I’ve broken this year’s Maker Faire roundup into two sections – those things that were totally new to me – and those projects and friends I was fortunate enough to see again.
- Fred Zyda’s Harmonograph
- Fred and Eleanor made a harmonograph to draw Lissajous figures based on designs by Karl Sims. Karl also published a tutorial on Make Magazine a few years back. This is one of those projects which doesn’t look like much on paper – but when it’s in front of you is downright mesmerizing. One of the things I love about Maker Faire is meeting people who have exhaustively searched for the perfect parts for their project. Here, Fred bought up pretty much every kind of pen possible before settling on the Pentel Energel Pro Permanent Gel Pen 0.7 mm – the key being not just a smooth motion, but a pen that could draw swiftly enough to keep up with the machine.
Pentel EnerGel Pen Refill 0.7 Metal Tip (#LR7-A)
- Fred and Eleanor made a harmonograph to draw Lissajous figures based on designs by Karl Sims. Karl also published a tutorial on Make Magazine a few years back. This is one of those projects which doesn’t look like much on paper – but when it’s in front of you is downright mesmerizing. One of the things I love about Maker Faire is meeting people who have exhaustively searched for the perfect parts for their project. Here, Fred bought up pretty much every kind of pen possible before settling on the Pentel Energel Pro Permanent Gel Pen 0.7 mm – the key being not just a smooth motion, but a pen that could draw swiftly enough to keep up with the machine.
- Maclean’s super accurate Apollo space suit
- Maclean‘s Apollo spacesuit was a marvel of hyper accurate multi-mode making using machined parts, FDM and resin 3D printing, vacuum forming, sewing, and electronics. he also brought his Ghostbusters proton pack!
- El Pulpo Magnifico
- The photographs and videos of this metal monstrosity simply do not do it justice. Their DJ spun some crazy tunes on Saturday night and their FJ1 were blowing the lid off the evening with huge bursts of flames while Makers ate, partied, and danced all around under a moonlit night.
- Generate Labs in the UnityPoint Health St. Luke’s Hospital
- The booth for Generate Labs is what making and helping people is all about. Makers and medical professionals work together to come up with ways to quickly and cost effectively solve real world problems and help out individual patients in ways that might otherwise be completely impossible. I was touched by their stories of helping a child with cerebral palsy play his favorite Taylor Swift songs, someone else play their favorite video games by building a prosthetic that would otherwise have been $70k, building life size physical representations of the human circulatory system so medical professionals could visualize how implantations are placed, special prosthetics so that a baby born with differences could learn to crawl. Even though their facility gives these devices away for free, I have no doubt they’re actually saving the facility tens of thousands of dollars by being able to print color coded test tube trays and repair their microscope equipment.2
- Udder Mayhem / Ankle Chomper
- These two video games were both clearly passion projects. Future gaming consoles may never have teat or foot interfaces, but these were both incredibly fun games and super enthusiastic teams.
- Baba Yaga’s Hut
- While the hut was made of cardboard, paint, a little PVC, and a couple towels3, it was beautifully executed.
- East Bay Maker’s Club
- This group had a laptop connected to an LLM, which pulled an image, which was turned into a simple vector drawing, then printed out using a 1980’s plotter. While LLM use tastes like the opposite of making, it was less a critical component of their project and more about enabling a kind of pictionary telephone-game between booth visitors.
- University of Wyoming’s UWIN Makerspace
- This university’s pitch was quite compelling – a four year university that is less expensive for out-of-state residents than it is for a local California community college, with no less than four separate makerspaces.
- Lumotron is an LED lit 3D geometric sculpture
- One of my favorite things to do at Maker Faire is basically sprint from booth to booth, learning everything I can about what people are doing and how they overcame challenges. Adrian took great care with his Lumotron to orient the 3D pieces to minimize any tell-tale appearance of 3D printing artifacts – and used some interesting mathematic applications4 to run a single sided LED strip through the entire sculpture in such a path that it created essentially a double-sided strip throughout. Plus, he built his own javascript tools for planning it all. Sometimes I like having a thing… but so much more often, I just feels so much more satisfying to understand how a thing came to be.
- Kitiki, the open source e-ink laptop
- I reached out to Ravi before Maker Faire because I was so interested in his project. If you’re not using a laptop to watch videos, there’s no real reason for a big power-hungry screen when a simple low power e-ink display could help a device last for days or weeks. He also hooked us up with a some foam for ED-E’s PVC pipe! Thanks bud!
- Chris Mora‘s life size Iron Giant
- Chris spoke passionately about building a life-size 50 foot tall Iron Giant out of steel. It took some serious love and determination just to do the head – and I have no doubt he’ll be able to build the entire rest of the robot.
- Justin’s slick EDC utility knife designs
- These were really nice looking metal EDC utility knives; thin, a smooth bistable movement, and it made use of easily disposable and replaceable utility blades. If I was a knife carrying kinda guy, I’d probably want one.
- Dipstick
- I like to peruse the Maker Faire website before the event starts, scoping out all the things I’d be interested in seeing. Dipstick caught my eye because it was a fun solution to a very niche issue (wanting to see clearly into shallow water) with some fun pictures. It’s basically a flexible digital underwater periscope and was an interesting combination of electronics, 3D printing, and plumbing. The father and daughter duo were enthusiastic and engaging as they explained how they made it. They purchased pretty much every kind of digital endoscope before finding – and then having built – the exact kind of waterproof one they needed for the project!
