logo courtesy of Maker Startup Weekeend |
Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in MAKER Startup Weekend
sponsored by Techshop and Autodesk. In the midst of social & mobile
startups, this was the first Startup
Weekend event geared specifically towards the "Maker" community. I
was part of the team along with Christina Chu, Bill Thomasmeyer, and
Ace Shelander, who designed, fabricated, built, programmed and integrated, the Interactive Musical Tire
Swing all in 1 weekend!
Photo courtesy of Techshop |
While it was largely an experiment for the Startup Weekend folks, who
mainly focus on startups in the social & mobile space, it was a
success from a teaming, mentoring and leveraging the tools and
facilities at Techshop perspective. It was refreshing for me to get out of the office my regular day job
and truly make something on a grand scale. Props to my teammates who
combined engineering, electronics, project management, fabrication, and
business skills to get the job done!
Photo courtesy of Techshop |
The Interactive Musical Tire Swing is an
interactive, Arduino-powered invention that can be placed in
child friendly areas, backyards, museums, and other public places. The
way it works is, the "brains", or Arduino microprocessor board selects
various mp3 musical tracks and/or beats and flashing LED lights based on
the position of an accelerometer mounted inside the tire, thus
interacting with the user. The Arduino programming and electronics design were
done by Christina Chu with a detailed write-up of the business end of the Interactive Musical Tire Swing on her blog, ThinkLoveCreate. I loved wearing many hats on this project, working with Ace on the fabrication and build, sourcing many of the mechanical parts including the perfect tire and helping Bill with the presentation. There is a pretty nice writeup describing all of the projects and the overall weekend on the Make Magazine Blog.
Photo courtesy of Techshop |
The entire weekend was an amazing experience culminating
in presentations to an audience of makers, geeks, VCs, VIPs, and the
generally curious. By the end of the weekend there were 8 teams left
pitching the potential business value of their respective
projects/products. Our idea was to transform the way way people relax and play using a simple tire swing by making it interactive. Our commitment was to get as much feedback by having people use it. A couple of weeks ago Christina submitted an application to the the Bay Area Maker Faire; lets see what happens.
Photo courtesy of @andybot |