We had quite the weekend there. We’re just back from Open Sauce 2024 and I don’t think we’ve ever seen so many makers, tech enthusiasts, and YouTubers all together in one place before. This year’s Open Sauce expanded into the Cow Palace venue in San Francisco and definitely felt more gigantic than last year’s inaugural event. Our poor feet; please send help for our feet.

The event combines the best of makers and creators, featuring interactive exhibits, an up-close look at maker technology, talks, panels, and small workshops with top YouTubers.

Pi-powered creations everywhere

It was excellent to meet so many makers who had brought their Raspberry Pi-powered creations to Open Sauce. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be blogging about as many of them as we can: there’s a penny press, an ocular impairment assessment tool, a Connect 4 clock, and a photo booth inside a vintage camera.

We were too busy perusing the maker booths to get to the panels, but we did set eyes on a handful of YouTubers as they popped out to meet people in the main halls. Off the top of my head, we spotted Mark Rober, Adam Savage, The Hacksmith, Ruth Amos, Estefannie, and Becky Stern, whose pet cat and mermaid hair we enthused about recently.

Special shout-out to Tex Kang’s not Pi-powered but still cool AI tote bag printing station. We asked it to print us a raspberry pie PCB, and it did a pretty good job.

PIZ dispensers and fortune tellers

Jeff Geerling gave away 480 Raspberry Pi Picos at the end (that’s an entire reel!) and he didn’t just hand them out like a civilian. He (of course) over-engineered an eye-catching alternative.

Jeff went for a little nostalgia hit, copying the iconic PEZ dispenser design but blowing up the size so it’s big enough to hold loads of Picos rather than those impossibly tiny candy capsules. We didn’t actually manage to cross paths with Jeff this year, so vast was the venue, but we did see his PIZ dispenser taking a rest at Kevin McAleer‘s booth. There we also had our fortune read by a robot named Voltara, inspired by the Zoltar machine from the movie Big.

Kev made Voltara especially for Open Sauce. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 and features a thermal printer and arcade-style buttons.

Thanks again to everyone who stopped to talk to us about your creations. We were overwhelmed by the number of Pis in the wild we spotted. We can’t wait to see you again next year.