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Health & Fitness

Lemonade: Day 12 - Mr. Robot, Walt Perko

When life gives you lemons, please, please, make lemonade with me! Making Community Lemonade in Long Beach, CA. Day 12 - I visited with Mr. Robot, Walt Perko

We're making Community Lemonade in Long Beach, CA.  Come and make lemonade with us!

!  I'm on a 100 day odyssey for community and creativity in Long Beach, CA.  We've got such an amazing city, and I'm a huge fan!  I want to share it with you!  I'm seeking out the creatives and the facilitators of creativity.  The art and the locations that inspire art.  Bringing them to you, here in this blog, and to others, on the streets of Long Beach.

I call it .

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Today was Day 12 of Making Lemonade.  I Met up with Walt Perko.

I heard about Walt Perko from a guard at the Neighborhood Resource Center in downtown Long Beach.  I was meeting with , and carting a lot of LEGO NXT robots and FIRST LEGO League toys into the center.  He gave me Walt's card and told me a bit about his story.  Walt is an unemployed U.S. NAVY veteran with big ideas.  His existence, though is fragile.

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Walt's business card reads "Teaching PreSchool to College" http://www.Brainless.org.  That's all I had to go on.  Still, the messages on his site, and on his other sites which he shared with me, speak like a maker's site.  I was curious.  More... downright interested.  I met up with Walt near the Boys and Girls' club at Admiral Kidd Park.  Admiral Kidd Park is across from Cabrillo High School in the 7th district.  If it were much further west, it wouldn't be in Long Beach.  Walt lives at the nearby U.S. Vets facility... at least for the next two weeks.  But I digress... We should talk about Walt's vision... visions.  I could recount them all, but I'm selfish.  I want to talk about the vision that is so like the makerspace vision.  There are small differences, it's ok to be different, to have different ideas.  Walt displayed his concept at the San Mateo Makerfaire, some years ago.

It would be called L'Robotorium

A creative space for boys and girls, with shared access to Computer Numerical Control (CNC) equipment and 3D printers.  A learning space that is fun and exciting.  A space that would encourage everybody to experiment, to evolve his concepts for learning tools for young children and adults alike.  A place with such low costs that even the lowest income could have access.  Walt would mentor, but there would be others.  College students to be mentored, earning college credit and a few dollars, while learning so that they can deliver.

Here's his L'Robotorium vision:

  •  He knows that he wants to use Parallax circuit boards.  Why?  He likes them, and Parallax is a US … California company keeping jobs here in the USA.
  • He will use SolidWorks as his Computer Aided Design (CAD) program.  Why? Because he likes it and considers it the best available with educational pricing.  He's worked with CATIA, the industry standard for 3D modelling.  CATIA and SolidWorks are both produced by a French company, Dassault Systèmes, S. A.
  • He knows he wants to use CNC … CNC Milling (2-types), CNC Laser Engraving/Cutting, CNC 3D Plastic Printing (2-types). 
  • He also wants to recycle plastics, like milk bottles, those plastic shopping bags everybody is banning.  The L'Robotorium Shop would turn these materials into usable CNC supplies for printing and milling. 
  • Youth cost would be $0.05 per minute.  $3.00 per hour so that even the least privileged could have access.
  • There would be webcams and parents could check their loved ones' status online.  Could know that they checked in on time.
  • He would have 3D printers running in the window, a workspace for kids, and a space to set up robot games and mazes.

Why would he be right for it?

  • Walt has over 1K hours of CNC design behind him.
  • He's designed his own language to run his toy robot, 15 words, all he needs to control the ball.
  • He's tested some of his content at the Boys & Girls' club in Oceanside, and the pre-school children... loved it!
  • He experiments constantly, which would set an example for the youth around him.

I asked Walt what the minimum would be... what he needed to get started.  Whether we could take his 3D printer and drop it into a storefront, put some folding tables and chairs and a laptop or two onto it.  Bring his many parts that he's collected over the years and have enough to deliver small sessions to interested parties.  That the space could be a place he could work... a workshop for him, a classroom for the students.  Not that it is all it would ever be... but someplace to start, to test a concept, to see if there was a desire for access to this cool technology at a reasonable cost.

I said I would help him get started if we could find someone to let us use their space.

Sure there would be procedures to work through, funding to seek, aides to find, maybe first as volunteers then as employees or contractors.  That could come in time.  But to get started, isn't that always good?

He said yes.  Any takers? 

And tomorrow...

Day 13: The trail is undefined

Tomorrow I have some opportunities.  I could visit the Art Under the Umbrellas fundraiser being put on by the Friends of Bixby Park, or I could visit the 2nd Saturday Artwalk, in the East Village.  I could start following the trail of that I so want to follow!  So many options!

Want more lemonade? 

Items Needed

Nothing!

Need to contact me?  info@handmadepenguin.com

Trish Tsoiasue writes as herself about creative and maker topics for the Belmont Shore Patch and as Handmade Penguin for the Handmade Penguin Blog.

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