Open Sauce 2025 simply wrapped and in the event you weren’t fortunate sufficient to make it out to the Bay Space for the conference, you missed out. Even in the event you have been there, you could have missed one thing superior — there was loads to see, in spite of everything.
There have been, after all, cubicles that no person may miss, like these from Elegoo, Makera, and Crunch Labs. However Open Sauce is for makers and created by makers, so we have been on the hunt for the sorts of smaller exhibitors that embody the Hackster spirit.
That’s why we scoured the convention halls and braved the nice 70° out of doors climate to search out essentially the most spectacular, most progressive, and most weird tasks of the occasion. These are our picks for the 9 displays that greatest displayed these traits.
#9 – Tic-tac-toe with a twist
This one was simple to overlook, as a result of it appears to be like like a easy digital model of tic-tac-toe at first look. Any elementary faculty scholar can inform you that tic-tac-toe is a horrible sport, because it all the time ends in a draw if each gamers have even the smallest quantity of expertise with the technique — a lot in order that even utilizing the phrase “technique” feels foolish.
However what in the event you tweak the foundations a bit? What if, for instance, solely the participant’s three most up-to-date marks stay on the board? Or, how about if the marks “fall down” to the bottom-most accessible area on the board, like Join 4?
That’s precisely what Dorian Todd of Full Contact Engineering achieved along with his digital tic-tac-toe board and it modifications the sport dramatically, introducing real technique. In each sport we performed, Dorian soundly trounced me as I struggled to wrap my mind across the new mechanics. And if a human opponent isn’t accessible, Dorian additionally included an AI to play in opposition to — although you most likely gained’t beat it, both.
#8 – A CNC router… that you just transfer manually?
Typical CNC machines, like mills and routers, must be bigger than the fabric they work with. That’s as a result of they want movement programs that may transfer the software to any a part of that materials. The result’s huge and costly machines that few makers can accommodate or afford. However the Compass CNC V1 is something however typical and its designer, Cameron Chaney, carried out a really intelligent workaround: changing many of the movement system with the operator’s personal physique.
The Compass CNC V1 is a bit like a handheld router and isn’t a lot greater than one. The operator strikes it throughout the floor of the fabric to make cuts as a small show guides them alongside the programmed toolpaths.
However right here’s the ingenious half: the machine has a miniature movement system of its personal to carry out small actions (about 20mm) and proper for errors within the operator’s movement.
The operator simply has to maneuver the Compass CNC V1 fairly shut to the toolpath, utilizing the on-screen information, and the machine will carry out the fantastic changes to keep up accuracy. House owners can minimize materials and components of any measurement (embody 4×8 sheets and bigger), utilizing a machine that’s reasonably priced and doesn’t take up a lot store area.
Compass is at present accepting pre-orders for kits that may ship in October 2025. These kits price $790 and embody all the “nutritional vitamins,” such because the Teensy 4.1 used for management and the stepper motors. House owners can then 3D-print their very own body and assemble a Compass CNC V1 utilizing the hand held router or spindle of their alternative.
#7 – Goldfish can drive vehicles now
When fish emerged from Earth’s primordial oceans on their quest to evolve into pandas, people, and armadillos, they did so on legs (or leg-like appendages, at the very least). Nonetheless, evolution is a really gradual course of and at this time’s goldfish don’t have that sort of time. So, Laura Caroline Jung, Phoebe Lin, and Ria Mirchandani constructed the Fishmobile to provide goldfish entry to land with out the wait.
Surprisingly, they aren’t the primary to do that. A staff from Ben-Gurion College constructed one thing comparable a couple of years in the past and that was the inspiration for the Fishmobile.
The Fishmobile is an Arduino-controlled robotic that drives round on Mecanum wheels whereas carrying a fish tank. Some ultrasonic sensors assist to keep away from collisions, however the robotic will finally be piloted by a goldfish. The goldfish will direct the car by swimming round within the tank, which a Raspberry Pi will detect via a digicam.
That hasn’t fairly come to fruition but and the demonstration at Open Sauce wasn’t actually being managed by a fish. In actual fact, the “fish” within the tank was a robotic imposter. However it’s only a matter of time till the Fishmobile offers goldfish the independence they crave.
