Cats! Cats! Cats! Cats!
The Sound Revolver (SR) was accepted to make an appearance at the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire but before I went there, I thought I would do a couple of things. One, go to Calgary to visit an old friend and fix his Nintendo and two, visit a class of grade 3/4 kids and talk about the SR.
Cat looking on while we repair a NES
When I made the SR, I left the naming to a class of 3rd/4th graders (whose teacher happened to be a friend of mine). In return for their efforts, I promised to bring it to their class so that they could play around with it. Additionally, I threw in a presentation about sound which talked about what happens at the molecular level, why different instruments sound the same, how we hear and more. You can view the slides here.
Me answering questions about TSR. Photo courtesy of “The Adventures of Room 17”
While in Calgary, I paid a visit to the Protospace, a local hackerspace and met a great deal of people working on interesting things like segways, robots, laser cut artifacts and more!
After a fun few days in Alberta, it was time to head over to Vancouver for the Mini Maker Faire. As I was packing up the the SR for transport, I was extremely worried that the plexiglass would break on the plane, so I thought I would add a quick note to the baggage handlers:
Fortunately for me, the SR arrived in Calgary and Vancouver unscathed! Yes! The only thing left to do before Maker Faire was to march through lots of weird looks from people in downtown Vancouver as I hauled it to my hotel room.
Setting up for Maker Faire turned out to be more pleasant than I initially anticipated save for a few hiccups here and there. After a few hours, it was ready for showtime.
Sound Revolver ready to go!
I was pretty amazed at how many people enjoyed playing around with the SR, especially kids. I got a kick out of some of the questions asked about the SR. Most of the questions were ‘how it worked’ and ‘potential applications.’ I never thought about the applications when I built the SR. It was more of a test to see if I could do it. Nevertheless, I did get some good ideas of how the SR could be used.
Yay, crowds!
Overall, it was a fun-filled couple of days. I was pretty exhausted by the end from all the talking, smiling and visiting. Would I do it again? Absolutely! Maybe next time, I’ll bring something that isn’t as tedious and clunky like the SR.
A shadow puppet booth!
A gigantic robot snake! (The Titanoboa)