Around the Americas

The folks on the Around the Americas cruise stopped by to build some sea perch and get a demo of our REx II vehicle.

Sea Perch Was a Hit at Maker Faire

Our booth at Maker Faire was a big hit!

People of all ages (although mostly kids) flocked to the Sea Perch controls for a chance to drive the ROVs around the small pool we brought. Everyone was smiling!

2 kids built their own Sea Perch in our booth in a single day. Great job!

And to top it all off, we won 2 Editor's Choice blue ribbons! Thanks to everyone who stopped by to check us out, and please check out the plans on our Sea Perch website to build your own -- Sea Perch is an open source project!

Final Preparation for Maker Faire

Today we made one last push to make more sea perch kits for Maker Faire. We fly out on Thursday, and start setting up on Friday!


We made nearly 90 kits in one day -- our most productive day yet!


We also finished the joystick panels using wood that we recovered from the disassembled roller coaster on east campus.

Sea Perch Kitbuilding

We are rushing to finish building all our sea perch kits before they must be shipped.

Sea Perch Joysticks

While the control boxes on a normal sea perch are designed to be economical, our demo at Maker Faire will need to handle 2 days of heavy use by (hopefully) excited people. We wired up a controller using arcade-style joysticks and mounted it to a sheet of plywood left over from packing ORCA in its crate.

Preparing Sea Perch Kits for Maker Faire

In preparation for our trip to the Maker Faire at the end of May, we are putting together 350 Sea Perch kits.

The hardest part so far was cutting 14,000 feet of Cat 5e cable (network cable) in to 350 pieces and coiling it. The blue cables on the floor here are about 200 of those.