Germany's first Makerfaire!

This weekend happened to be the first Makerfaire in Germany and I got to tag along with Stefanie to go check it out! Super thrilled. Still not entirely sure what the occasion was, I think it was a trip organized to broaden the perspective of those students who are into hardware hacking? The event was in Hannover, about 2.5 hour drive from Berlin.

So I finally got to experience the famous speed limitless Autobahn. I was really impressed actually. Not particularly by the fact that Stefanie got us there in ~2 hours averaging 100mph the whole way, but by how well the lack of speed limit worked. Everyone on the road averaged about 80-100 mph. Even with a big speed difference, people were very good about using the lanes and letting people faster pass. I thought it was most impressive when a Ferrari zooms by at 140 mph and the cars just peacefully got of the way so the Ferrari could continue at the speed without any breaking. People were also very good about following rules when it comes to temporary speed limiting due to constructions. I guess they know that the moment the "forget about the limit now" sign shows up they can go zoom zoom again.

So back to the Makerfaire! It was a bit small, about 80 booths (though half were repeats) but was still pretty entertaining. Saw alot of 3D printers and robots obviously. As expected the print resolution is still abysmally low but at least now its multicolored. I am really curious about how the maker community will respond to the laser sintering patent running out in 2014. For those of you who don't know: http://www.tested.com/tech/3d-printing/456856-laser-sintering-3d-printing-patents-expiring-2014/

The robot was actually really cool. It was a huge thing driven with pneumatics and played the guitar. It was straight up intimidating but quite awesome. 

There was also a robotic cooker. It was basically a pressure cooker with a cutter and mixer. It made a hell of a risotto I give it that. I was quite impressed. 

It seemed like a big theme was about exploring how to incorporate engineering into the learning environment. There were alot of showing of programs for gradeschoolers building hardware hacks which was pretty cool. There was a hover craft, some wearable input device, and starwars robots. 

There was also some focus on trying to market 3D printers to families with young kids. The cutest attempt I thought was a monkey puppet that mimicked the user by recording the kid's movement with a kinect. Funny thing was when an adult tried to use it, it didn't work because he was too tall and the kinect couldn't see him. 

And of course there was a cosplayer maker

My favorite part of the makerfaire was actually about the food. Or rather the container for the food. We ordered some grilled potatoes that ended up being served in a bowled made of waffles! It was brilliant. You eat the potatoes and then eat the waffle bowl with the left over sauce. Apparently they also do this for fries at the beach, but in a waffle cone. Cool stuff.

Overall it was alot of fun and thank you Stefanie for driving and not getting us killed on the Autobahn :)