Last weekend the second edition of Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition,  hosted 90,000 people (15,000 young boys and girls!) at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, discovering more than 600 maker projects, participated to workshops and attended the conferences and many light-talks.

Take a look at some snapshots on our Flickr account: we took them during the faire at the Arduino Booth and Store (also behind the scene),  the Arduino Activities and the presentations announcing  the State of Arduino and CasaJasmina – the open source connected home – curated by Bruce Sterling. During the long and intense weekend Arduino participated also to the press conference and vernissage of the exhibition 50 years of italian inventions, from Programma 101 to the first 3d printed car, a project by Make in Italy CDB foundation.

In the next weeks we are going to share some  videos of the presentations and the events of those amazing days! Thanks for participating to Maker Faire Rome! Stay tuned…

Do you have any picture to share about the event? Post the link in the comments!

From the 3rd to the 5th of October all the Arduino crew will be staying in Rome for the European Maker Faire hosting more than 500 makers from all over the world! You can come and visit us in one of the 3 main areas (Arduino  booth, Arduino Store, Arduino Activities) of the fair dedicated to Arduino:

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ARDUINO BOOTH
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Visit the Arduino booth and explore a showcase of projects and Arduino boards:

• SPECIAL Installation – Arduino TRE Photobooth
  A 3D anaglyph photobooth uses two cameras to capture a 3D picture. Each picture is processed using the new Arduino TRE board. It separates the red channel from one camera and the cyan channel from the other, and overlays them together. The result is then printed out on a large photostrip.

• Arduino Starter Kit – Demos

The Kit walks you through the basics of using the Arduino in a hands-on way. The kit includes a selection of the most common and useful electronic components with a book of 15 projects.

• Arduino At Heart – Showcase

Learn more about the Arduino AtHeart program, designed for makers and companies wanting to make their products easily recognizable as based on the Arduino technology. Fea

Bhoreal – OpenTracker v2 Board – JubeBox with littleBits Arduino Module – Cromatica – Smart Citizen Kit – Apollo

• Creative Technology in the Classroom (CTC)

Kit Demo for Teachers & Schools

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ARDUINO STORE
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The official Arduino Store will be open during the 3 days of the Maker Faire and is your chance to purchase boards, materials, kits, for all your tinkering skills.  Come check us out to discover more than 300 products.

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ARDUINO ACTIVITIES
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FRIDAY

///h.10.30-19.30
Creative Technology in the Classroom
Activity: 4 Kit Demos for Teachers & Schools

• Tickle Robot A regular ticklish robot in a rocking chair. Come to think of it, that doesn’t sound very regular at all. Tickle the robot on its heart and it will start wiggle like crazy.

• Open Box An open source box that contains open source electronics. Oh, and it automatically opens when you knock on it.

• Binary  LP This sort of works as an LP player. The difference is that instead of using a needle on a plastic disc, we use three IR sensors in a row to read a pattern from a paper disc. If you are both musically and digitally inclined, you will have lots of fun creating melodies with this.

• Drawdio You might think that this pen is magic, and it might just be. Drawdio turns (almost) everything that is conductive into an instrument. You can either make music by drawing a picture or by touching the tip of it to different conductive things around you.

///h.10.30-14.30
Arduino and Makers activities
Activity: Presentation for Teachers & Schools

Overview of workshops and activities for kid and teens at school

///h.14.30-15.30
Arduino TRE and Web IDE
Activity: Board Demo

Come try out the new Arduino Software (IDE) we are designing for the Arduino TRE, give us your feedback to guide the development in the right direction!

///h.10.30-18.30

Svante’s catapult and claw
Activity: Kid-friendly Workshop (over 6 year-old)
You can remote control our robot Svante: grab objects with a claw, or make him use the catapult to launch balls to specific targets.

Do you want to participate? Add your name to the schedule (on paper) in the Arduino Activity area and be there at your scheduled time.

SATURDAY

h.10.30-11.30/12.30-13.30/14.30-15.30/16.30-17.30

Drawdio
Activity: Kid-friendly Workshop (over 7 year-old) – 4 slots

Make sound while you draw. Learn about conductivity and sound by drawing on a piece of paper.

Do you want to participate? Add your name to the schedule (on paper) in the Arduino Activity area and be there at your scheduled time.

h.11.30-13.30/13.30-14.30/15.30-16.30/17.30-18.30

Binary LP
Activity: Kid-friendly Workshop (over 7 year-old) – 4 slots

Draw your own binary patterns to play music in our nice Binary LP player. Learn about sound, melody, binary reading and sensors.

Do you want to participate? Add your name to the schedule (on paper) in the Arduino Activity area and be there at your scheduled time.

h.13.30-16.30

Conductive dough cakes and animals
Activity: Drop-in Workshop (20 min – over 6 year-old)

Make an animal, a cake with candles or an emitting light object with conductive dough and learn the basics on conductivity.

h.10.30-12.30

Lasercut Race
Activity: Workshop

Build something is usually pretty fun, but if we’re talking about lasercut race cars, it’s impossible to not enjoy it! what could be better? tune them after all and challange the other racer!

