature light rods. Talking about the circuit, it is powered by an old school PIC16F84 (still available in Simlim Tower :-o) Getting most out of a chip is definitely the art of electronics design.

If Ian of Dangerousprototypes is the celebrity last year, this year we have Bunnie Huang. He gave a talk “Singapore better than United States for hardware makers”. Full report of his talk is here.

I shall end this post by introducing this wonderful lady engineer Michelle and her projects at AIS CUBE.

With a team of 2 they managed to implement a BASIC virtual machine inside PIC32 micro controller, together will a full development platform named “Sonata”. This is a tremendous meaningful project that opens the door for kids to learn electronics. I would compare it with the Raspberry Pi project, but this is much more low level yet easier to hand on.

And yes I’m the lucky bastard who grabbed one of these tiny twik^2 dev boards. At first glance it contains a PIC32 MCU, a 3 axis accelerometer  and a tiny RGB OLED screen (which is nice!) Please expect more to come about this little board.

Final words:

The maker movement definitely increases the talent pool. It is true even in a crowded island like Singapore where everyone is busy making ends meet. I hope those who sitting high above can hear it. Instead of bring talent in, why not incubate own talents? (quote from Bennie)

PS: No Raspberry Pi this year, why?

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It is a day to remember, 4th August 2012, that I attended the inaugural Singapore Mini Maker Faire 2012 (#SMMF12).

Door gift, a SMMF12 badge with blinking LED light.

A paper Optimus Prime guards the entrance. Size does matter, is it?

Seems everybody is talking about 3D printer. This is the famous MakerBot Replicator.

“Portabee”, selling at much cheaper S$600 as a kit. It is foldable and “portable”. The interesting feature is that all the plastic parts are actually 3D-printed (chicken-n-egg story!) . I think a wise way to use it is to print a set of spare parts before they wear out.

A rotating LED POV display by RS-Components (DesignSpark), demonstrating Renesas GR-SAKURA board. I wonder how reliable the connection rings are.

A beautiful laser-cut Raspberry Pi case by 3DGadgets. Wish I can have one.

Had a chat with Mr. Adrian Koh from 3EGadgets. He shows me the wire wrapping on his LED board. Impressive!

An Augmented Reality game by Mr. Masahiko Adachi. Kids love it!

Electronics Puzzle by Mr. Masahiko Adachi again. To my guess upon finishing you should have a working radio.

Angry Bird game by National Instruments. Impressed by the improvements of Labview.

Had a nice chat with Ian of Dangerous Prototypes. Great to meet some celebrity (can I have a nicer photo?) We talked about ATX bench power supply, Bus Pirate, Shenzhen electronics market, and he introduces me to hackspace.sg

I also had a long chat with NUS-HCI lab students and their supervisor. Nice to meet you Biyan, Brian, Kin Yong and Shengdong. I love the Tangible Programming Toolkit. What a pitty I didn’t take a photo! Oh!

Finally my tribute to sgbotic.com. If not for your news letter I would not know this amazing event! Anyway I got your discount coupon. Let me support your web shop

It is really nice to meet the maker community here in Singapore. Shall I setup a booth next year?

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