A Maker Summer to Remember 2013: Part 2

TechNinja — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 08:55:37 +0000

Such a summer has been had this last year by us, it’s taken nearly 6 months to get an update. Busy doesn’t start to cover it!

With the creation of her incredible WaterColorBot, Sylvia then launched her Kickstarter to make it into a kit for everyone to enjoy, which then launched her on a tour around the world. Picking up where we left off back in July, just from momentum we breeze past Summer and on into Winter:

August 10th: Riding the wave of her success at the White House Science Faire in April, Sylvia was given a full scholarship to NASA Space camp, flew across the country on her own, had an incredible, unforgettable time, and even got a custom made NASA twitter badge which she now proudly wears on her lab coat.

Sylvia says: "It was really really fun! I got to meet so many cool friends, and I went on the multi-axis trainer and spun around, but didn't get dizzy. I also did two awesome missions where I was one of the ISS commanders and did a bunch of experiments, and another where I was doing moon mission control in the future. I am totally going back as soon as I can!!"

August 15th: We made it! With the community's help, we demolished our goal of $50k to raise nearly $90k towards the WaterColorBot project. Now in December and January, bots are shipping and backers are getting their hands dirty with robots, CNC, and watercolors!

Sylvia says: "WOO HOO! So happy and excited to finally complete the Kickstarter so bots could get out to people. Thank you everybody who contributed to make this goal happen, and for those that got one, hope you liked the cards I made :) "

August 17th: After her return flight from Space camp, we stopped off at Boing Boing: Ingenuity with the WaterColorBot. In the first hour we formed the most incredible team in the universe, with me, Sylvia, Joe Grand, and Ben Krasnow, proceeded to create a Ford XC controlled Water Color Painting hack. We then won first place grand prize (a MakerBot Replicator 2) totally by accident, and freaked out.

Sylvia says: "I still can't actually believe we got the grand prize! I had total blast with Joe and Ben, who are unstoppable incredible uber-makers and I can't wait to do more awesome stuff with them!"

October 10th: After a quick invite, Sylvia was incredibly pleased to attend and talk to young girls at Intel to celebrate the international day of the girl! She talked all about the incredible journey she’d taken, did some Maker Makey experiments, inspired some girls, and was given a brand new Arduino Galileo board from Intel CEO himself Brian Krzanich.

Sylvia says: "Super cool to meet the CEO and all the awesome girls making fun experiments with Makey makey and scratch, and I can't wait to try to make something cool with my new Galileo board."

October 23rd: With summer over, well intentioned plans altered by a loss in the family, we continued on and arrived in London for MozFest. Where Sylvia and I spoke and presented all about the WaterColorBot and it’s open source APIs, and showed off our web interface demo. So much fun, so many new fans of this little painting platform and the show. Full photo album here.

Sylvia says: "Going to London was SOOOOoooooo cool! I met so many amazing, creative people and got to tour around London, and it was one of the best trips I've had yet. I'm going to make my web game and submit soon!"

December 5th: With November nearly uneventful, RobotsConf in Florida headed up December with Sylvia and I doing a quick Keynote about the crazy adventure we’ve had this year, with her making the WaterColorBot, and me making the desktop software to drive it (Full photo album here). Once that was out of the way, we dove in and hacked together an awesome AR Drone with Spark Core triggered servo grabber controlled entirely by Leap Motion hand gestures.

Sylvia says: "I love Florida! And yea I was a little scared to do my keynote, but me and Dad winged it and had fun, and the rest of the conference was all about making awesome robots, so that's never not awesome!"

December 12: Only just returned, she’s off again to her third TED event, TEDx San Diego! Sylvia spoke all about her incredible adventure so far with the show, and the WaterColorBot from inception, to incredible difficulty getting through iterations, and how she conquers the innumerable hard problems keeping her from her dreams every day (including doing the talk!). Video to be posted soon.

Sylvia says: "Phew! Glad that's over. Yes, it was fun and amazing, and exhilarating, but man how stressful. I think I'm going to wait a bit to do anymore talks for a while. For now I'll stick to fun videos :) "

And that just about wraps up for this year. It’s been an incredible whirlwind of activity, and though the WaterColorBot has been big, Sylvia really hopes she can now focus on more episodes and outreach to teach the magic that is getting hands on and making things.

A Maker Summer to remember 2013: Part 1

TechNinja — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 15:04:54 +0000

TV show appearances, Multi-Maker Faires, and Crazy Robot Adventures? All part of a regular summer for us here at SSAMS.

When we last left our heroine “Super-Awesome” Sylvia, she had just started to recover from a whirlwind trip from RoboGames to the White House with her Watercolor painting CNC platform, the WaterColorBot. Now in only a short 2 and a half months, we’ve gone around the country and back again. Here’s the highlights, in reverse chronological order:

July 16th: Sylvia launches her very first original product, the WaterColorBot, as it’s own educational kit on Kickstarter. Supported and manufactured by the incredible staff at Evil Mad Scientist, this one is sure to be a game changer, not to mention it’s fun and incredibly educational, but we’ll have to make our goal of $50k before August 15th! Can we make it? Check out the widget on the front page, or just tell all your friends, family and teachers to go to watercolorbot.com for more info.

July 16th: Sylvia and Lenore of Evil Mad Scientist will appear on Maker Camp! Sylvia will be driving up to Makezine HQ and talking all about the bot, and taking questions from viewers around the world. Check the Maker Camp event page to ask questions and see them in action!

July 11: To New York, for a quick appearance on the Katie Couric show, airing Tuesday July 16th, 2013! Sylvia shows off a few awesome science demos, and the WaterColorBot tries to draw the Katie show logo. To a nation looking to improve their science and engineering literacy, hopefully this will help to inspire them all. Check out more and some web exclusive content from Sylvia on KatieCouric.com

July 6: Sylvia turns 12! This anniversary also marks the beginning of her fourth season of Maker Show, this year is going to be spectacular.

June 29: To Missouri, for Sylvia’s third year at the Show me state’s greatest show and tell, Maker Faire KC! Sylvia and her bot painted over 35 portraits over 2 days, not to mention we had a great time at Hammerspace, playing with the robots, and playing around at Science City.

June 19: To Atmel, microchip headquarters of the world! Sylvia was featured at their bring your kid to work day, celebrating education, engineering of all kinds, and awesome experiments, most involving microprocessors like our favorite, the Arduino. Read more about Sylvia's jaunt into integrated circuit fame on the EMSL blog post.

May 18: Maker Faire Bay Area, and incredible bustling non-stop exciting amazing everything at once kind of thing. Lots more makers this year, so much to see. Sylvia manned the booth for a while, but still got a chance to escape and really enjoy the faire, always a good thing. Thousands came to see the bot, and almost everyone walked away with a smile.

To the future!

This summer isn’t over yet, Sylvia will be co-leading an Extreme Engineering camp July 22 to 26 with Gary Stager, then off to Space camp in August thanks to the amazing support of fans. Not to mention so, so much more to come, like new episodes (really, we mean it!), books, and things we can’t even imagine. See you all soon, and don't forget to breath... and get out there and make something!

Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show! - Kickstarter

A Maker Summer to Remember 2013: Part 2

Tags

A Maker Summer to remember 2013: Part 1

To the future!

Tags