Live from Maker Faire Rome

Return to Roma! We’re here again in the Eternal City, myself and Maker Faire Bay Area producer Gillian Mutti, checking out this year’s crop of amazing makers, projects, and tech startups at the mother of all European events, Maker Faire Rome. It’s a huge show, produced by the Rome Chamber of Commerce and the Italian Trade Agency (who generously sponsored our travel), and supported by some of our favorite vendors like Arduino, Digi-Key, and STMicroelectronics. We’ll be updating this post throughout the weekend as we attempt to see it all. –Keith Hammond, Editor-in-Chief, Make:

Friday October 17

Friday’s Education Day started the event off strong! Ten thousand students crossed the gates and spend the day exploring the latest in Innovation, Creativity, and Discovery. They dove into Dive into robotics, AI, IoT, and immersive media, and or got hands-on in their education & gaming space. Rome intentionally partners with leading universities, schools, and businesses, aiming to bridge the gap between research and real-world application, connecting innovators with investors and public leaders to drive open innovation forward.

First off was saying hi to our friends and partners in crime DigiKey, Microchip, Arduino and get hands on with the Uno Q. Needless to say this is a maker favorite hall.

Arduino‘s massive booth features traditional Arduino boards and lots of new demos with the new Uno Q and App Lab. Uno Q developer/evangelist Julian Caro Linares from Spain is very excited about the Uno Q: “it’s like the days of Commodore and Sinclair, kids can have their own computer, plug it into the TV. I think it’s something students will buy on their first day of university” and use for all kinds of projects.   Top headers are compatible with traditional Arduino shields (including two legendary misspaced pins), and new high-speed connectors on the bottom will enable a whole new ecosystem carrier boards. App Lab  is open source and compatible with third-party boards (if/when they emerge), with lots of pre-baked Examples to get you started, such as Detect Objects on Camera = Python running on the SBC, with JavaScript and HTML for the interface. Bricks are code blocks that make it easy to build functionality – key is the Bridge brick that tells the Arduino MCU and the SBC how to communicate with each other, call functions, etc. Here’s a Home Assistant demo demo with Shelby relays and WaveShare touchscreen display, and a RetroPie Arcade Cabinet running all on a single Uno Q, displayed in a window at the top.

STMicroelectronics has a massive booth, showing off microcontrollers and teaching workshops (Arduino/STMduino etc.), and featuring this excellent Robot foosball table developed with University of Catania.

M5 Stack are still releasing a new product every week, including the new Stick S3! Jimmy and Takasu showed us their wares, and some fun user projects like this nice mini MIDI controller using Stack Core for MCU and display.

DAOS – bring them your idea, they’ll prototype it and even set up manufacturing for products like:
— Meta Sail sailboat navigation unit
– My Memo pill dispenser
– Key Bop laptop security alarm/notification dongle
– Soccerment instrumented shin guards for soccer data
— Kippy pet locator

Italian Army dog robot by Veco Robotics

HugLab – Valerio Spelati is developing interactive “soft pets” to support autistic children, and collect interaction data. The panda uses light, sound, and vibration, kids/teachers can customize colors and sounds etc.  The octopus adds recognition of two people (using a magnet sensor) for turn-taking games. CV glasses worn by the teacher record eye contact = social interaction, and the system records interaction data for study.

Saturday October 18

Otto robots!   Featured in Make Magazine, Camilo Parra’s 3D printed cuboid robots have now been adapted by HP for educational kits.  These are a wheeled version, but the project is still open source and you can still build the little dancing bipedal version as well.   Nice work and great to finally meet Camilo IRL!

Prosthetic limbs connected to bones, and full body exoskeleton for physical therapy and rehabilitation, in the exhibit from INAIL, the Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority.

A cool ROV manipulator arm for underwater exploration, from SDR3 Robotics.

I’m excited to learn more about DIYPresso, an open source hackable espresso machine! Un doppio per favore!!

Glowie interactive lamp by Hart Studio – an example of beautiful product design, typical of Italian makers bringing a project to market.

Kids learning to solder with OMG Robotics! Which is something we love to see. Their kits are sets are designed to make programming, robotics, and 3D printing simple and accessible to everyone.

Hands-on workshops are taking place all around the Faire.  Here in Make Lab 6 in the Innovation zone, kids are building robot hands.  In Make Lab 15 in the Discovery zone, they’re building cardboard robots with Calliope microcontroller boards.

Alpine Robot – this crazy-looking wall-bot is actually a safety device – it rappels down a cliff, kicking against the cliff face as it goes, in order to disengage any loose rocks, before mountaineers attempt to climb a new route.  Rockfall on fresh routes is a major hazard that has taken many lives.   The team is even talking about eventually augmenting the robot with a drill and resin injector to stabilize weak spots on sketchy pitches. 

