Madagascar Institute

Madagascar Institute finally does something for the children

hans — Fri, 28 May 2010 18:42:25 +0000

At Maker Faire San Mateo, ran The Wheel aka the carousel for lots and lots of people, including packs of children. Most of them couldn’t even reach the pedals, though many tried. We had about 5 or 6 people fall off the ride, none of them children. I guess that jungle gym training is good for something.

carousel time elapse

hans — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:33:08 +0000

Gaylen set up a time elapse camera above the carousel at Moscone West, so you can see the whole spiel, from setup to party to teardown:

The Carousel at GadgetFest/Google I/O

hans — Thu, 20 May 2010 08:25:57 +0000

No one got hurt, though we had about 6 people fall off. The stagehands were super helpful so we got out in record time. Next, Maker Faire!

Mada in Popular Mechanics

hans — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:05:32 +0000

See for yourself, a Popular Mechanics love song to our very own Hackett! Some of us were behind him while it happened: Welcome to the Academy of Mechanical Arts and Ballistic Sciences

the next carousel test, now with fire and LEDs!a

hans — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:47:17 +0000

Thanks to J&M Special Effects just down the Gowanus four blocks, we ran a completely legal test of the entire carousel complete with 4 propane cannons and a tower of LEDs, all powered from the electricity generated by the generator on the middle. That means it all works! Sure, there were some kinks so now we get to work on fixing those all week before it ships out on Monday. (video and pics by Jess Bruder)

carousel at a party

hans — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:32:52 +0000

Thanks again to Drew and Josh and all for letting us use their space! We worked all week on the carousel and had plenty of room to build, test and ride it. Then a party showed up at the space, and so we added that extra special mada touch to the party. Plus Mia brought out her awesome duobike. (thanks to Tod Seelie for the pictures).

back when we built things with jets

hans — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:20:23 +0000

Before we discovered the wheel, we built things with jets. Here’s a little reminder of those dark ages:

how do we get this damn thing together?

hans — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:14:27 +0000

After a big production push in the mada shop, we moved over to the super big Gowanus Hotel space for the final assembly. Up until this very moment, we had a clear, simple idea of how these 8 custom plywood-wheeled bike things would go together. We threw that all out the window when we got the thing together. The tangent-o-meter allowed us to clamp the thing together and have it roll, but we still had to figure out how to actually bolt it together. Many ideas were thrown out and debated, Hans whipped out a bunch of tabs which then failed. Lindsay then put out a simple idea, stuck with it thru heated debates, and finally we were convinced, we put it together, and it fucking worked!

It’s alive!

hans — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:04:28 +0000

Yesterday, we finally figured out the angle on one section, so we had to take it for a spin. The whole thing was just held together with C-clamps so we were fucking stupid to be going that fast. Everyone survived and much fun was had.

Today was the first test of the whole thing bolted together, so people could actually really ride the thing. It went fast and rattled fiercely.

(videos by Gaylen)

carousel progress

hans — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:56:41 +0000

The carousel is coming along, tomorrow is the big first test! Here’s where we were as of last night: