Several projects were updated over the weekend, the forums have been tweaked, and I look forward to meeting you in Russia June 13-21.
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Best year ever at the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire! We broke all our sales records. The surprise hit was our Arduino starter kits, selling way better than anticipated. I had a surprising number of requests to see all our robots. Our two tables have only so much room!
I was delighted to hear some people skipped every booth to see us first, and I was shocked – shocked, I say! – at the number of people who had never played Tetris before.
Unlike the Bay Area Maker Faire we had the Wifi we were promised the entire weekend, media attention, Maker Happiness people checking in on us, and some really exciting opportunities to network. New to me was a menu in the Maker check-in package and a slip to write down an order. That way a Maker Happiness volunteer could go get lunch and the Maker wouldn’t have to abandon their table. So thoughtful!
Next up I have to prepare to attend Geek Picnic in Moscow. It’s like the Russian Maker Faire. Follow us on Instagram to see pics while I’m over there.
Today I’ve updated our terms of service and our privacy policy.
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I used the Arduino Starter Kit tutorials for building your own game of Tetris and modified them just enough to run the game with WS2811 full color LEDs.
For added authenticity I added wall kicks (turning a piece close to the edge pushes it away from the edge) and increasing difficulty (finish a row, game gets faster).
You can grab the code from the LED8x16tetris github repository I just pushed.
You can try the game live June 6-7 at the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire at the PNE fairground in Vancouver, BC, Canada. We’ll have stuff you can build, stuff you can buy, stuff you can play, and smiles for everybody. It should be a beautiful weekend, so come on out and make the most of it.
There are now 1006 Makelangelos around the world. To celebrate I invested Sunday to build a new website just for the Makelangelo robot. Thursday and Friday last week were spent making “how to assemble” videos and now they’re being edited together.
I am humbled and grateful that you enjoy this project so much. Thank you!
