GoPiGo at MakerCon 2015

MakerCon 2015 wrapped up last Wednesday night, after a jam packed two days from 8am-midnight. Check out our Twitter & Periscope feeds for the live videos we shot during the conference. We are honored to have been chosen as a finalist in the Launch Pad competition, and congratulate the winners, BotFactory, which makes 3D printed circuit boards!

We loved seeing our friends from Seeed Studios, our awesome manufacturing partner! Their home base is in China, but they also now have an office here in the Bay Area.

Wells, Product Marketing @ Seeed & Taryn, COO @ Dexter Industries.

Eric, CEO @ Seeed & Taryn

Rogue Rover was another Launch Pad finalist, and they are making electric tractors for farmers. They shared that farming is the most dangerous occupation in the USA, and it is almost entirely because tractors are so dangerous. Farming equipment hasn’t been redesigned in almost a hundred years. John Deere has done a lot around autonomous farming equipment, but most farms need some kind of human labor, even if it is just checking on the other tractors — so we’re excited to see where these guys go!

Rogue Rangers, electric tractors for farmers.

After a few weeks in China last month, and riding around on my cousins very heavy electric bike, it was awesome to get to try out Bolt. It’s a $5,000 electric bike that doesn’t require a license or registration. It passes all regulations as a bike, and there’s no maintenance cost like a motorized scooter or motorcycle.

Bolt electric bike.

Also, found Makesolid.com, which has some really neat innovative materials for 3D printing. The wheel below would be awesome for the GoPiGo, right?

Get the Periscope App so you can go back and watch some of the live stream videos we took, including the entire presentation by Eben Upton of Raspberry Pi Foundation. Great lessons learned that he shared included how you can make it in the west for the same cost as in China, but be prepared to redesign for automation & invest.

Eben Upton of Raspberry Pi Foundation & Taryn Sullivan of Dexter Industries. Oh, and don’t forget little GoPiGo!

One of the most fun presentations was by InMoov, the first open source 3D printed life-size humanoid robot! My video didn’t turn out too well, but check it out below. A few others are here.

And, of course there was a robot battle.

See you next year!