Hello everyone, welcome to our Maker Faire Bay Area 2024 (MFBA) coverage! This year’s theme is The Greatest Show and Tell on Earth. We’re proud to say been covering the Maker Faire pretty regularly now, you can check out our coverage last year, MFBA 2019 and MFBA 2018. I had such a blast attending the Maker Faire again. I’m so excited to share all the fun I had this year with you here. Join me as I take you through all my Maker Faire adventures. What are we waiting for? Let’s go!
Taking the San Francisco Bay Ferry to Mare Island
This year, I decided to do something different. I took the Ferry from San Francisco (SF) Ferry Building. And I have to say, it was so convenient, and only cost me $9 using my Clipper Card ($11.25 per adult if you buy a paper ticket). Now full disclosure, the SF Bay Ferry from San Francisco to Vallejo, where the MFBA is held, takes around an hour. Might sound long, but my experience was a buttery smooth ride. The Ferry is super spacious with lots of seats, and iconically scenic. If you’re coming from SF, I highly recommend you take the Ferry.
First photo at the SF Ferry building waiting for my ride. Second photo inside the Ferry.
Arriving at the Maker Faire Bay Area 2024 grounds
After disembarking at Vallejo, I literally walked straight into the line to enter the faire. Check-in didn’t take long, around 5 minutes, and I was soon given my badge and let into the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth. I was so happy to be back, as you can see from my face below!
Along with my badge, I was handed a map of the faire grounds that included an overview of the different exhibit areas, makers spaces, and much more.
To help organize my plans for the day, I quickly jotted down a path for my tour of the event area.
Exploring the Maker Faire Bay Area 2024 grounds
I started my Maker Faire adventure at the Pedal Powered Stage. Participants volunteered their time and energy to “bike power” the stage. Faire goers were encouraged to see how much power they could produce to help power the stage.
After so much excitement under the sun, I went to get some shade and explored all the wonderful exhibit at the Storehouse South and North exhibit areas. There was so much to see! Here are some of the exhibits that caught my eye:
Retro Roadshow
I was immediately attracted to the old school video game consoles from the Retro Roadshow. They had a Nintendo Game Cube and a Sega Dreamcast to name a few. All of them in working condition and free for anyone to play and explore with. These consoles really took me back.
Maddie Wu’s Tango & Cece Table Top Friends
Maker Faire isn’t just about old school consoles and DIY tech. There were super talented artists and impressive artwork on display as well. I came across the work of Maddie Wu (@maddiedanceparty). Their artwork centered around their “lil table top friends Tango & Cece” that were is so adorable. They recently launched an animated pilot of their work on YouTube. If you like what you see below, do check check it out.
Bottanggo Animatronic Software
Something you had to experience in person to truly appreciate were the demos from the Bottango team. Bottango is an open source animatronic software that provides 3D animated workflows for controlling robots. To try and capture the experience, I made a couple of videos from their booth:
Seeing how smooth their robots moved was just plain impressive! If you’ve ever been interested in dipping your toes into animatronics, they sell Animatronic Kits that could help you take that first step.
E-pisteme Space
A DIY kit that caught my eye was from the E-pisteme Space project. E-pisteme provides DIY kits is targeted for teaching STEM, engineering and scientific experiments.
Their kits come with parts that are 3D printed, and they even have a companion augmented reality app. Super cool!
Raspberry Pi Booth – They Make Computers!
What would the Maker Faire be without Raspberry Pi?
This year the Raspberry Pi team was showcasing their newly released AI camera. I got to see the new camera in action, doing all kinds of AI things such as identifying humans and sample objects in real time. Fun stuff! Speaking about fun stuff, last year I was lucky enough to meet Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton when he visited the Bay Area for the Maker Faire (read all about that fun encounter at my Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 coverage).
Thanks Raspberry Pi!
Thorsson & Associates Workshop
Do you enjoy Cosplay? We bet you do! If that’s the case, you’ll want to check out the work of Thorsson & Associates Workshop. Every year they bring some epic professionally built cosplay to the Maker Faire. I’ve been covering their exhibits and cosplay at the Maker faire since 2018 (check out our coverage here: 2018, 2019 and 2023). Of course, I had to bust out my self made Mandalorian Helmet and get a few shots with their team. Fun times!
Cocoa Press 3D Chocolate Printer
There’s always one or two projects that totally take over the Maker Faire, and I’d say for this year one of them was the Cocoa Press 3D Chocolate Printer. Cocoa press was showcasing their Cocoa Press 3D Chocolate Printer DIY Kit at the Faire that will allow you to build your own 3D Chocolate Printer and do exactly that, 3D print chocolate! This looks like a great step toward everyone having their own chocolate factory within the comfort of their own home. And yes, it really works! I even got to taste some samples.
Alpenglow Industries
I always have a blast visiting the Alpenglow Industries team and seeing all their products. Alpenglow Industries is an electronics shop that also makes DIY kits. I’ve purchased their soldering iron kit previously (top left photo), and had a great experience with it. Their other products include DIY light up artwork and are so much fun.
Some of the products offered by the Aplenglow Industries team.
It’s always nice to catch-up with Carrie from Alpenglow. Until the next Maker Faire!
DIY Cameras: Digital and Analog
The Pieca
They always say, save the best for last. Well, the Maker Faire was no exception. This year my most memorable encounter was with the DIY camera makers Tom (@teaandtechtime) and Lucas (@a.frame.analog). Tom is the creator of the Pieca, a Raspberry Pi based DIY digital camera that was even featured on Petapixel. Yes, they succeeded in building their own self-built digital camera and they did an excellent job. The cameras they showed me included full digital camera lenses, one of them has a 1″ imager, and even a digital viewfinder!
I even got to test it too! Just impressive stuff, superb.
Self-built Analog Camera
And not to be outdone by Tom, Lucas (@a.frame.analog) showed me his self-built Analog camera that he completed just in time for the Maker Faire. I was super grateful to have been lucky enough to be among the select few to see his camera in action in person. Super epic stuff. check out the photos below.
DIY Camera Crew!
Of course I had to get a photo with the DIY camera makers!
From left: Lucas (@a.frame.analog), Skkaw, and Tom (@teaandtechtime).
That’s a wrap of this year’s Maker Faire Bay Area!
Alas, all fun things must come to and end. And so this ends our Maker Faire Bay Area 2024 coverage. I hope you had fun following alowing with my adventures. If so, please make sure to like this post, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media.
Until the next one!
Bonus: Awesome sunset views from the San Francisco Bay Ferry
Like I said at the start of this post, I highly recommend you take the Ferry if you’re coming from SF. The views are stunning, and you may even get to see some movie-ending sunsets with the iconic Golden Gate Bridge as the backdrop. Couldn’t have had a better way to end such an epic day!
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