#6 – Acrobatics 100
Your typical wizard goes to be dumping every thing into stats like intelligence and knowledge, which leaves them woefully unprepared for acrobatic feats. So, what’s a magic-wielder to do when they should traverse a chasm on floating stepping stones? Tech Wizard’s resolution was to solid self-leveling by constructing a bag of holding stability.
This backpack works utilizing the identical ideas as self-balancing robots and inverted pendulums, by rotating mass and utilizing the second of inertia to supply an opposing, counteractive power to tipping. On this case, the mass is a weighty flywheel and a CubeMars actuator spins that underneath the management of a Teensy growth board.
That total contraption matches inside a big clear dice with shoulder straps. When worn securely upon one’s individual, it is going to work to remain upright and can subsequently hold the wearer from falling over. The impact is unnatural, nearly magical balancing potential that will often be reserved for rogues and rangers.
#5 – Milling steel with minimal cash
Machine instruments are notoriously and frustratingly costly, which tends to place them out of the attain of most makers. As talked about within the Compass CNC part, they must be bigger than the fabric they work with. And it turns into even trickier when working with metals and particularly with more durable and harder metals like software metal, which require excessive rigidity.
However the Shariff DMC2 Mini CNC mill manages to be reasonably priced and compact. And, primarily based on what we noticed at Open Sauce, it certain appears succesful. Better of all, it prices simply $2,500 in equipment kind (which patrons can assemble themselves).
Regardless of that low value, it has fairly spectacular specs. It runs on single section 120V energy (or 220V in relevant nations), has a 12×7×5.5” work envelope, a 2.2kw (3HP) spindle at 24000 RPM with an ER20 collet, closed-loop steppers appearing as servos, a central lubrication system with hand pump, a flood coolant system with chip tray and filtration, a full enclosure, and it runs a Mach3 controller.
The samples we noticed at Open Sauce regarded nice and included widespread supplies like brass, aluminum, and metal, together with harder supplies like titanium and T2 software metal.
That is all very promising and we’re going to do our greatest to get a DMC2 Mini to evaluation for The Maker’s Toolbox. The kits are at present in inventory, however assembled machines are out of inventory. Shariff DMC instructed us that they’re specializing in producing kits, as these are extra fashionable and way more reasonably priced.
#4 – The origin of a cargo cult
Most Open Sauce attendees didn’t get to see it, however on Thursday the San Mateo County Occasion Heart was buzzing with exercise as exhibitors rushed to get their cubicles arrange. Keith Sachs noticed the identical factor at Open Sauce 2024 and so he got here ready this 12 months with a really sensible cargo robotic.
It’s a bit like a robotic mule, which Sachs designed to lug round containers and tools. Its body is made from interlocking aluminum panels fabricated by SendCutSend, which collapse down right into a bundle sufficiently small to suit right into a carry-on Pelican case for transportation. It’s pushed by a hacked hoverboard and Sachs can management the bot’s motion via a regular RC transmitter and receiver set, with energy coming from Hercules (Harbor Freight) energy software batteries — the one components of the robotic that may’t go within the carry-on case.
This robotic has simple utility, however it turned out to even be a giant hit as a makeshift car. It may possibly simply carry the burden of 1 and even two folks, and each William Osman and Engineezy have been noticed taking the it for a spin.
Sachs plans to enhance the design for subsequent 12 months’s Open Sauce, so make sure to hold a watch out for that. And think about bringing some money, so you possibly can bribe Sachs into serving to you progress containers to your individual sales space.
#3 – The keyboard of a thousand keys
What number of distinctive phrases do you employ frequently? Estimates range dramatically, however it’s secure to say that the majority English audio system can get by in each day dialog with only a few thousand. In case you’re keen to restrict your diction, you would most likely even follow solely the thousand commonest phrases with out an excessive amount of bother.
Attoparsec put all one-thousand of these phrases on a single huge keyboard, every by itself particular person key.
Sure, which means there are one-thousand keys. No, this isn’t sensible. Sure, it is extremely cool.
That wasn’t fairly so simple as simply placing collectively 9.615 keyboards, as Attoparsec needed it work like a “regular” keyboard and that meant utilizing a single microcontroller. However even essentially the most environment friendly attainable keyboard matrix would require 64 I/O pins — excess of the standard microcontroller has to supply. Thankfully, GPIO expanders exist they usually let Attoparsec get to all the vital columns and rows with a Teensy 4.0 growth board. It is sort of a pyramid scheme keyboard matrix.
