James Mulroy

Molnari's rotor for the Molnari GT Gyrocopter.If you are sick of waiting in traffic or waiting to go through toll booths, or you simply want to have the time of your life, the Molnari gyrocycle/gyrocopter is for you! Making a scene at the Bay Area Maker Faire this past weekend, Molnari--a licensed automaker (that means that the company can print its own VIN numbers)--showed off working prototypes of street-legal aircraft.

Molnari had two prototypes on display at Maker Faire. The first, seen after the jump, is the Molnari G2. This vehicle can cruise--as a "gyrocycle"--at about 105 miles per hour on the freeway and give you about 250 miles of range. Alternately you can convert it into a gyrocopter (which has an unpowered rotor--unlike a helicopter--and a powered propeller), which lets you cruise a bit faster with about an 80-mile range.

Team Phoencia's Maker Faire Booth: Left: James Erd (machinist); right: Steve Berl (real time programmer).Ride a rocket into space, put a spacecraft into orbit, launch out of orbit, head to the Moon, land on the Moon, then travel at least 500 meters on the Moon, and finally send a panoramic image back to Earth. That's what Team Phoenicia--a Lunar X Prize contestant--plans to do, and here is some of what they are doing to get there.

Like any mission to another celestial body, you start with prototypes. This year at the Bay Area Maker Faire, Team Phoenicia showed off a couple of very early prototypes of vehicles for the mission. The first is an example of their descent device, which will bring the rover down with a soft landing to the lunar surface. This early prototype uses propellers for simulation, but the real deal will use rocket engines.

ORD BOT 3D Printer Platform, Credit: BuildlogMeet the ORD BOT. This little guy showed up at Maker Faire Bay Area this year, and is cheaper than most--if not all--other 3D printers out there. It's faster than them, too, according to its makers.

The ORD BOT is a simple 3D printer platform kit that uses an extruder to "print" 3D objects, just like the Cube or the MakerBot. However, unlike the MakerBot, the ORD BOT can only print using one color at a time (for now, anyway). But what it lacks in color it gains in speed: Its print speeds exceed 400mm per second and can reach up to a whopping 1 meter per second. This is considerably faster than the MakerBot's output speed of 33mm per second. The ORD BOT comes with two different print areas with the largest, called the Hadron, being about 200 square milimeters.

Launch of Falcon 9/Dragon to ISS, Credit: SpaceXOn Tuesday morning, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 9 rocket, shooting the Dragon capsule into orbit. This launch mission is part of NASA's COTS program, where the agency will work with private companies to send cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), as well as help advance the private spaceflight industry.

On May 19, the Falcon 9 flight computers aborted the launch of the 2nd COTS mission at the last moment after detecting higher than normal pressure the combustion chamber of engine 5. According to SpaceX, the problem was caused by a faulty check valve--a valve that only allows a material to flow in one direction--on the Falcon 9's Merlin engine.

[Credit: 3D Robotics] This one is for all those autonomous vehicle makers out there who need a cheap autopilot system to make it go. Among the bits of awesome seen at the 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire, was the ArduPilot Mega 2.0 (APM2) from 3D Robotics, a complete open source autopilot system.

The APM2 board is equipped with the MediaTek 3329 system on a chip, Dataflash (a serial interface for flash memory), a digital compass, a motion-tracking system, a barometric pressure sensor, and more. According to 3D Robotics, the APM2 can be used "to turn any fixed, rotary wing or multirotor vehicle (even cars and boats) into a fully autonomous vehicle; capable of performing programmed GPS missions with waypoints."

Brian Roe playing with Roy's brain (battery) @Maker FaireMeet Roy. He's a swell guy, really. He's also a robot made largely out of parts cut on a laser cutter, and with your help on Kickstarter, you can own a piece of Roy, or even your own whole Roy robot.

This past weekend, Roy the robot made an appearance at Maker Faire and officially launched on Kickstarter. Roy is an experiment in animatronics--it's a robot designed to imitate human behaviors and even move and look like a human in some senses. Roy is made from servo motors, wires, various mechanical fasteners, and some micro controllers and other electronics.

Playing the Slaperoo. [Credit: Slaperoo]There were a lot of crazy gadgets at Maker Faire this year, and the Slaperoo was definitely one of the craziest. The Slaperoo is an electric percussion instrument that helps bring tech and music together, and it lets you make an awesome groove unlike any other out there.

Made of a long aluminum tube for sound to travel through and a long steel strap to strike (with your hands) or bow (like a violin), the Slaperoo makes a very metalic sound. The sound or vibrations are then picked up by a transducer, which converts it to an audio signal. The Slaperoo also comes equiped with a 1/4-inch audio plug so that you can use it with an amplifier of your choice.

Frog Design Tron Light Trikes Have you ever wanted to play Tron and zoom around in the infamous Light Cycles? Well now you totally can! This year at Maker Faire, Frog Design--an engineering design firm--is showing off their awesome Tron Light Trikes (video below).

These Tron-themed cycles let you and an opponent battle it out one on one on a large screen for all to see. So how do you play? First, you and an opponent sit down at separate stationary bikes--each with their own personal display--and wait for the countdown. When it's time to do battle, you peddle to move forward and use the handlebars to steer. Your motions on the stationary bikes in the physical world (so boring) are transmuted to the virtual world (so not-boring) and are displayed on a large screen for others to see.

Falcon 9 April 30 static fire. [Credit: SpaceX]

Update: The Falcon 9 launch was aborted right as it was about to launch due to a higher than normal combustion pressure in engine 5. The next launch window will be on May 22 at 3:44 EDT or 12:44 PDT. Stay tuned to GeekTech for updates.

SpaceX tests Falcon 9's engines, Credit: SpaceXThis week, SpaceX test-fired its Falcon 9's nine Merlin rocket engines while out on the company's leased space at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral. The test was part of a dress rehearsal for the upcoming launch of the second Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) cargo vessel.

Lasting only two seconds before a planned abort, this test of the Merlin rocket engine appeared to be successful. SpaceX will now evaluate the data collected from the test and make any final preparations for a launch set to take place in only a few days--on May 7.

It's a pi pie! Get it?It's that time of the year again--time to rejoice and celebrate that wonderful mathematical marvel, pi. And there's no better way to observe Pi Day than to make an apple pi pie--or as my friend puts it, an apple pi^2.

Let's get started! First, I must warn you, you will need lots of patience when making this pi (pun intended), so make sure that you give yourself plenty of time before you begin. First off, you will need to make a pi mold for your pie. To do this, I used three disposable aluminum loaf pans and a lot of aluminum foil. The disposable loaf pans are cheap, flexible, and easy to manipulate. Since I wanted to make a pi-shaped pie, I ran a Google image search on "pi" to find a couple different variations of the letter.

[Photo: iRobot]Have you ever wanted a robot in your home like those cool robots in the film iRobot? The idea of servant robots that can perform tasks, adapt to their surroundings, and call for help when needed is not new, but actual bots that can do these things may be closer than ever.

A new robot from iRobot Corporation called Ava is currently in the R&D stage but it may soon be able to help out the elderly in their homes, monitor patients in hospitals, help with retail by helping you find a product in a store, and more.