Last week I went to the Maker Faire at Odaiba, Tokyo

From what I could see, In most of the stands people were presenting their hand-crafted electronics. Half of the presenters were showing some sort of robot (My favorite was the guy with the “hand extender” – a phone would film your hand, and the robotic hand at the end of a pole would mimic the movement). Then we had the raspberry Pi hacks (and its Japanese versions). After that, a little bit of everything, like the guys who made super detailed star wars costumes.

The most interesting part, however, were the children workshops. There quite a few of them. In one, a person was helping the kids build elaborate paper planes and fly them through hoops. In another, this old dude was teaching kids how to program in Scratch. There was an “experimental” one, with multiple tools like air blowers, and the kids could do whatever their wanted.

At the end of the Faire, I saw a stand selling the Arduboy, a tiny programmable pocket console. While I certainly would love having one of these, what came
to my mind was trying to make a Pico-8 powered hand held using some mix of Raspberry pi, a small led screen, a disassembled controller, and much more experience putting electronics together than I actually have.

I wonder if there is some sort of workshop that would help me with the steps necessary to make this project…