I have a wide variety of projects under way. Here is a sample.

I am building and extending the ball balancer by Aaed Musa. So far I have replicated his design and begun to modify it for continuous and interactive use at maker show cases. The biggest change has been to add a remote selector for different patterns. I have also enhanced the air flow, made the patterns a bit more reliable, and changed the look somewhat. It is good enough for public showing for now. In the future I plan to make it more interactive with additional controls and find a more eye-catching base to put it in.

Slightly less finished is the Vortex cannon I am building with a friend. It’s based on a 55 gallon plastic barrel, so it is about 3 feet long and 2 feet in diameter. Although not shown in the picture, I have a basic tilt and swivel stand for it. He is going to clean up the look and we will take it to the next Maker Faire. We will shoot fog rings out of it with a party fogger. I hope we don’t set off the fire alarm and cause an evacuation!

Lastly (for now), I have been working on the idea of a kind of electronic pet–something that is between plant and animal like with some alien thrown in. I have mostly focused on the electronics but recently started playing around with the look. It’s going to need a translucent skin (so the inevitable blinky lights will show through). I picked up some soft, clear TPU to experiment with (it will probably be silicon in the final version). Once this stuff is off the 3D printer you can soften in an oven (about 370f) and re-texture it.

As these things get more finished I will put more details into project posts.