A giant robot puppet for Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire

Glasgow based visual artist and maker Fergus Dunnet has created a giant version of the Edinburgh Mini Maker robot which will be stepping out around Summerhall this Sunday for the 2015 Faire.

You can track the puppets progress on Fergus’ blog as he has posted regular updates throughout the robots creation, from creating a prototype to a first look at the big puppet and getting it fully assembled for a test run.

Here are some pictures of the robots first outing at The Meadows earlier today for the Mini Maker Faire press call:

Fergus will be attending the 2015 Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire to show off the puppet and talk about his work. The event runs from 10am-5pm on Sunday 19 April and tickets are available now.

2014 Makers Announced

Exciting news… we’ve just announced the first batch of makers who will be participating in the 2014 Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire!

We’ve pulled together an exciting and diverse bunch with makers from a wide range of disciplines including engineering and electronics, arts and crafts, science and sustainability, music, maths and much more…

This year’s line up features chillies, a one-man-band, some noisy toys, underwater robots, a biotech laboratory in a 13×11 inch box and the world’s first pedal powered hydraulic hybrid Reliant Robin pick up to name just a few!

See the makers page of our site for a full list of makers confirmed so far and keep tuned as we’ll be adding more information on some of the participating makers to our blog in the run up to the event. Announcements about workshops and talks happening at the event will also follow soon.

The 2014 Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire will take place on Sunday 20 April at Summerhall and tickets are available now – click here to book.

Making your own microscope… possibly the best work placement task ever?

We recently had a work experience student in our office called Daniel Haquin from Portobello High School. Daniel saw lots of sides of our business and towards the end of the week we set him the task of creating a smartphone digital microscope. Based on the hit Instructables guide he created a prototype version of this extremely simple and yet beautiful contraption (find out how to do it yourself here).

Have a look at the pictures he took below and see if you can guess what he was zooming in on…

We were massively impressed with Daniel’s work, and absolutely love the photos he took. His work has helped us to prove that this method works and we are hoping to develop an interactive activity using this for our next Science Festival.

If you create your own gadgets and would like to be part of Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire in 2014, complete the online form here for your chance to get involved.

Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire wins Creative Edinburgh Unite Award

We were delighted to receive the Unite award from Creative Edinburgh at their 2nd Birthday party and awards ceremony at The Bongo Club last night.

Creative Edinburgh is a not-for-profit membership organisation offering creative industry businesses and individuals in Edinburgh a channel to connect to available support, programmed events, business-to-business networks, skills development and investment opportunities.

The Unite award was presented for the 2013 Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire – in recognition of the way the event brought creative people from across the maker community together. We were thrilled to win and all enjoyed showing off the award itself – a lovely set of knuckle-dusters complete with Unite emblazoned across the front in shiny gold letters, made by Bonnie Bling.

Thanks to everyone who took part in this year’s Mini Maker Faire and made it such a brilliant day.

p.s. Have you heard about our call for makers for 2014? For your chance to get involved complete the application form here.