Do you want to participate? Add your name to the schedule (on paper) in the Arduino Activity area and be there at your scheduled time.

h.10.30-18.30

LED necklace
Activity: Drop-in Workshop (15 min)

Build a cool and simple necklace! Power an LED with a small battery and put it inside a designed paper box. You will be able to decorate it with hole patterns and hang it from your neck.

h.14.30-16.30

Arduino TRE and Web IDE
Activity: Board Demo

Come try out the new Arduino Software (IDE) we are designing for the Arduino TRE, give us your feedback to guide the development in the right direction!

h.16.30-18.30

Vibro-Robot
Activity: Kid-friendly Workshop (over 6 year-old)

A workshop to learn by playing the basics of robotics. Using little motors, lasercut pieces and little plastic parts, kids will build their (first) small robot!

Do you want to participate? Add your name to the schedule (on paper) in the Arduino Activity area and be there at your scheduled time.

SUNDAY

h.10.30-18.30

Svante’s catapult and claw
Activity: Robotics Demo

You can remote control our robot Svante: grab objects with a claw, or make him use the catapult to launch balls to specific targets.

h.10.30-18.30

Conductive dough cakes and animals
Activity: Drop-in Workshop (15 min – over 6 year-old)

Make an animal, a cake with candles or an emitting light object with conductive dough and learn the basics on conductivity.

h.10.30-18.30

LED necklace
Activity: Drop-in Workshop (15 min)

Build a cool and simple necklace! Power an LED with a small battery and put it inside a designed paper box. You will be able to decorate it with hole patterns and hang it from your neck.

h.11.30-13.30

E-Jewels
Activity: Workshop

Jewels are not just for girls and electronics not just for boys. During this brief workshop you will learn how to solder and make your first electronic jewel. This workshop is perfect for mum/dad+son/daughter

Do you want to participate? Buy your E-Jewel kit in the Arduino Store (10 euro) before the workshop starts r name on the paper in the Arduino Activity  area and be there at the scheduled time.

h.14.30-17.30

Arduino TRE and Web IDE
Activity: Board Demo

Come try out the new Arduino Software (IDE) we are designing for the Arduino TRE, give us your feedback to guide the development in the right direction!

At the Atmel booth at Maker Faire, they were showing off a few very cool bits and baubles. We’ve got a post on the WiFi shield in the works, but the most impressive person at the booth was [Quin]. He has a company, he’s already shipping products, and he has a few projects already in the works. What were you doing at 13?

[Quin]‘s Qduino Mini is your basic Arduino compatible board with a LiPo charging circuit. There’s also a ‘fuel gauge’ of sorts for the battery. The project will be hitting Kickstarter sometime next month, and we’ll probably put that up in a links post.

Oh, [Quin] was also rocking some awesome kicks at the Faire. Atmel, I’m trying to give you money for these shoes, but you’re not taking it.

[Sophie] had a really cool installation at the faire, and notably something that was first featured on hackaday.io. Basically, it’s a virtually reality Segway, built with an Oculus, Leap Motion, a Wobbleboard, an Android that allows you to cruise on everyone’s favorite barely-cool balancing scooter through a virtual landscape.

This project was a collaboration between [Sophie], [Takafumi Ide], [Adelle Lin], and [Martha Hipley]. The virtual landscape was built in Unity, displayed on the Oculus, controlled with an accelerometer on a phone, and has input with a Leap Motion. There are destructible and interactable things in the environment that can be pushed around with the Leap Motion, and with the helmet-mounted fans, you can feel the wind in your hair as you cruise over the landscape on your hovering Segway-like vehicle. This is really one of the best VR projects we’ve ever seen.

In case you haven’t noticed, one of the more popular themes for new dev boards is Bluetooth. Slap a Bluetooth 4.0 module on a board, and you really have something: just about every phone out there has it, and the Low Energy label is great for battery-powered Internets of Things.

Most of these boards fall a little short. It’s one thing to throw a Bluetooth module on a board, but building the software to interact with this board is another matter entirely. Revealing Hour Creations is bucking that trend with their Tah board. Basically, it’s your standard Arduino compatible board with a btle module. What they’ve done is add the software for iOS and Android that makes building stuff easy.

Putting Bluetooth on a single board is one thing, but how about putting Bluetooth on everything. SAM Labs showed off their system of things at Maker Faire with LEDs, buttons, fans, motors, sensors, and just about every electrical component you can imagine.

All of these little boards come with a Bluetooth module and a battery. The software for the system is a graphical interface that allows you to draw virtual wires between everything. Connect a button to a LED in the software, and the LED will light up when the button is pressed. Move your mouse around the computer, and the button will turn on a motor when it’s pressed.

There are a few APIs that also come packaged into the programming environment – at the booth, you could open a fridge (filled with cool drinks that didn’t cost five dollars, a surprise for the faire) and it would post a tweet.

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