Mister Engineer
Santa’s Shop coming for 2022
Operation daily through December, 5:30 P.M. to 9 P.M.
Haile Village
Brightway Insurance Agency Window
9127 SW 52nd Ave
Gainesville, FL 32608
The story of Santa’s Shop, the animated Christmas window display, was featured in the November/December 2017 issue of Our Town magazine. Click here to see the story.
Click here to see a video of Santa’s Shop in action.
To see the development of Santa’s Shop, go here.
Why was Santa’s Shop created?
Haile residents, Mike and Annelle Rigsby, designed and constructed Santa’s Shop for the community in 2016. It took approximately 2,500 hours to build.
How was Santa’s Shop made?
Eighty percent of the display is handmade, including the robotic Santa and his three elves. Many toys and figures were first modeled in clay, 3D scanned, scaled down using software, and 3D printed. Then the finishing touches were added to each piece.
How does Santa’s Shop run?
Santa’s Shop is controlled by more than 20 microcontrollers (Arduino and Raspberry Pi). Dozens of servo motors and sensors provide feedback for the moving parts.
A big thanks to Kristy Moffat of Brightway Insurance Agency for graciously providing a home for Santa’s Shop.
Phil and Freddy star in “Christmas Tree Contest,”
an animated video short created by the makers of
Santa’s Shop.
Find Notable Board Books in
2018 Hackaday Prize Semifinalist
Notable Board Books are customizable, interactive books containing personalized music and pictures. This project is designed with Alzheimer's patients in mind. To encourage sing-alongs, Notable Board Books include an audible track with instrumental and vocal music. The contest video can be found here.
Amazing Rubber Band Powered Cardboard Car
Click image for PBS video (2007 Maker Faire)
A Beginner’s Guide to 3D Printing
14 Simple Toy Designs to Get You Started
A Beginner’s Guide to 3D Printing is written for those who would like to experiment with 3D design and manufacturing, but have little or no technical experience with the standard software. Professional engineer Mike Rigsby leads readers step-by-step through fourteen simple toy projects, each illustrated with screen caps of Autodesk 123D Design, the most common free 3D software available. The projects are later described using Sketchup, another free popular software package.
For print/design files, go to Thingiverse.
In China:
The Ultracapacitor Powered Robot
Pretty Useless Machine—featured on Instructables.com—posted in their Dec. 1 newsletter to 2 million viewers
Over 150,000 visitors at Maker Faire, San Mateo
To contact Mike use mrigsby@pipeline.com