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:
Welcome to the first SASvlog! (Super-Awesome Sylvia vlog!!)
Like I promised, the Illinois computing educators conference vlog is out. It includes my crazy little journey from February 23th to 28th and features silly moments, fun adventures, and snippets of the conference.
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.
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.
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!
WHite HoUse SCience FaiR? WHaaa? This month has been crazy!! Robogames 2013, TWO Science Fairs, and an interview with Bill Nye and Levar Burton... in the same week?! HOLY MOLY!!!
Just a few weeks ago, I got a call from the White House staff, and they invited me to go to their 3rd ever science fair! Last year, Joey Hudy got chosen to go for making awesome kits, and got to show off his big orange marshmallow cannon. This year, MAKE magazine and Cognizant nominated me to come! The most insane part was that I only got one week warning, my school 6th grade science fair was on the same day as the white house one, and we’d have to leave on the last day of Robogames!!! OH NOEsS!!
Luckily my dad helped organize and put together a fundraiser on gofundme, and we raised the full goal amount in less than a day thanks to all the awesome people who donated and helped get the word out! WOO hoo!
On the Thursday before the Science Fair, I left to San Mateo to compete in Robogames 2013 with my WaterColorBot paint pen plotter (fill wrap-up post coming later). After an exciting couple days at Robogames (and winning a silver medal!), I boarded a plane to Washington DC, with my robot and project board all wrapped up in my awesome custom made carrying box. I was SOOOO excited!!
We got to our hotel at 2am, slept ‘till 6am, got dressed all fancy, then left for the White House! (Not much sleep. :P)
When we got there, I was checked by security and led to the room where I was supposed to set up in. I didn’t have much stuff to assemble, so I had a ton of time to figure out exactly how I would do my demo, and what the heck just happened. Craziness!!
After about an hour, some people started to come by and I showed off my WaterColorBot. My demo worked with a Raspberry Pi as the computer, and connected to the iPad with a WIFI adapter that my dad help me make into an access point. After all of the other kids set up and looked around, we went outside and had some lunch and talked with lots of important people. After lunch settled down, I got interviewed by Levar Burton and Bill Nye!! Oh My Gosh!
At 12:30, the science fair officially opened to the rest of the staff and VIP’s that got invited. I talked to a BUNCH of cool people and really had some fun talking with them all about how the bot works, how I came up with the design, and how I think it'll be perfect for girls my age to get into engineering with once we make it into a kit. I also talked lots and lots about other things I liked doing, plus all about my show.
I hadn't had much sleep, but even though I'd been standing and talking for hours, I was totally pumped. It's hard to describe, but getting up there and talking about something awesome that you know pretty well, that people really want to hear, and have interesting questions about, is a lot of fun, and you wouldn't think so. But it is.... and I knew I had to hold out for the POTUS!
When it was time for the president to come in, all the regular people were moved into the entry hall. He then came in, said hello and started talking to the first booth. After a few teams/groups had talked with the president, I was next! He walked up, said hello and shook my hand. We talked, and then he held up my watercolorbot painted picture of the white house logo the press, and lots of camera shutters went off. He then talked with me a bit and drew something on the iPad for the bot to draw, “GO STEM!”. At the end he shook my hand again!! I was thrilled!
Meeting the president was so incredible and exciting! I had a TON of fun in Washington DC and I really hope to go there again. Even though I got to meet the president, I’m still just regular old me, and I think any kid my age could get to be where I was, if they just don’t give up and keep going at their crazy ideas. Even if nothing new happens because of my trip, I’ll be sure and keep my friends at the White House forever.
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...
