opensauce 2024

Self Driving Cars?

before we even arrived at the convention we were greeted by some amazing tech. On my way from the airport i bumped into several "self driving" cars. These Waymo cars operate as a taxi service across parts of san fran, and don't even have a person in the drivers seat!
is this really safe? probably not but to their credit everytime we saw one they operated perfectly even on some very difficult san fran crossings and hills. The sensors it uses to achieve this are lidar, cameras, radar.

Metal Hand?

One really cool project i saw was this fully metal hand! using a amazing complex gear system the hand is able to provide a amazing amount of dexterity and flexibility, without the user need to charge it and allows it to be used in everyday situations easily. The creator is working on trying to produce the product commercially, and has a few demo units on people with the impairment in order to gain feedback and improve it more over time.

Cad Software with Live Remote Control + Gpd win 2

met the man behind CommonWealth Robotics (Kevin Harrington) after i spotted him holding a Gpd Win 2
(an amazing portable computer) while walking through the conference center. It was awesome to talk to him about the device and i was even more blown away by the software it was running!

"BowlerStudio by CommonWealth Robotics is a robot development app combining scripting, CAD, and simulation. It supports Java/Groovy, Python, and Clojure, with scripts from local storage or GitHub. Features include a kinematics engine, MuJoCo Physics Engine for simulations, and a Creature Creator for generating 3D printable robots."

it was amazing to see the software in action and i loved the features that he demo-ed and even got to control the robot cat through the software while seeing the simulated cad model react in real time. i will certainly try to implement in into my workflow when i have more money to invest in larger robotics projects

Positron 3D printer

I got to see several positron 3d printers in person, and watched them print. I've been following the positron project for several years now after the project was invented and shown by kralyn3d it was amazing to watch the whole video series and then see some in action while getting to discuss interesting topics with the team such as how the new clear heated bed system works. The main goal of the Positron is to be as small as possible while still maintaining a standard build plate size, it achieves this by printing "upside down" to ensure a low center of mass during fast movements and using a interesting belt system. It's a really interesting open source project and i look forward to seeing how the team progress after the launch.

photo of their booth from their twitter

Micronics 3D

I got to see Micronics 3D who built and launched a fully working desktop SLS 3d printer. It was really interesting to see the demo items produced and the process of how it's made while talking to the people behind the amazing project.

PillBot (endiatx)

Met the team behind the PillBot, a small pill sized device that contains a live camera system and movement system. it was really interesting to see the process of how the device reduced in size over time (see photo) and some challenges they had to overcome with things like getting a movement system that could unjam itself from hard places within the human body while also not causing any harm. I also got to learn a lot about how it could effect the medical industry relating to gut health and learned about the process approving medical devices for public use and what stage the team is at within that process.

Framework team

Got to meet the framework team, it was amazing to see a project with such a respectable goal and the team behind it in person. framework is a laptop producer, their focus in on repairability, upgradability, and customization while still keeping it all in a modern day package. The team was great to talk to and i had a great discussion with them about how they have leveraged largely unpaid social media to grow their business and talked to them about how i found the project through both LTT and Louis Rossman. It was awesome and they seemed to really enjoy talking to me and even gave me a free hat and signed it for me.

Colorado PCB

I also got to meet the family run team behind Colorado PCB, they were a joy to talk to and i really liked talking to them about their process for making pcbs such as etching, plating and engraving. As well as discussing some thoughts i had about how i saw the industry shifting in the coming years which they seemed to firmly agree with. I really liked the family run feeling to the business and i have kept in contact with them over email. I hope one day i am able to visit their plant in Colorado for myself and see how it all really works.

Photo of the empty stage taken while we were volunteering

Creator Panels

I really enjoyed all the Creator panels it was interesting to see people i've enjoyed the work and talent of for years up close. While most of the starter QnA questions might have been generic, it was still interesting to see how the creators interacted with each other and also responded to questions from the audience

I even got to ask a question to a panel featuring 3D printing creators like Stephen Hawes and Proper Printing
(see below)

My OpenSauce badge: Colin Furze, Styropyro, the framework team, colorado pcb, the positron team, Stephen Hawes, and Ludwig

Final Thoughts

Overall OpenSauce 2024 was amazing and really helped me, wether it be meeting amazing startup founders and talking to them about their journey, or seeing content creators i've watched and followed for years was amazing. When your doing projects, and certainly when doing it all by yourself it's easy to feel isolated but events like this really help show how many others like you are out there, all working on their own projects and building cool stuff. I hope i can afford to come back next year and do it all over again

OpenSauce 2024

a recap and highlight reel of the coolest things i saw at opensauce