Live Updates: Maker Faire Rome 2017

That’s a wrap! Maker Faire Rome 2017 is finished. Browse below to see highlights from this incredible weekend. The newest entries are at the top. 

spime.im performing end of Sunday from Torino; the glove controller is made by Remidi

More of the #MFR17 project goodness from a Sunday afternoon stroll…

cargo bike

electric cargo bike

new Goliath CNC router

jewelry boxes as cake

sailing boat kit

baby chairs

low coast diffusion cloud chamber by Trieste Mini Maker Faire producer Carlo Fonda, with Marco Baruzzo

Sonia Melina, biochemist, with plant-based alternatives to standard stem cell solution

Jose Salatino’s CNC paint robot — with portrait of David Cuartielles, one of the founders of Arduino

“Armamentarium Huge-Scale 3D Printing”

custom shoes

Cricket crackers! Cheap protein for the future

It’s worth noting that every one of the seven big halls at Fiera di Roma has an espresso bar at the entrance.  Cheap and good coffee abound!

The Young Makers building also had lots of student projects.  Federica Vadala here showing her “wireless access control system”.

And this mineral-oil filled aquarium speaker system drew a crowd three-level deep:

So many ways for kids to dive deeper at Maker Faire Rome!  Tons of hip-height walls making little workshop rooms, with hands-on activities with all kinds of maker toys & tech.

A Sunday morning smattering of projects and moments…

A material designed to be flexible on one side, but rigid on the other. Good for wheelchair application: the seat can still fold, but the user is supported

A great panel on the future of food, with topics ranging from insects as protein to maker tech for farmers

Kolga Kugler’s One Love Machine Band

… a definite crowd pleaser!

Young love for robots

Sailboats, kayaks, bikes – action sports here too

The Italian Automobile Association brought in a great racetrack for kids

Driver’s Ed

Lots of assistive tech projects, this one a racing wheelchair

These columns with convenient circular cut-outs run the length of the venue, and are not surprisingly a fave place to chill

I snuck into the drone pilot area to snap a few quick pictures in between races. I always think these pilots look like the cyberpunk imagery I imagined when I was younger.

The arena for drone races was huge. It is hard to capture the scale in this picture till you notice the people sitting at the far end.

Wasp, the 3d printing company had some cool new tech to show off. This giant printer is in a new delta configuration which allows them to have a print area twice as large as previous delta designs. It prints in concrete, though it wasn’t actively printing at the faire. They did have some of their ceramic/pottery printers going which I really enjoy.

The paper airplane guy keeps a consisten crowd entertained. These floating strips that he does are really fascinating to watch.

Here’s a set of pix from various moments Saturday at the 5th annual Maker Faire Rome:

One of the SEVEN buildings

at the Fiera di Roma, Maker Faire Rome 2017

Robotic legs

One alley in robotics building

A University research project around measuring erosion with sensors (including this one embedded in rock) to measure rock movement and sand displacement

Josef Průša, founder of Prusa3D printer company (out of the Czech Republic), getting some maker appreciation

Arrow Electronics’ booth was packed all day

A fresh and fun Arduino booth

Miguel Valenzuela and family in a Pancake Bot workshop

A robot demonstrating the capacity for pizza slinging movements drew crowds

Sensor-embedded swim suit to track performance data

Testing biomechanics

Maker Faire Rome curator Alessandro Ranellucci appears in a very cool comic book put out by WASP, an Italian 3D printer company

Eben from California’s Tapigami holding court, with tape creations

Scraping the last bits of the very last lasagna at the Saturday evening maker party — fun times!

Massimiliano Colella, Director of Asset Camera (the organizing body behind Maker Faire Rome), with his son Gabriel at the Maker Party

Food innovation! I had no idea there were so many innovative and creative things going on with food and tech. I have to say that my favorite thing in this building was the hand painted planets.

The Robotics and Health building is almost overwhelming! So much to look at. I tried to at least get a glimpse at every booth for this recording but I think I missed a few.

This building is primarily for kids, and also stuff that was built by school groups. There is such a wide variety in here from hands-on simple things like constructing things from straws to complex robotics and fashion.

On Friday before the Maker Faire opens to the public, it is open to the local schools. There were roughly 25,000 students all crowding around projects and gathering to watch makers show off. It was wonderful!

While this was happening we also had a global producer’s meetup, where maker faire organizers from all over the world came together to discuss the various issues involved with running a faire of your own. Since there’s nothing quite like a Maker Faire in the world, it has it’s own unique challenges that the community is figuring out and sharing.

We have arrived in Rome and visited the Maker Faire. This is simply a huge Maker Faire. They boasted that it is the biggest in Europe but I think it easily gives good competition to our Bay Area Faire as well. The event is broken up into several large buildings, each with a theme, such as drones and vehicles, or kids and education, and each building could take you a day to explore! I’ll do my best to share as much as possible here.