Hey guys! Here's my second Vlog. It's all about Robogames 2015!
This year I entered into the lego robotics competition and had my friends Schuyler St. Leger and Roger Fachini III showed off their hacks and improvements on the WaterColorBot.
Check out Roger's WCB demo files here:
https://github.com/rogerfachini/spiraudio
Check out Schuyler's demo files here:
White House? Yes! Robogames? Yes!! Crazy non-stop roller-coaster of life? Definitely.
UPDATE: Sylvia announces the Science Fair for the White House! And be sure to watch the live event at wh.gov/sciencefair, or at wh.gov/live, beginning at 11:30am EDT (8:30am PDT) on Monday, April 22, 2013.
Original Post:
Brentwood School STEAM Day was a blast, we saw the sights, and helped over 40 kids walk away with a brand new mintyboost, and a respect for making things with their soldering irons. Both worksheets used at the event are now available in the printables section. Wrap-up post to come.
Not long after, Sylvia was invited to a hangout to talk about the Maker movement with Tom Kalil at the White House, bringing together a bunch of other really awesome maker peeps to talk about how we can make things better in education with making things. We even managed to get the WaterColorBot to have its own video feed while it drew the White House Logo!
Then only about 3 weeks later, we got one more call from the White House: an invite to their 3rd ever Science Fair, and to bring a project of Sylvia's choice!! Though the date was only a week away. What could she possibly bring? The WaterColorBot! With a few hardware tweaks, and some software help (from Dad, and from Robotgrll for the iPad app), she thinks she's ready.
Then there was the problem of how to fund such a crazy trip with less than 4 days to do it. We asked Evil Mad Scientist Labs and they graciosly promised to match all donations up to $1,242! We then managed to pull together a funding campaign with GoFundMe in about 4 hours, and once it was launched, made our funding goal in less than 23 hours thanks to the incredibly awesome people on twitter and facebook!
You can still donate to Sylvia and the cause here, and extra funds go towards making awesome shows, and getting young girls into tech.
So now we've made our goal, bought our tickets, and now we're ready to go.
If you're in the San Francisco area, come see Sylvia and her White House bound Watercolor painting robot at Robogames! We'll be there all day Friday and Saturday, then fly out Sunday at 3pm and head out to the White House Science Fair. No you can't join us there, but you will be able to see it broadcast live online at whitehouse.gov/live on Monday, exact time TBA.
See you out there!
The new year has proven to be busier than usual, and some things are even getting done, though it's still slow going. New destinations, new shows, new projects, all for the win in 2013!
First up, Sylvia just got back from an awesome week with her favorite Evil Mad Scientists, Lenore and Windell from EMSL. After working out her very own design with the team, she got a little help putting together the hardware, and with a bit of elbow grease and some iteration (failure is always an option!) she's sure to get to Robogames with her very own WaterColorBot! Not to mention our favorite RobotGrrl will be coming in to help with software, so it's sure ot be a winner no matter what. :)
Next up, kicking off on March 9th in Los Angeles, Sylvia will be joining the awesome staff of Brentwood school in teaching basic soldering skills to students, building the Adafruit minty boost at the first annual S.T.E.A.M. Day!
And not long from now, we've got at least 5 new episodes written and ready to be shot! Unfortunately, after a tumultuous December, January and February, my day job is no more, and filming will have to be postponed, yet again, until I can find the money to continue to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table for the whole family. Once I get that out of the way, we'll make time to get a batch of episodes out: Surface mount soldering, Paper Craft Animals, Raspberry Pi, and lots more on the way...
That's right, "Super-Awesome" Sylvia is in MAKE: Issue 30! Head over to the MakerShed (or your favorite newsstand) and pick up as many as they'll let you buy at once!!
Not only does it have Sylvia waxing nostalgic of her favorite moments at Maker Faire, but it's chock full of amazing and unique projects that you could get out there and make.
Though it's been quite a while since our last blog post (and video) we're glad to say everything is just fine, and that's one of the reasons we're so slow to catch up. First, announcing two brand new site features: Printables, a place we'll be storing everything we make that's worth of sharing and duplicating at home, and Press, where we'll be posting quotes and links to articles/reblogs about the show, and it's also a good starting place for people who might want to know more about the show but don't know where to start. Also we've switched the comments over to Disqus, seeing as the spam problem was just not going away.
Also, since the last blog post we've been to the amazing Exploratorium Open MAKE:, The Parallax Expo, and Sunday 4/22/2012 we'll be heading off to Robogames! (thanks to goading from RobotGrrl)
We'll have photos, video and blog posts for most of these events coming in the next few weeks so stay tuned!
