Maker Faire Rome Is the Greatest Show-and-Tell in Europe

Maker Faire Rome rocks! Three full days October 23-25 were dedicated to the maker spirit of open innovation and hands-on creativity, with hundreds of exhibits and demonstrations, workshops and hands-on activities at the spectacular Gazometro event site.

Rome’s is the world’s biggest Maker Faire outside of Maker Faire Bay Area and it draws exhibitors from all over Europe. This year’s big themes included Faire mainstays like electronics, robotics, and digital fabrication of course, but also a refreshing Euro focus on circular economy and sustainability, fun VR and gaming exhibits, and Italian strengths like agriculture and food. And always, with an Italian flair for beautiful and bold design. It’s really a blast. If you’re in Europe, or planning a trip there, consider making Maker Faire Rome a destination at least once.

Major sponsors as usual included our friends at DigiKey and Microchip alongside the two powerhouse Italy-born electronics companies Arduino and STMicroelectronics, showing off lots of robotics and gaming projects using the new Arduino Uno Q and Ventuno Q boards featuring STM microcontrollers and Qualcomm processors.

As always, the event is supported by the Italian government as a way to support technology investment and education. This year Italy’s National Research Council showed off some cool projects, like this B-Shell – a Bistable Collapsible Gridshell by the Visual Computing Lab. Flat-pack it for transport – maybe to outer space? – then pop it into shape.

Or this project, exploring optimum spectra for plant grow lights.

A spectacular centerpiece on the grounds was Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown’s own DeLorean DMC-12 time machine, one of the original movie cars used in the filming of Back to the Future, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, on loan from the Enter Technikwelt Solothurn museum in Switzerland. (Save the date for Soluthurn’s upcoming Maker Faire in the spring, March 13-14. “We have great chocolate and cheese,” promises Fabian Knuchel of the Enter Techikwelt museum.)

We also saw Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor, in operation at the booth of Elettronici Entusiasti magazine.

Soldering a kit at the booth of Elettronici Entusiasti magazine.

Young engineer Romain Pras is building the Aelox 5-axis 3D printer, an open source project. He’ll share the files when it’s working well.

StackChan robots at the always-rocking M5Stack booth. I showed founder/engineer Jimmy Lai that we put the CardputerZero on the cover of the new Make: Magazine (Vol. 99), and then he showed me a super cool new prototype LoRa gadget that you Meshers are going to enjoy … next year!

Daniele Ingrassia and his team at InMachines are Kickstarting a new open source tool, the Piccola desktop CNC mill, ready for market with certified safety features and open source control software too. Meanwhile their OpenLab series of DIY digital fabrication machines (see OpenLab Starter Kit in Make: Volume 95) has a new metal printer based on laser sintering.

Save the bees! Maker Faire Rome has dozens of university engineering team exhibits. This one is demonstrating AI detection of destructive Varroa mites in beehives.

Cool lamps seem to be a specialty at MF Rome. Here, lovely 3D printed lamps by Hart Studio, and wacky mechanical robot lamps by Giulio Sannito.

Makey represent! Thanks Elegoo for this chonky Makey robot, the global mascot of Maker Faires.

xTool was there with their traveling roadshow of new lasers and other digital fabrication tools. (Watch for reviews in the next issue of Make!)

Davide Venturini of Precious Plastics Romagna does more than recycle plastics into useful objects and materials, he’s also a machinist who has redesigned several basic DIY machines used in the global Precious Plastics community, including a new shredder with hardened steel teeth, a new high-pressure injection molding machine, and a CNC mill to cut the molds. He also hacked a washing machine to automate the washing of waste plastics using, of course, an Arduino. You can find him at the RooT nerd club and hackerspace, rootclub.it.

Maybe you’ve brewed your own beer, but have you malted your own barley? GrainLab developed this micro-maltery for sprouting small batches of your chosen grains. They’re also experimenting with 3D printing grain-based foods in a variety of shapes and textures to help people who have difficulty eating some traditional foods.

DIY funghi! These mushroom growing setups from DiNicola Fungjhi look like they’d produce plenty for your kitchen all year.

Could we clean our clothes without lots of detergent chemicals and water? I’d like to try this OzoSteam Station, which the maker says will get clothes clean like new, using only steam, then oxygenation by ozone, followed by a hot-air drying cycle.

