![Rochester Maker Faire RITlug table.](media/makerFaire/20181117_091159.jpg)

# Introduction

A few weeks ago I presented my [musical floppy
drives](https://jrtechs.net/projects/musical-floppy-drive-build-log)
at the [Rochester Maker Faire](https://rochester.makerfaire.com/) with
[RITlug](https://ritlug.com/).  Wow, that sentence had a ton of
links-- you should check them out. This post is a  quick recap of my
experience at the Maker Faire and a project update for my musical
floppy drive project. For those of you who  don't know, [Maker
Faires](https://makerfaire.com/) are community gatherings where people
"celebrate arts, crafts,  engineering, science projects and the
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset". 

I would like to give a huge thanks to
[Christian](https://ctmartin.me/)  for providing me with some of these
pictures and [RITlug](https://ritlug.com/) for giving me the
opportunity to present at the Maker Faire.  

# Project Background

Musical floppy drives are floppy drives wired to an Arduino to play
music. I initially started with two floppy drives; however, that grew
to 8 drives very fast.  

<youtube src="Y5msiFa54Ug" />

I currently have 10 floppy drives stacked together in a tower like
structure to make it easier to take to places like the Maker Faire and
[Imagine RIT](https://www.rit.edu/imagine/).  

![Rochester Maker Faire RITlug table.](media/makerFaire/20181117_092417.jpg)

# Future Project Upgrades

Although the 10 floppy drives are quite loud in a small room, people
typically found it difficult to hear at the Maker Faire. This was
largely due to the noisiness of the hundreds of people at the
convention center. To fix this in the future I want to bring a small
amplifier for the floppy drives.  

The second improvement which I plan on making is creating some form of
web application where people can  request music for the floppy drives
to play. The potential down side of this is that it is often difficult
connecting to the internet at conventions. 

I have a ton of old IDE hard drives that I plan on incorporating into
my musical orchestra. The tricky part of that upgrade would be to
somehow incorporate those into my current floppy drive structure so
that it is easy to take places.  My current plan is to have the hard
drives completely separate from the floppy drives and run it on its
own Arduino board.  

# Cool Projects at the Maker Faire

Although there were a ton of really cool projects at the Maker Faire,
I did not have the time explore everything  and take a lot of
pictures. However, I want to share some of the really cool projects
that I saw at the Maker Faire.  

## HatChan

![HatChan](media/makerFaire/20181117_095844.jpg)

This is a project that one person is calling "HatChan". This is a hat
equipped with a ton of LED lights, and  a fully functioning wireless
access point. When you connect to his access point, the captcha portal
takes you to a 4chan esk site where you can upload pictures -- mostly
memes. 

## 8-bit Computer

![Rochester Maker Faire](media/makerFaire/20181117_120948.jpg)

This one person brought a home made 8-bit computer to the Maker Faire.
What I find the most impressive about this project was that the person
who made it was only a sophomore in high school.  

## Foss@Magic

![Rochester Maker Faire](media/makerFaire/MVIMG_20181117_151211.jpg)
*Photo provided by [Christian](https://ctmartin.me/)*

FOSS@Magic is a organization at RIT which aims to promote free and
open source software-- i'm also a part of this group. This year the
FOSS group demoed their colorful MAGIC letters. On  a tablet beneath
the letters, there is a web site open where you can select the color
of each individual RGB letter.  

## RITlug

![Rochester Maker Faire](media/makerFaire/MVIMG_20181117_151247.jpg)
*Photo provided by [Christian](https://ctmartin.me/)*

The RIT Linux Users Group (RITlug) is a student-led organization aimed
to promote and teach students about Linux and open source. This year
we presented my Floppy Drive project, a Raspberry Pi
[Lakka](https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/easy-retro-gaming-lakka/)
gaming set up, a [Magic
Mirror](https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror), and [Tiger
OS](https://ritlug.com/tigeros). 
