At MyMakerTools we provide what powers your Maker projects and the Maker tools to be creative. This includes USB Power supplies to power your creations, the Maker Surprise line of Bricks & controllers, HO train goodies to make the layout stand out and soft wear to make your life just a little more comfortable.
This is the corporate show that travels the country. It has a large selection of prebuilt MOCs as well as multiple areas of interactive play. Here are the locations and dates we are looking at.
Going back to Omaha for Brick Days. This will be April 22-23 at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs IA. Lets have some fun. We will be showing the new version of the Space Base in its expanded glory.
Where else are we going to show. Well right now that is about it. Everything else is too far away and not near something we would want to go to. But we keep looking for events to display at.
Off to make a concerted effort to keep this Blog going at least until May. Here are the topics that I hopefully am going to cover.
And finally
The first live Bricks by the Bay since 2019 (@bricksbythebay_official). It was the same and then again it was different. The venue was the same as the last few times, so that was the same. All the MOCs were in the center of the ball room and the vendors were around the sides.
The attendance was of reasonable size given the circumstances. Not as big as in the previous years. Traffic was much better on Saturday than it was on Sunday, which is fairly typical of these events. We would have like to see more people, but the ones that were there were highly motivated. There was a lot of interest in what we were working on. The softwear side had lots more interest than in the past. While our basic controller and USB power devices always draw lots of questions, there was a lot of interest in the Lighting effects we were showing. Besides our MOC display, we had a demo of the new light controller. Here is a video of it running the demo script.
One of the most visited vendors are those with bulk LEGO or brick piles. Placed on a table or on the floor, people of all ages will rake through the Bricks looking for that one piece they need, select colors to fill out their inventory or just pick out every part they can find. While the competition for select parts can be fierce, it is always a congenial competition. I think the Bricks just brings out the best in people. It does not even come close to Big Box stores on Black Friday.
Here is a quick video of the display we used to attract people to the table.I only brought three sections, the new Main Section that I first showed in Omaha in April, the Vertical Generator, the Space Port and the areas behind the cliffs. These areas behind the cliffs are yet to be finished and are only the beginnings of a larger space that will exist behind the cliffs.
As I indicated earlier, I did spend a lot of time searching for parts in the brick piles. Here is my collection prior to some washing and sanitizing.
That is it for now, looking forward to next year.
Date: June 23 through June 26
Location: Santa Clara Convention Center
Website: Bricks By The Bay
Social Media: @bricksbythebay, @bricksbythebay_official #bricksbythebay
Our Location: Across from the Great Ball Contraptions & near the Lego Masters
Bricks by the Bay is this weekend. Here is what we will showing at the convention.
My biggest problem has been the current chip shortage. Finding electronic parts has become an all day task. Most are available in Asia at the "brokers", but it is not uncommon to see anywhere from 10 to 100 times cost increase over normal MSRP. As an example, an item that sells for $60 cannot afford to pay $55 for a part that was $1.24. I still have inventory of these two items and they will be aggressively priced for the convention.
I
have always wanted a simple and consistent way to mount LEDs both in my
MOCs and for my HO train layout. These two products get me closer to
the goal. One is the size of a 1x2 plate/tile and the other is the size
of a 1x1 plate/tile. You can glue these onto a plate for mounting on a
ceiling or a tile when you want up lighting. Right now the product
only comes with white LEDs, either a simple single Dome type LED or a
larger flood light type. Custom colors will be available, with a small
charge. I have not priced these yet, but they will be well under $5
each, depending on the size and LED. The website will have a list of
vendors where you can buy wire. Each board provides a rather large pad
to solder the wires onto. We will not be providing wire on the standard
product. We don't know what you need. The Website list a few places
where you can get wire and what the difficulty level is with each. Look
here for more information.
When you don't need the fancy lighting effects and all you need is for the lights to be on, this is the best answer. This device takes in USB power and then distributes to either punch down connectors or small connectors that are popular with other 3rd party LED vendors. What I do is solder a piece of solid 24-26 gauge wire to the ends of the small wires from the LEDs and then place these stiff wires in the punch down connector. Depending on the USB power source, you can power over 25 LEDs easily with this.
At a minimum, I hope to demonstrate this at the convention. There is still a lot of work to do on this, so it is iffy right now. This is 48 x 64mm or the size of a 6x8 plate.
We will have a new selection of of shirts and other softwear items. These include
Snack Mats
Bowl Cozy
Brick Themed Shirts for Adults and Children
We
have been downsizing everything. Long story, so the younger ones have
decided to divest some of there childhood collections. These Minifigs
are the ones they are willing to part with. There will be some good
deals.