The smallest Geiger counter in the world? Definitely the smallest I’ve seen, the Doze micro Geiger counter by Wekos.

Homemade lasers by Massimo Capello, a favorite participant in Maker Faire Trieste as well.

Young students Francesco Leo and Samuele Maraschio explained their Cultivation of the Future 2.0 project, with full spectrum LEDs in the visible and UV wavelengths, light and humidity sensors, and an irrigation pump, all controlled by an Arduino of course. Well done, lads.

Terrarium in an iMac, by Marco Lucani.

Is that bread dough proofed yet? How’s that sourdough starter coming along? The DoughSpy knows. Two types of proofing monitors use sensor data to optimize your bake.

The Nuvola 32 is an Italian-grown, open source ESP32 dev board for IoT, audio, displays, and retro gaming, by Adriano Ambrosi.

Here’s the final prototype of the Mentime Drink Machine by Andrea Filomeno, intended for sale in 2027.

What’s an Italian Maker Faire without a pasta robot? The Robby Minichef boils and drains your spaghetti, farfalle, and rigatoni with precision, thanks to maker Gualtiero Regini, a medical device engineer by trade.

The Intellizen robotics system uses AI running on two Arduino Uno Q boards, one for robot control, and one for the intelligent inspection camera. Soon to be upgraded to the more powerful Ventuno Q as soon as their preorders are fulfilled.

Spectacular necklaces made from reused keyboards and CDs, by artist/artisan Byludo Ecotech.

Using Indonesian weaving patterns to create Italian ceramic tiles. Project Baur, by Guida Patricia.

Haptic feedback rig using pneumatics, by the Foundation for Medical Robotics.

Wearable airbag for workplace falls, and powered exoskeletons to assist with heavy labor, exhibited by the Italian Institute of Technology, I-RIM, and others.

Virtual reality robotic surgery simulator, from Sapienza University of Rome.

Virtual reality flight simulator, with appropriate warnings.

The MEYELens eye tracking rig, 3D printed and open source, is a wearable system for measuring pupil responses and collecting data for research and experiments.

Matteo Villoni’s Orion PDA is an offline handheld computer with a QWERTY keyboard, sunlight-readable display, music player, and voice recorder. Its Lua development kit lets you create your own applications.

The AliSeas Box helps collect data about fisheries while at sea. It automatically measures and identifies fish species using an AI camera system, and weighs them using a clever dual-scale system with accelerometers and two load sensors – one to measure the fish’s mass, and one with a calibrated reference mass – to solve the problem of weighing something onboard a boat that’s heaving up and down in the waves. Created by sister-brother team Elena Piccioni (marine biologist, pictured) and Alberto Piccioni (physicist).

The Aperol Spritz truck!

M.A.S.H is a clever modular automated sorting system to route packages faster than traditional conveyor/sorter lines. It’s the project of three engineering undergraduate students in Qatar who interned for DHL and came up with this system to cut next-day package delays by about 40 percent. Each module is controlled by a simple SMT32 microcontroller, so the whole system can be orchestrated by a single computer and reconfigured at will in software.

The makers, Jai Aadhithya, Nihal Ashik, and Hanish Abdulla also wrote the book Becoming a Maker: A Condensed Introduction to Hobby Robotics. Jai and Nihal were thrilled to meet an editor from Make: magazine (“We grew up watching Make: videos on YouTube!”) and ran halfway across the Faire to deliver a copy of their book. We wish them the best with their project and their careers.

Iris is a robot for helping autistic kids, using AI interactions to help them manage frustration and develop patience, attention, and social interaction. Created by high school 20 students with a Raspberry Pi and of course, an Arduino inside.

Arlok educational robots, chilling with Makey.

Detecting microplastics in drinking water, using a TDL sensor and Arduino.

The tiny Fiat Panda is ubiquitous in Italy. It looks kinda cool, and kinda hilarious, tricked out as a racer or a rally car.

“An idea. A 3D printer. The sea.” The P3dalo’ is a 3D printed pedal-power unit for small boats.

How does digital fabrication enhance the artisan? Italian designers and craftspeople showed the ways in the exhibition Avant Craft, with amazing automotive and racing yacht design, motorcycle helmets, leather and lace work, CNC embroidery, and some wild 3D printed ceramics.