Yesterday, I participated in yet another edition of the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Fair. This was the ninth annual event. (I have a photo of myself at the 2011 event here on my blog.)
As we have from the beginning, we put together a team of amateur radio presenters, including:
- Arun, W8ARU, who brought his weather satellite receiving station and actually caught a pass of an NOAA satellite at around 3:30 pm.
- Joe, AC8ES, who showed his 3D printer and his Red Pitaya setup.
- Dave, N8SBE, who brought his complete K3 setup. This is very popular with folks who seem drawn to the panadapter display.
- Yours truly, who came with keys to teach kids (and adults) how to send their names in Morse Code.
While we all had a lot of fun, it was also somewhat disappointing. The attendance seemed way down to me, and there didn’t seem to be as many exhibitors as in the past.
Part of this might be the venue. The Mini Maker Faire was held at the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor Public Library. The nice part about this was that it didn’t cost the organizers a dime. The bad part was that the exhibitors were in disjointed spaces, and both the exhibitors and attendees had to pay for parking.
I don’t know what the answer is exactly, but I’m hoping that the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire can get back on track next year. A change of venue might be part of the solution. More publicity among both potential exhibitors, as well as among the general public, is certainly in order. We have a lot of creative people here in Ann Arbor, and this should be its showcase.
Dave New, N8SBE says
It did seem a bit disjointed this year, especially the lack of Maker registration/badging. Having Maker badges was a nice touch in past Mini-Faires, and I missed that.
The other issues are the high acoustic noise when we have an outdoor exhibit (which is pretty much a requirement, since we need to get access to antennas), next to the First Robotics group, the Tesla coil exhibit down the way that completely wiped out the bands whenever it was running, and the S9+10dB continuous noise on 40 meters (unknown source).
High acoustic noise is usually dealt with by showing digital modes (visual display which you don’t have to listen to), especially running the super sweeper on Ham Radio Deluxe, showing and decoding multiple simultaneous PSK31 signals. There were some signals on 20 meters, which we could decode between the Tesla coil demonstrations.
The other thing I wanted to show was DMR radio, using the Raspberry PI/DV4mini USB hot spot you see sitting in front of me in the posted photo. The challenge was getting a usable WiFi signal. The AADL WiFi was completely overloaded, and once connected, the Raspberry Pi refused to ‘forget’ the connection. I ended up having to research the issue online using my laptop which was tethered via EasyTether USB to my cell phone, and found that by editing the wpa_supplicant.conf file, I could remove the AADL entry, and get control back of the Pi. I then tried to use Arun’s WiFi hotspot on his cell phone, but apparently, his provider is blocking UDP packets, so even though I could connect to various DMR nodes, I couldn’t get the VOIP audio packets to pass.
I finally ended up demoing DMR by going to the Hoseline tab on the BrandMeister site, and streaming the USA 3100 audio from my laptop through the powered speakers I brought with the K3 setup. Apparently EasyTether passes the required VOIP packets just fine.
I need to get the Linux EasyTether client running on the Pi, then I’ll be able to use the DMR hot spot anywhere I can get cell phone service.
I also picked up an Outernet kit from the SDR Guys at Dayton, but didn’t have time to put that together. Maybe for Field Day, or at the latest for the Detroit Maker Faire which is the last weekend in July. There is now an APRS folder on Outernet (see the June QST article), so specially formatted APRS messages will be routed to the satellite and will appear in the APRS folder.
Michael M says
I think a major factor this year was that the Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad (WESO) was happening on the same day — an all day event held at Pioneer HS. If we were not already committed to that event we’d have been at the Mini Maker Fair, and we were rather disappointed at the conflict. (I think the downtown library is a great venue for the MMF.) In past years the WESO event was held in May, unfortunately they conflicted this year. The participants in WESO are among the most likely attendees of the Mini Maker Fair.
Dan KB6NU says
Hmmm. I can see where that would be a problem.