Maker Faire Bay Area 2018 – They just keep getting better!

2018-05-22 | By Kevin Walseth

This past weekend was a blur… DigiKey had a great set-up in San Meteo, CA for Maker Faire Bay Area 2018. We were set up in Zone 2 of the expo hall back-to-back with the Make: Electronic stage (which was conveniently sponsored by DigiKey). Speaking of the stage, we had some great talks all day long on both Saturday and Sunday. Included was, of course, our favorite Allie Weber a.k.a. @robotmakergirl. Allie talked about some of the amazing accomplishments she has had in her short but action-packed 13 years. She even shot me with a nerf dart. Of course, we can’t have a talk with Allie and miss out on a crowd selfie!

Shawn Hymel also talked about creating PCBs with KiCad. He has a great step-by-step video guide here. This was only a start to who was on stage throughout the weekend.

Back to our booth set-up. To start with, I would like to personally thank the entire DigiKey team that had a hand in the prep, set-up, and spent the long weekend manning the booth. It is highly appreciated and I think we all had a great time meeting new and existing makers of all ages and expertise levels.

Here is a list of the different demos we had in our booth:

Bantam Tools Desktop PCB Milling Machine – Effortlessly handles double-sided PCBs with 6 mil trace and space. The Bantam Tools Desktop PCB Milling Machine is fast, easy, and affordable.

Lulzbot Mini 2 3D Printer – Although this product isn’t available quite yet, it is an amazing 3D printer with new and improved belt-driven z axis, Trinamic motor drivers, larger build volume, SD card print, and many other updates.

Breadware IoT Sensor Kit - Experiment with the Mega-B Development Kit, which includes an Arduino Mega, a Mega-B Bread™Board, and 13 prototyping modules ranging from environmental sensors to manual inputs.

Nordic Thingy 52 - An easy-to-use development platform, designed to help you build IoT prototypes and demos without the need to build hardware or write firmware from scratch.

Circuit Classics – Exquisite printed circuit boards that bring to life Forrest Mims' vintage designs from "Getting Started in Electronics." They are now available on www.digikey.com.

PSoC 6 IoT Greenhouse - The PSoC 6 Pioneer IoT Add-On Shield is the development tool associated with this processor line, sporting an onboard debugger, Arduino-compatible headers, CapSense widgets, and more, all tied to a PSoC 6 processor.

Pimoroni Raspberry Pi Zero W Kits – Featuring the Raspberry Pi Zero W, these kits are great DIY creations for the Pi.

micro:bit - The micro:bit is incredibly user-friendly and can easily be used by entry-level makers including those in elementary school. The micro:bit is programmable by drag and drop using Microsoft MakeCode with no software to install.

Circuit Playground Express - You can now start your journey with Microsoft MakeCode block-based or Javascript programming. Then, you can use the same board to try CircuitPython, with the Python interpreter running right on the Express. As you progress, you can advance to using Arduino IDE.

We even had the Battle Royal with Cheese Battlebot in our booth for the weekend. This amazing battle bot is on the newest season of Discovery’s hit show “Battlebots”. Sponsored by DigiKey, this 250# robot spins an impressive 80-pound slice of bacon as it attempts to destroy its competitors on the battlefield.

The best thing about a Maker Faire is the audience. We get to visit with everyone from a kindergarten student who likes the blinking lights to a tenured engineer who has been a DigiKey customer for many years. The one thing they all have in common – they all love to make! Even Conan O’Brien’s son loves to Make and has his own 3D printer. I had a brief conversation with Conan, his wife, and his son and we talked about how amazing this event is and how it brings together so many different people that all have the same love for making things.

I would love to say this is the next Make: Magazine edition, but it was only a photo booth.

I am extremely excited to do this again in a few months! Let’s get ready for NY!