Violent Robots, Dangerous Racing: Maker Faire Orlando 2025
It was apparently a wild time... but I was mostly at my table
First of all, if I met you this weekend at Maker Faire Orlando 2025 (MFO), thanks for signing up for (or continuing to receive) this email list. I was the guy with the light-up 3D-printed guitar.
I try to post here either weekly or biweekly1 on Wednesday. So you have that to look forward to. As Carl noticed on Sunday, I often write more than you might expect in the footnotes, so feel free to click that “1” 👆 if you’re curious.
So what did I show off? Should you display at a MFO? Read for my thoughts.
Lights, guitar, pedal: my Maker Faire 2025 booth
For my table this year, I brought my 3D-printed guitar (Build details available on Hackster, with newer modifications on Printables), which generated a decent amount of attention among guitarists and 3D-printing aficionados alike. I got some great feedback on my picks and PCB business cards, and if my booth somehow led you to this page PLEASE let me know in the comments. Thanks to everyone that came by!
Of course, I didn’t bring any actual robots this year, but lots of footage of those creations is found on my YouTube page. Which is apparently hard to find.2
Watching robots get pummeled 2025
Most of my time was spent at my table showing off my things, but I did get to wander off for a while to see the rest of the event. While there were quite a few arts and crafts/fantasy/cosplay exhibits that are perhaps more adjacent to my interests, there was also a HUGE robotics section that I thought was very cool. This included more benign robotics like the industrial-style arm shown below and school FIRST robotics teams, but it’s hard to beat a good ‘ol robo-pummeling.
I got to film the two matches shown above, and I really would have liked to watch more. The action was so violent, that in the second match, both robots were incapacitated by the end. One of those two robots (or parts thereof) went flying right at me, so I’m glad they had a secure clear cage for everything. I’m not sure which ‘bot actually won. Probably the one that wasn’t flying around.
I do wish they had a bleacher setup though; as it was it was just a bunch of people crowded around the fish tank-like structure.
[Not] watching Power Wheels Racing (or getting injured)
Florida, as you may or may not know, is subject to a lot of rain, though IIRC we’ve never really had any at previous MFOs that I’ve attended. This year, though, there was significant rain on Sunday, meaning that I hardly got to watch any of the Power Racing Series Event.
The basic premise here is that people modify Power Wheels vehicles, with a budget limit of $600, then full-sized adults race them. While you might correctly assume this is a rather slow form of racing, Joel, one of Tampa Hackerspace’s drivers, ended up rolling his car and having to go to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder.
He was OK-ish, but when I inquired about who was driving, I was asked if I wanted to. I was tempted, but declined. Being 240 pounds (but in pretty good shape, really!), and having been prone to injury in my younger life, this seemed like a bad idea. In the end though, things didn’t end up going anyone’s way 👆⛈️
The overall MFO experience
Displaying at a MFO is an interesting experience. On the one hand, it’s exciting to meet people and show off your creations. On the other hand, after standing on a hard concrete floor for two days straight and talking is very tiring. If you’ve ever done something similar, you know what I mean—awesome, but you’re also glad when it’s over. It’s probably good bring a helper or two to even out the load.3
You’ll also meet interesting people, and possibly get a few ideas for how you can improve things as noted earlier. I’m still a pretty novice guitar player, so there was plenty to take in.
You might say that displaying at a Maker Faire is sort of similar to my experience visiting “Nashville” earlier this year for the Autodesk University 2025 conference/trade show. While I was physically in that particular town, 95% of my experience there was at the conference venue.
So did I attend Maker Faire Orlando 2025? Physically, yes, but not in the same way that you did if you bought a ticket! -JC
Thanks for reading! I hope you will follow along as I post weekly-ish about engineering, technology, making, and projects. Fair warning: I am a native Florida man, and may get a little off-topic in the footnotes. Maybe I even had an alligator or two as pets growing up. Perhaps they are alive today and could be used to test earth-wormhole pet friendliness.
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Addendum/Footnotes:
Semi-weekly? Based on my quick research, I think biweekly is correct. Every week or every other week. Anyway, I’m not going to spam you every day is the point.
Did you just read that because of my suggestion? Thanks! Sometimes I go a bit overboard on the footnotes, sometimes they’re just footnotes. This one is somewhere in the middle.
Carl also pointed out that he wasn’t installing that app. You don’t have to do that. Annoyingly, Substack, which I use to send these emails, seems to push that pretty hard and act like it’s mandatory. I’ve yet to figure out how to turn it off if that’s even possible. OTOH, it is a pretty good reading platform for posts such as this though, so if you get into more newsletters hosted on Substack, it might be worth a look.
OK, this footnote is officially on the long-ish side now.
The way I know this is that Carl, one of the people with whom I was staying, tried to look up “Jeremy Cook” on the smart TV at our rental house. It was extremely hard to find, even appearing behind people with subscriber numbers in the single digits! And I “own” the “jeremycook” channel URL handle there too, which is especially frustrating.
Long story short, I added DIY to the end now, so if you search for “Jeremy Cook DIY,” maybe I’ll come up. Not crazy about “DIY,” since I’m not, say, showing how to install toilets, but engineering seems a little inaccurate, and “make” has different connotations depending on which region you hail from, as Mr. Four Bits pointed out. Anyway, DIY is perhaps close enough.
The other thing that’s frustrating is that I make/DIY/invent/engineer such a wide variety of things that YouTube’s algorithm likely has no idea what to do with me. So maybe the newsletter format is what’s appropriate. I put my brain on “paper” and it gets sent to your inbox for you to decide how to handle it.
Props to Carl and Peter from Tampa Hackerspace who did give me a break a few times!