Framework modular laptop for DIY upgrades and repairs – we love this RISC-V based project, they were at MF Bay Area too!

Amateur (ham) radio and Meshtastic LoRa nodes – stationary solar-powered and mobile handsets — presented by ARI, the Associazone di Radioamatori Italiani, and “amatori” is a word that reminds me that “amateur” really does mean we do it just “for the love of it.”

LilyGo’s awesome selection of Meshtastic boards and IoT gadgets, presented by none other than Lifang “Lily” Zhong herself!  

Duckietown, a setup for teaching robot autonomy, adopted by robot clubs and schools all around the world. They were also the culprit for supplying thousands of students with squeaky ducks on Friday.

Aeurytmia multimedia spaceship installation, performed by one robot and two humans including the maker Gabriele Iampietro, who says “I tried my hand at a lot of disciplines, including 2D and 3D design, lighting, programming, robotics, acoustics, electronics, welding, carpentry, electronic composition, printed circuit boards, and much more.” AmplifiedProjections.com

Teams reprogramming their robots (in ROS 2) to navigate an obstacle course for the I-RIM 3D 2025 Challenge. I-RIM 3D 2025 is a hands-on showcase for Italian robotics. It’s where the country’s top minds and companies come together not just to talk about theory, but to see, touch, and explore the future of robotics and “intelligent minds.”

Umanoidi Ritratti di Robot – silver prints of prototype humanoid robots from Italian Institute of Technology, by photographer Francesco Amorosino.  Photographer Amorosino began this project by working with the robotics laboratories at the University of Texas at Austin and the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. His photographic technique involved using a flash to create a controlled light source, separating the robots from their backgrounds. The resulting darkness symbolizes the mystery and uncertain future of this emerging technology. Later, Amorosino supplemented this series with photographs taken at the Robot Museum in Istanbul.

There’s a whole high school zone with lots of makers from secondary schools, mostly in Italy, but also Croatia and Hungary.  Here’s a robot hand and teleoperation glove and 3D printed pumping heart model made by students at Liceo Scientifico in Ferrara, as part of a hands-on physics learning program for 11th and 12th graders in conjunction with MIT’s Edgerton Center. Some of these students get to go to summer camp at MIT.

Arduino controlled model trains!

Italy’s air force the Aeronautica Militare has a great exhibit where you can climb inside a flight simulator; meanwhile the Polizia Scientifica have a great exhibit about forensics and crime scene investigation. 

E-Box emergency box with solar powered radio and satellite communications.

Oscilloscope music by Antonio Ianiero.

Insane robot band! (Between shows)

Automatic 35mm slide scanner by Lorenzo De Luca and his team at De Luca Labs. They’re gonna open source it and we’re gonna show you how to make it in Make Magazine!

Lifeshell, an open source earthquake shelter / desk built to withstand a collapsing building.  We could use some of these in the Bay Area!

UV-C stethoscope sanitizer by UV-Heroes, developed at University of Siena and manufactured here in Italy.

ADOne low-cost humanoid robot “for tedious jobs,” by luca Rastrelli from Perugia and Michele Angelici from Rome.  The mechanical design is open source, so you can build one (and program it yourself!).

Heisingberg project, a mindblowing optical computer built by Salvatore & Carlo, PhD students at Sapienza Universty of Rome, using laser light to optically compute optimized traffic flow in Rome.  No I don’t understand how it works, it’s a quantum effect of “squeezed light,” but you can read all about it here.

Re4real is a startup for plastic recycling by depolymerization, using a bio-based catalyst (an edible, non-toxic salt) to break down polymer bonds at room temperature and pressure. CEO Simone Di Trapani explained the process and showed how it can even extract polyester from blended cotton-poly fabrics and return clean cotton fibers.  Depolymerization is an approach that’s being tried by many startups because it promises to recover virgin-quality feedstock for true circular recycling of the plastic we’ve already made (rather than pumping more oil out of the ground); I’ve looked into a number of similar startups and this one looks super promising because it doesn’t need additional energy inputs for heat or pressure, or require toxic chemistry.  They’re not sharing their secret catalyst but they’ve raised $2M in seed venture funding already.  

3D microfluidic bioprinter – also from Sapienza University of Rome. This team is  Really an impressive bunch of projects from this “uni” (as we say when in Europe).

