Open Sauce 3 – Rise of the Machines

Maker News
Open Sauce 3 – Rise of the Machines

Open Sauce, the irreverent engineering convention started by YouTuber William Osman, filled the San Mateo Event Center last week with robots, games, and skeletons. Oh, and 150 featured creators. It was a fun show, if a little surreal. We failed to see everything, even though we really tried. But hereโ€™s a selection of a lot, though still not all, of terrific exhibits from the show. 

Metalmancy Arcade Cabinets

Metalmancyโ€™s arcade machines, built by Carlo Supina, are powered by Framework boards and built like tanks. They were running games by developer Joanna May, who was promoting her Chickensoft tools for devs.

Framework PC

Framework was also on site, challenging people to see how quickly they could assemble a laptop from their modular parts. 

Bash Em! Bop Em!

Presumably beating their own record for assembly, this dance-controlled robot battle was first played the night before Open Sauce. Each team member lives in a different city and couldnโ€™t bring everything together before Friday. But the mashup of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Dance Dance Revolution floor pad controllers, little hydraulic cylinders, and 3D printed connections came together for the show. Attendees had a great time playing. And apparently Iโ€™m awesome at it. โ€“ Sam

Engineezy

More than one project came together at the deadline. Engineezy built this wearable marble machine in a week.

Sashimi Slayer

We spotted this sword-controlled rhythm game earlier at alt.ctrl.GDC, and the internals are still holding up better than the toy swords around them. Theyโ€™ve improved the GUI and added a bonus level since March.

3D Snake

The team that brought the world a giant keyboard is back with 3D Snake. The game was a side project, but works well to demo their smoother, reinforced giant keys. The game will twist your brain in a good way.

Maker Nexus and Their Team Building Labyrinth

This four-person ball maze by Maker Nexus is heavier than it looks, but it will make you some instant new friends.

DIY “Benchtop” CNC Mill

This DIY CNC mill (thatโ€™s definitely too big for a bench) started as a university project by Michael Dean and blew through its budget right off the bat. But itโ€™s still cheap for a CNC mill, and the aluminum, brass, and 4140 steel finished parts on display looked great. 

Compass CNC Router

At the absolute other end of portability was the handheld CNC Compass router. Cameron ran hands-on demos showing off the latest upgrades. We canโ€™t wait to see it at Maker Faire Bay Area.

Shariff DMC: Desktop CNC Machines

For something more hands-off and heavier duty, this low-cost benchtop mill was made with production in mind. Shariff DMC wasn’t allowed to run the cooling system, but it carved through aluminum on a shaky table with zero chatter.

A steel fishing lure mold, cut on the DMC2 Mini

Fernside Dragons

These inflatables started as a lockdown project and evolved into a growing collection of decorations and costumes. You havenโ€™t seen Nyan Cat until youโ€™ve seen one running around an expo with legs sticking out.

Paul Bunyan’s Pocket Watch

This mechanical wooden pocket watch by Nick Allen was mesmerizing, probably because it was 300 lbs. If you doubted it belonged to Paul Bunyan, there was a bell jar of Paul Bunyan-sized pocket lint to prove it. 

Wooden Mechanical Calculator

If you need even more gears, William Gerhardingerโ€™s mechanical calculating machine was carved with a scroll saw and worked wonderfully. He was lifting the cover and showing off the mechanism all day.

Open Workout System

“No subscriptions and no bricked hardware” is the driving ethos behind this open source workout system. Users can program in the exact weight they want to simulate, and it will provide the equivalent level of resistance while taking up a fraction of the space of a traditional set of weights. Not a bad tool for physical therapy.

Novoloom

Combining custom patterns and procedurally-generated designs, Novoloom plans to launch online ordering for custom clothing kits soon.

Evetteโ€™s Niche

Evetteโ€™s Niche displayed a wide range of whimsical machines, from costumes and accessories to musical art nouveau instruments. She taught herself Blender to pull off the organic designs.

SkyTech Electronics

SkyTech Electronics put old hardware to practical use by building one Mac Classic into a robot tank, and another into a thermal photo booth. They also had the oldest electronic guestbook I signed. โ€“ Sam

BAYLUG

The Bay Area Lego User Group brought vintage space models and wild new designs, like a Blacktron Strandbeest. 

Extrastellar Entity Labs

Mace Morningstar and Peter Turnbull built Alphonse, an animatronic goat head, for a heavy metal pagan ritual performance. People trusted the NFC tag enough to feed it their phones.

SF Bay Area Japan Maker Community

The SF Bay Area Japan Maker community brought projects from a variety of makers, including a very popular 30-second click counter game, Tetris art, and (fittingly) 3D-printed Pokรฉmon. Be sure to visit them at Maker Faire Bay Area.

AdamCAD

Those interested in making their own 3D shapes could stop by the AdamCAD booth, which demoed their parametric text-to-3D AI CAD software at Maker Faire Bay Area 2024. Theyโ€™ve since added a โ€œcreative modeโ€ for organic shapes.

Open Source Special Needs Devices

Adaptive tech tools for special needs kids are surprisingly expensive and still may not do exactly what you want. T-Rex Successful, Slightly Famous, Autistic Adult builds projects like the Python-programmable communication board (left), which are a perfect fit for open source solutions.

Austin Bradley’s Bad Ideas

Some games make sense being larger, others definitely donโ€™t. Two people were trying to play a game with Ausin Bradley’s giant Wii remote which, like the sign says, probably shouldnโ€™t exist.

The Gateway

This trippy, six-foot-high, rippling hexagon wall by Andrew Kotite and Ben Otzalay of OK Design wins the award for most mesmerizing wall.

Stochastic Volumetric Display

This awesome DIY project by James Hoffman is made of off-the-shelf RGB LED strings. Users can lay them any which way, and the software maps them all automatically using two cameras โ€“ one capturing the horizontal angle, one vertical angle โ€“ for an instant volumetric display without fussing with pain points like perfect grids. It was amazing, and it had a great demo game with a Leap Motion hand tracker. โ€“ Keith

Geoff Peterson Talking Animatronic Robot Skeleton Sidekick

Itโ€™s hard to see every project at events like these, even when they come to you. Kevin Langeโ€™s mostly accurate Geoff Peterson skeleton from The Late Late Show was wheeling around, making new friends and weirding people out.

Talk Tips

There were three stages where YouTubers spoke and shared advice. Some sage wisdom for aspiring video creators included “make your content as long as it needs to be”, and to think of your first five videos as learning experiences, since no one will watch them.

They also proved it was possible for a grown adult to get beat at a giant game of Operation by a child.

But the most important thing to look forward to is friends! Editor-in-Chief Keith Hammond ran into Kayte Sabicer and Jorvon Moss (aka Odd Jayy), and proved that the real sauce is the sauce we made along the way. 

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Sam Freeman is an Online Editor at Make. He builds props, plays games, tries to get robots to make things for him, and collects retro tech. Learn more at samtastic.co

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