Maker Faire, the offbeat carnival at which scientists, hackers, tinkerers and other do-it-yourself types gather to show off their ideas and inventions, is coming to Rhode Island.

The cross between a high school science fair, an arts-and-crafts fair and an old-fashioned country fair was created in 2006 by Make Magazine, the O’Reilly Media Inc. quarterly that is to do-it-yourself technology what Cooks Illustrated is to cooking.