However as you most likely guessed, no person sells full units of key caps with English’s prime one-thousand phrases and so Attoparsec wanted to make his personal. For a earlier challenge, he resin-printed his personal key caps. Nonetheless, that may be a very time-consuming course of that wouldn’t make sense for a keyboard of this scale. As an alternative, Attoparsec used dye sublimation to print the legends on clean key caps.
Typing on this keyboard is inefficient, to say the least. And typing at excessive velocity would require arm muscle endurance past what most of us possess. However at the very least you’d by no means have to fret about typos.
#2 – Hollywood’s prop secrets and techniques
Whenever you watch a Hollywood blockbuster — and even an indie style movie — the true nature of the particular results are hidden from you as a viewer. The aim of a film is to immerse the viewers in a narrative and it will be counterproductive for props or particular results to steal the present.
Nonetheless, many people take a particular curiosity in these props and results, which is why Davis DeWitt arrange his exhibit to supply a glance into the magic that occurs behind the scenes. DeWitt has an excessive amount of Hollywood expertise as a prop maker, particular results engineer, and filmmaker. He has labored behind cameras on film units and constructed props for the opposite facet of these cameras, giving him distinctive perception right into a famously enigmatic business.
The star of DeWitt’s sales space is definitely a film star himself, known as Newt. You possibly can see Newt on the silver display for your self in The Lightning Code because the plucky robotic sidekick. Calling Newt cute can be an understatement and he was a giant hit at Open Sauce. He isn’t an inert particular results placeholder both — he’s a totally practical robotic that DeWitt piloted all through filming.
DeWitt additionally confirmed off one other film prop: a remote-controlled smoke grenade that rolls completely into body to realize the best shot.
On prime of that, DeWitt arrange a focus-pulling demonstration with the assistance of Forrest Gibson, a cinematographer and first AC on quite a few productions. Attendees bought to strive pulling give attention to a transferring topic, studying for themselves simply how tough the job could be and the way spectacular it’s that we by no means even discover it as viewers.
Lastly, DeWitt’s personal private tasks garnered a whole lot of consideration from everybody passing by — together with Allen Pan. A type of tasks is a Condiment Cannon that flings single-serve packets of jam. One other is a handheld PEZ candy-launcher that hurls the sugar bricks at excessive velocity.
DeWitt has a quickly rising YouTube channel with the sort of excessive manufacturing worth you’d count on from somebody along with his background, so make sure to examine that out.
#1 – Fleshy enjoyable
Have you ever ever regarded into the attention of a classic Polaroid digicam and seen it wanting again at you? Have you ever ever caught your finger into the mouth of an previous Hewlett-Packard so it may get a style for you and inform you its ideas?
You may have achieved each of these very bizarre issues in the event you had visited The Flesh Emporium exhibit at Open Sauce.
The Flesh Emporium is a peek into the thoughts of Ethan Calfee, whose creations are like H.R. Geiger-esque amalgamations of organs and classic tech.
One challenge, the Eyeball On the spot Digital camera, began its life as an innocuous Polaroid 420 Land immediate digicam. However in the event you peer into its lens, you’ll discover a grotesque eye leering again at you from the digicam’s bellows. In case you let the digicam snap a shot of you, a thermal printer will spit out the photograph with doubtlessly dire predictive imagery.
Calfee’s classic Hewlett-Packard PC is much more delightfully disturbing. The growths will definitely catch your consideration — they cowl the chassis like oozing tumors. A type of on the entrance is definitely an orifice that Calfee charitably known as a “mouth.”
In case you stick your finger in there and begin feeling across the prime, you’ll contact some sort of agency protrusion. And sure, the expertise is precisely as suggestive because it sounds. Whenever you make that contact and the pc will get a style, it is going to kind an opinion of you. And it isn’t afraid to share its ideas by printing a card and excreting that from its floppy drive.
It didn’t assume very extremely of me in any respect and that damage. However others acquired extra favorable evaluations and I really feel a compulsion to belief the machine’s judgment.
Extra importantly, The Flesh Emporium encapsulates what folks love about Open Sauce and the maker neighborhood as an entire. It’s uncooked creativity for creativity’s sake and a mirrored image of the creator’s personal distinctive character, which is what we attended the occasion to discover.
