Marc's Blog: outings - Second Northern California Maker Faire at Mare Island

π 2025-09-28 01:01 in Outings, Public

Just like I said last year, I can't call it Bay Area Maker Faire, as it's not really in the bay area anymore, Mare Island is honestly closer to Sacramento than it is from the South Bay. It's a bad location in my opinion, and this year it even drizzled most of the morning, how surprising for a location literally connected to the water... I also couldn't help but notice that the event is indeed smaller than it used to be back when it was in San Mateo (although someone pointed out to me that the sponsorship of bigger companies also brought in money that allowed for a bigger event).
Anyway, after a longish drive, I ended up arriving 30mn before it opened, they let us in early, and after taking my time seeing everything, I was done by 16:00, 2H before it closed. Big contrast compared to earlier maker faires where I wrote on this blog that I really needed 2 days to see everything... I brought a minimal version of my LED outfit, which people still liked :)

This year didn't really have anything too exciting compared to last year, to the point that given the very remote location, I'm not sure I'll go back next year.

All that said, here are the pictures: i01*

The dark room was probably the most fun location for me :)

hi Erin :)

the cuttlefish crew made a new art car this year

bad ass helmet

One thing new this year was the Luminarium, which costs $7 extra. You were supposed to reserve timeslots, but the whole thing didn't seem efficient, and was apparently oversold, so it soon had a long line that didn't move much. Mmmhh....

I had plenty of spare time to see a few talks, not too many caught my eye, but those 3, did:

a talk on wearable LEDs

batteries are often the issue :)

nice one

the talk by Steve Wozniak was excellent

The magician that uses physic properties and adds magic on top, did a great job:

I had a chat with this guy, I was honestly worried about this "plane", given that it was meant to carry a human. The guy is a pilot and did his research. His goal was to fly in ground effect only, which will indeed limit the injuries if anything goes wrong, which it probably will a few times :) If he sticks to that, I wish him luck as long a no one tries to actually fly at altitude with that thing, since if any motor failure happens, this thing is going down and hard (glide ratio of a brick and no rudder to compensate for adverse yaw from a single motor failure):