Great Balls of Fire

What do you get when you combine a local computer programmer, two metal fabricators, and a backyard engineer? You get a top team in the Red Bull Creation contest, which challenged teams across the country to build an invention that ‘hacks the past to create the future.’
Justin Self of Truckee-based Fusion Metal Crafters assembled the team, Donner Party 2.0. He brought together Justin Winter, a computer programmer with Truckee web design firm McCormick & Winter, fellow fabricator Randy Vasquez, and Grant Kaye, a professional photographer and tinkerer.
The group had two weeks to design and build an invention that was based on the contest’s theme and also incorporated an Arduino microcontroller, as well as film the entire process.
While researching things from the past, Winter liked the idea of doing something with time. His inspiration — a grandfather clock.
‘We wanted to see if there was a way we could redo the clock and make it a lot cooler,’ he said.
Their answer to a ‘cooler,’ updated grandfather clock was actually something hot — fire. The team designed the clock to shoot a number of fireballs out of its roof to correspond to the hour. The clock tells time by the number of bursts as well as blue LEDs that pulse each second and blink for 10 seconds on the quarter hour. It also lights up at night when it’s not blasting fire.
But if you’re looking for a traditional clock face, you won’t find one.
‘We originally talked about putting a face on, but we only had two weeks,’ Winter said. ‘It’s more of an art piece than a functional piece.’
The Red Bull judges were obviously impressed because they selected Donner Party 2.0 as one of 16 finalists out of more than 100 entries. For the next stage in July, the team will be flown out to New York where they will be given a new theme and 72 hours to imagine, design, and build another creation. And of course, all the Red Bull they can drink.
The winning team gets $10,000 to split four ways and tools.
Winter said he is confident about his team’s chances of walking away with top honors.
‘A lot of the other teams did more electronics and programming; they are super nerdy focused,’ he said. ‘Our project has the cool factor.’
If Donner Party 2.0 wins, Winter said they plan to use the money to keep inventing.
‘Hopefully we will use it to build more projects like this,’ he said.