Lisbon Mini Maker Faire 2014

With Lisbon Maker Faire 2015 almost here, we feel like now it’s the perfect time to remember last year’s event!

Maker Faire is the greatest show and tell in the world! Originally created by Maker Media , it’s an event to celebrate arts, crafts, engineering and science projects associated with the Do It Yourself (DIY) movement where the main focus is the sharing of knowledge, experiences and ideas.

Brought to Portugal for the first time mainly by SAPO and Pavilhão do Conhecimento, this amazing event was a huge success, despite its initial expectations of 3000 visitors, we ended up receiving over 9000, making it mini only in name! The event reunited 70 makers with over 100 projects!

Here are the projects our group presented:

From Mário Saleiro, his homemade CNC and the third iteration of his previous versions, TheMaker1 and TheMaker2, TheMaker3:

From Álvaro Valente and Gonçalo Pereira, the Lowcost Spot Welder:

From David Lobato, his Nixie Tube Clock:

Hugo Santos, presented his Self Balancing Robot:

Again from Mário, MiRo, a 10kg mobile robot:

Nelson Neves took his Intelligent Windows project:

From Emídio Martins, we had an Optical Communication System:

I took the PianoPIC:

Mário also took the Hackeyboard, a mechanical keyboard with a lot of cool functionalities:

Sérgio Vasconcelos presented his Goblin Fleet Commander:

Luís Sousa took his GyroGlove:

Ricardo Alves presented the LED Cube:

Mário Saleiro and Bruna do Carmo took the Infante Robots, an educational robotics system:

José Luís brought his Filament Extruder:

Luís Sousa also took his EL Wire Glasses:

Ricardo Alves also brought his FireDarts project:

And finally me and Micael Martins took the Tesla Coil:

Even though they didn’t presented any projects, I must thank our members Fred Zabel, Dinis Miguel and Jorge Sacadura for their help and support, they were an important part of our committee!

Besides the projects, our Hackerspace also organized a small KiCAD PCB Design Workshop, which was presented by me and Hugo:

We also saw a lot of interesting projects and met a lot of dedicated and passionate people.

It was an amazing experience and we’re ready to be part of it again!

Here’s a small video summary of Lisbon Mini Maker Faire:

We can only finish this post by thanking and congratulating all organizers of Lisbon Mini Maker Faire for their initiative and excellent work!

Here’s our team photo at the end of the event:

If you want to read about the personal experiences of some of our members at Lisbon Mini Maker Faire 2014 you can read through Mário’s review, or Hugo’s, or Sérgio’s, or even mine.

We’ll see you soon!