Kinetic sculpture from Fab Lab Architecture  

Sunday October 19

3D printed construction toys by Costruziono Ludico

American sculptor Michael Walsh is here too – we saw him at MF Bay Area last year – exhibiting his Sculpture in the Digital Age, from 3D printed sculpts to his VR CAD design process to his amazing kinetic ride-on sculpture from Burning Man.  

Wild vehicles: All-wooden car driven by Dyneema cord and pulleys, Cyberpandino tricked-out Fiat Panda, flying bike by Paz Aerospace (as seen at Maker Faire Bay Area!)

Jellyfish lamps and jewelry from recycled PET plastic bottles

Automated terrariums from Micro Eden (left) and Terrario Evoluto (right)

All-natural slow cooker, Cassetta di Cottura, sewn from all natural materials (cotton, wool insulation) – bring your pot to a boil, then this cozy jacket will keep it cooking low and slow all day. Handmade by a women’s co-op in Tuscany, part of the Slow Food movement.

Some great agriculture and food projects we saw last year too: 

– TecnoSeta – reviving Italy’s silk industry one worm at a time!  Silk cultivation, thread spinning machines, and weaving.

– Yeastime fermentation optimizer – love these guys, since last year they have scaled up to more breweries, and bigger tanks.  They’re also looking at collaborating with other fermentation projects, like yogurt makers.   

– ReVita – paper products from food/ag waste

– Terravionics – using drones and sensors, satellite remote sensing, and AI analysis to grow better crops – still in development, they’ve got their first customer, an Italian grape grower who makes the sweet condiment mosto cotto (grape must syrup), using his mosto vineyards as a test bed for his proper wine vineyards sometime in the future.

Revolutionary RC Car by Andrea Gigio – this thing is awesome, with powerful hub motors in the wheels and a bunch of servos controlled by multiple ESP32s communicating wirelessly via ESP-Now protocol and running an algorithm that does a lot of work: to manage the active suspension, automate traction control, and calculate electronic differential in the turns because there’s no mechanical differential. Andrea was delightful to talk to; check him out on YouTube @TopoAndyGigio.

3D printed fashion from the Bio Fashion Lab 4.0 project, out of ITS Academy Sistema Moda.

Mechanical music past and present, by AmmiLab

CosmoLab dev kit for music and DSP (digital signal processing). If you’re into modular synths (talking to you David Groom) you’ll dig this awesome looking, and open source, kit by Fase Lunare.

Ultrasuono – a super charming “environmental” audio project that anyone can build on a breadboard, following the beautiful instruction book designed by this student team from Polytechnic University of Turin. It creates sounds that vary according to changes in temperature, humidity, and light intensity, and can export that data too.

ReSYP remote synth player – connects to the internet to let you play fancy synths remotely to compare their sound and feel.

3D printed prosthetic arms from E-nable continue their development with cable-actuated fingers.

Meanwhile, Together We Ride has gone beyond their original prosthetic arm for biking, and created new hand designs for boxing, a spring-loaded elbow design (for amputations above the elbow), a ball-and-socket quick-release to bail the bike in the event of gnarly downhill crashes, and new decorative “aesthetic” designs. A pleasure to hear the update from founder Daniele Pepe.

Morph exoskeleton is an impressive looking,  full-body, passive load-bearing exoskeleton with cervical support. 

Straw insulation panels from EAP Thermus.  Daniele Simoncini is a straw-bale home builder who created these panels for customers who want to insulate existing homes, where a full straw bale would be too much. About 4” thick, they’re stitched together with a special sewing machine, installed with normal fasteners, covered with breathable plaster, and that’s it.

Faza automated chicken coops feature smart controllers for doors and ventilation fans, with sensors for ammonia, heat, humidity, food and water levels, and more. This third-generation family company continues to prototype new controllers to keep innovating.  

Sorso portable, modular, espresso coffee maker — and it’s open source, and beautifully designed. The main module in white has the battery, water tank, and heating unit. Swap out the hand-pumped pressure unit (in orange) if you prefer drip. Swap out the outlet unit (in brown) to switch from coffee pods to loose grounds. Add the bottom unit (green) to store pods and cups. Un doppio per favore!

Precious Plastic Italy and Smashing Plastic SRL show off their recycled plastic panels and furniture – and friends like this Makey from Precious Plastic Genova. 

And what’s a mega Maker Faire without DIY rockets, rovers, and satellites?

That’s just a taste of this massive event.  Maker Faire Rome has a different flavor – more refined and elegant in some ways, less wild and spectacular – but no doubt it rivals the mothership Bay Area event in size and scope. And it brings me the same joy in the cross-pollination of creative makers innovating with all kinds of technologies — the “gathering of the the nerd tribes” that makes every Maker Faire so unexpected and delightful.  Fantastic event once again!