Maker Faire 2011: 54 Photos of the Ultimate Nerd Festival

Giraffes are boring. Electric Giraffe's named Russell however, are a step up.

Russell's body inexplicably includes a stuffed zebra.

Cheapest engineering help. Ever.

These robotic sculptures from Poseables re purposed water bottles for heads.

Resembling a stick-figure more than a person, each posable has hinged joints that allows it to be moved into a variety of positions.

Each comes as a kit, and can use a variety of objects as the "head."

Buster Pose-able! Ha! I kill me.

Musical instruments and a boat are turned into a fountain.

Part of the Kinetic Steamworks Kinetic Steamworks exhibit.

More from Kinetic Steamworks.

Kraus Motor Co. brought some lovely custom motorcycles... sadly, we could not test them out.

Another from Kraus Motor Co. Kraus Motor Co.

One of the many inventive costumes at the Faire.

Kids playing at the SoundCave Roadshowexhibit.

Another shot of the SoundCave, which is an interactive art sculpture, musical instrument and stage all in one big truck.

One of the many bike-based creatures at Maker Faire.

The front of this particular beast featured a trunk that would spit large flames intermittently, which caused the surrounding area to become incredibly warm.

Milk-jug igloo.

Although there were a few Lego-based displays, Lego Jeepwas the best.

More Lego Jeep.

The Steam Punks are domesticating zombies now?! Well. I never!

A member of the League of S.T.E.A.M>

The PR2 robot at the Willow Garage was designed to "provide a common platform that people can build on and extend and can also share results." At Maker Faire, it was mostly giving fist bumps to kids.

One of Make's DIY problem-solving projects: a VCR converted into an automatic pet feeder.

FTDI are specialists in converting peripherals to USB; their Vinco chip is a single chip solution with a Vinculum-II based platform, 256kB Flash, 16kB SRAM and a 16 bit MCU core.

Competitor at Asus' motherboard contest - you can see video of a contestant here.

LED light bright fun at the Instructables booth.

Part of the Sparkfun booth.

More LED ideas at Sparkfun.

Wearable LEDs at Sparkfun.

And yet more LED based projects.

Star Raiders at the Computer Nostalgia booth.

Another old school machine courtesy of Vintage Computer.

Atari showdown!

MITs Altair 8800

Comdyna LGP-20

Indoor mechanical swing set.

A vintage ElectroMechanical pinball table housed in a clear acrylic cabinet, courtesy Pacific Pinball Museum.

HP showed off some touchscreen models by encouraging kids to play games on them.

The Fiesta Hall featured some great light projects.

Such as the Glow Cathedral Garden.

More LED work.

LED earth.

Zombie Bats are a complete zombie defense solution.

MonkeyLectric makes bike wheel LEDs. Spinning bike wheels and LEDs make it really hard to take a decent photo on my phone.

A History of the Sky is a time-lapse visualization of the sky compiled into a large grid of time-lapse movies, each representing a day, and arranged consecutively.

Disco dance floor.

LED curtains.

Wall-E made an appearance.

Not to be outdone, there were at least a half a dozen R2D2s.

Children pulling Colossus, a sculpture built for Burning Man in 2005 - each stone weighs about 10,000 pounds.

Don't let that muffin get away!