- Famous After Death / Warren Hart
- Warren creates block prints using 3D printed versions of his digital designs – but also drawings / paintings over trading cards and pages from old books. Most years I don’t buy anything at Maker Faire besides food and drink – but this year I bought one of Warren’s pieces because every time I looked at it I just laughed.
- Pop It
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- The booth was so mobbed that I only got a chance to watch it in action. The project was a cross between a carnival game and Simon. You and three competitors slap one of the four colored buttons matching the colored lights as they flash beneath your balloon.
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- One Servo Robot
- When I first saw this page on the Maker Faire website, I thought “So what? A single servo in a ball wiggling?” When I saw it in real life… I realized Fangwei was able to actually control the approximate direction of the sphere just through wiggling that one motor! In a delicate balance of the placement of the electronics and felt feet mixed with shaking the servo in a particular way to one side or the other and some careful calibration – he was able to actually move the robot in a desired location.
- Rubber Band Helicopters
- I didn’t get a chance to actually build one of these, but I watched the videos on their Maker Faire page – and got to see several in action. They’re so simple, so fun to watch, and open themselves to lots of design and exploration by adjusting the paper fins.
- Story Lamp
- This is another exhibit that almost doesn’t make sense until you see it. Kids make drawings on transparencies, these are folded and joined into a ring of four panels, then placed on a rotating mechanism with a light source and then behind a diffuser. The result is a dreamy kind of pantomime repeating visual story.
- World’s Largest Mechanical Pencil
- Bob’s building a youtube channel and documenting his wild builds, including this fully functional giant mechanical pencil.
- SnackNotes
- Brain at SnackNotes had a LOT of different little projects to show off in their small booth. He had zoetropes, a DIY whiteboard etch-a-sketch, squishy blob puppets, and lots more – and was happy to share everything about their projects.
We also got to see some friends and favorite familiar projects from prior years:
- Stephan and his DynaMandala
- The entire Scare Makers crew!
- Miles and the entire crew from Raptor House FX
- Lauren from Dustworks / Sepia Lux the cuttlefish car
- Tim from Inventopia and his Struder and world’s largest functional Gameboy
- Sander / CaliforniaSTEAM‘s incredible capacitor powered earrings
- Ray and his 3D printed, resin coated dragon scale tumblers
- Crashspace and their ‘zines, kaleidoscopes, and other assorted projects5
- Crappy Happy Robots are always a delight
- BayLUG, Bay Droid Builders, and Dalek Fax
- No trip to Maker Faire would be complete without a visit to the Lego area, checking out the droids, and hearing a dalek scream at people
- Devising Delights‘ inflatables were just as delightful as always
- I don’t think I’ve seen Paul Nosa at Maker Faire for some time – but it was great to see his sewing artistry on display.
- Melty Cube. Daniel’s “melty cube” has to be seen in person to be believed. As the staff spins and changes colors, you realize each face is slightly different, causing them to become animated before your very eyes.
- Clever Clocks. I saw these clocks for the first time in 2025 and was mesmerized by their seeming simplicity and abstract beauty. Every single one of their clocks is clearly a work of art. What I love about these timepieces is that when you don’t need to know the time, every one of them is lovely kinetic sculpture.
- High Altitude Balloons and Maker Buoys
- Dickinson Glass
- We’ve bought several pieces from the Dickinsons over the years and love checking in with them each time we come to Maker Faire. His work is beautiful and it’s mesmerizing to watch him craft something out of a blob of glass and flame.
- Mr. Ray’s Worm Circus
- Worms, comedy, and magic. :) I’d first seen Mr. Ray in Rocklin, but delighted he recognized us from last year!
- Shawn Thorsson’s props and costumes / T&A
- As with so many makers, everyone at the entire booth is absolutely overjoyed about sharing what they made, how they made it, how they overcame challenges – plus they have some hilarious Hollywood stories as well.
- Stephen Ng’s Games
- I first saw Stephen‘s word games at last year’s Maker Faire. This description won’t do it justice, but it’s kind of like a combination of Banangrams/Scrabble and Tetris, where you build words using big physical blocks and LED displays, while new letters drop down a screen.
- Run! The Card Game
- Sync Tank
- I’d seen Sync Tank in years prior, but didn’t get a chance to stop by their booth again. However, since I haven’t typed up my notes from prior years, it seemed appropriate to add it in now. Chase built a way to watch and monitor his fish underwater. If you love fish and fishtanks, but are bummed you can’t have them with you all the time, this is the project for you.
- Laser Maze
- I last checked out the laser maze about two years prior and didn’t get a chance to go back this year. If you ever get a chance, it’s incredibly fun to try and make your way past these lasers in time to beat the clock.
- Flame Jockey?! [↩]
- Instead of the full replacement cost necessitated by the manufacturer! [↩]
- to distribute the weight of the house on the PVC pipes [↩]
- I wish I could remember what it was… [↩]
- Like the wearable wifi sensor! [↩]
- There were more than one booth from other makers that were largely indistinguishable from AI image / AI 3D model + printing / AI vision / AI API calls [↩]
