Intel at Bay Area Maker Faire

We had a great opportunity to talk with Intel's Jay Melican, whose official title is Maker Czar, at the Maker Faire in San Mateo on May 21st. Jay attends about six of the more than 30 Maker Faires each year and keeps a close eye on the current trends. 

Intel honored 11 years of Maker Faire with 11 interactive demo stations designed to inspire visitors and drive home the notion that great ideas and technology can help to change the world. In addition, contestants from the first season of the Intel-sponsored tech reality TV series, “America's Greatest Makers,” were available for meet-and-greet opportunities. Having been renewed for a second season, the show has been an effective way for Intel to support, and give exposure to, makers from all over the country.

Jay filled us in on three of Intel's extremely popular processor platforms:

1) Curie, a new module board from Intel, includes a combo sensor with accelerometer and gyroscope. It is perfect for wearables because of its extremely low power. For example, the Curie is being used in a smart glove that can detect how much weight you are lifting while working out.

2) The new Arduino 101, a board using the Curie module, is also popular with Maker designers. It has Bluetooth and a gyroscope and pricing starts at $29.99. The Arduino 101 aims at education and work is being done to bring the board into classroom kits. It is currently included in Google's Science Journal App.

3) Edison, Intel's high-end IoT board, is Wi-Fi-certified in 68 countries and includes Bluetooth 4.0, 1 Gbyte of DDR, and 4 Gbytes of flash. Thud Rumble, a group of DJs, joined Intel at Maker Faire to demonstrate how the Edison module could eventually eliminate the need for DJs to bring laptops and other bulky equipment to gigs.