The first Philadelphia Maker Faire was extremely impressive, and seemed poised to be one of the premier maker events on the East Coast. Unfortunately, it had the misfortune of happening just a few months before COVID-19 made such events impossible. Robbed of all its momentum, the event tried out different venues after the shadow of the pandemic was gone, but struggled to meet the high bar set by that inaugural outing.

But after attending the the 2025 Philadelphia Maker Faire this past weekend, I can confidently say the organizers have moved the needle forward. This year marks the second time the event has been held at the Cherry Street Pier, a mixed-use public space with an artistic bent that not only lends itself perfectly to the spirit of Maker Faire but offers room for expansion in the future. The pier was packed with fascinating exhibits and excited attendees, and when the dust settled, everyone I spoke to was thrilled with how the day went and felt extremely positive about the future of the Faire.

Providing coverage of an event like this is always difficult, as there’s simply no way I could adequately describe everything there was to see and do. The following represents just a few of the projects that caught my eye; to see all that the Philadelphia Maker Faire has to offer, I’d strongly suggest you make the trip out in 2026.

Wasteworld Toys

Of all the awesome projects I saw during the Faire, the one that stuck with me the most has to be Brett Houser’s Wasteworld Toys. This incredible collection of hand-made remote controlled vehicles invoke the look and feel of the Mad Max universe, but are populated with its own cast of post-apocalyptic characters that come from the depths of Brett’s obviously considerable imagination.

Whether your saw them as pieces of art or electronic marvels, it was impossible not to be impressed with the work Brett put into these builds. While there were some 3D printed parts and cannibalized model kits, much of the raw material used to build the vehicles and characters came from the trash. Brett has an eye for repurposing everyday objects, like taking the metal top from a disposable lighter and turning it into an armored faceplate for one of his Wasteworld warriors.

Beyond being able to simply drive them around, most of the vehicles had some secondary function. One was equipped with an Airsoft cannon, another had a functional flame-thrower, and there was even a mobile rocket launcher that actually fired tiny rockets. They weren’t all weapons of war though: there was a surveillance van that featured a tiny display showing nearby WiFi networks, and a tricked-out station wagon that had an emulated version of Contra running in the back that you could play with a Bluetooth PlayStation controller.

Many of the vehicles featured first person view (FPV) capabilities, with the cameras so expertly hidden on the vehicles and cybernetic characters that at first glance you assume they’re just part of the visual theme and not functional components. To make the experience even more immersive, several vehicles featured displays that were really only visible when looking through the FPV gear, such as digital readouts of the system’s battery voltage.

As impressive as the vehicles of Wasteworld Toys was, it was perhaps Brett himself who left the biggest impression on me. Humble, affable, and eager to share the intricate details of his work, he was even willing to hand the controls of his creations over to attendees, much to their delight. The Wasteworld couldn’t have asked for a better ambassador.

Myelin BCI Board

Hackaday readers may recall the OpenBCI project, which made some headlines about a decade ago with their relatively low-cost development boards for experimenting with brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). We covered a few projects that used their software and hardware, including a flying shark controlled by EEG signals.

It turns out that OpenBCI has now turned their attention to some kind of mixed reality headset that costs as much as a new car, leaving the future of their more hobbyist friendly hardware in question. Which is why Mike Recine has been working on the Myelin, an open source hardware project that continues the legacy of OpenBCI’s early work. Powered by the ESP32, the battery-powered board can wirelessly link to your phone or computer to deliver 16 channels of EEG data.

Mike is hoping to launch a Kickstarter for the hardware soon, offering up assembled and ready-to-use Myelin boards. Kits are also on the horizon, and of course as an open source hardware project, spinning up your own board will be an option as well. The project doesn’t have much of an online presence currently, but interested parties can sign up to be notified when more information goes live.

A Cardboard Table Saw

The ChompSaw is advertised as a “kid-safe power tool for cutting cardboard” but it doesn’t take long to realize that’s selling the machine a bit short. There’s no blade in the machine, instead it uses a small metal piston to rapidly nibble away at the cardboard, a mechanism that co-founder Max Liechty says could be thought of as a “full-auto hole punch.” Even though there’s no blade, the business end of the ChompSaw is still under a protective cover that keeps anything thicker than 3 mm cardboard out. You couldn’t hurt yourself with this machine if you tried.

It rapidly rips through cardboard in any direction, making it easy to follow patterns and cut out complex shapes. Though it was designed primarily for common cardboard (think: all those Amazon boxes you’ve got stacked up), it can chew through other thin materials such as paper, foam, and plastic, opening up even more possibilities.

The ChompSaw brought in over $1 million during its 2023 Kickstarter campaign, and is available for purchase through their site. While it might not seem like the kind of machine we’d usually get excited about at Hackaday, its ability to cut through foam and other materials holds promise for more practical applications than rainy day arts and crafts. Plus, one should never underestimate the value of CAD: Cardboard Aided Design.

The Sights of Philly Maker Faire

The Road Ahead

In addition to the attendees and exhibitors, I also got the chance to talk to some of the folks behind the Philadelphia Maker Faire. It will probably come as no surprise to hear they all share a passion for discovering and showcasing local talent, and  are very excited about the future of the event. There was even some talk about coordinating efforts with other art and tech events in the area such as JawnCon.

Considering they were up against some dreary weather, the organizers were encouraged by the fantastic turnout. Similarly, the venue itself was more than up to the challenge, and should have no trouble supporting the event as it grows. Put simply, the Philadelphia Maker Faire has found its stride, and promises to be even bigger and better next year. If you’re in the Northeast US, this is an event you should keep on your calendar for 2026 and beyond.

Underwater robots face many challenges, not least of which is how to move around. ZodiAq is a prototype underwater soft robot (link is to research paper) that takes an unusual approach to this problem: multiple flexible appendages. The result is a pretty unconventional-looking device that can not only get around effectively, but can do so without disturbing marine life.

ZodiAq sports a soft flexible appendage from each of its twelve faces, but they aren’t articulated like you might think. Despite this, the device can crawl and swim.

Each soft appendage is connected to a motor, which rotates the attached appendage. This low-frequency but high-torque rotation, combined with the fact that each appendage has a 45° bend to it, has each acting as a rotor. Rotation of the appendages acts on the surrounding fluid, generating thrust. When used together in the right way, these appendages allow the unit to move in a perfectly controllable manner.

This locomotion method is directly inspired by the swimming gait of bacterial flagella, which the paper mentions are regarded as the only example of a biological “wheel”.

How fast can it go? The prototype covers a distance of two body lengths every fifteen seconds. True, it’s no speed demon compared to a propeller, but it doesn’t disturb marine life or environments as it moves around. This method of movement has a lot going for it. It’s adaptable and doesn’t use all twelve appendages at once; so there’s redundancy built in. If some get damaged or go missing, it can still move, just slower.

ZodiAq‘s design strikes us as a very accessible concept, should any aspiring marine robot hackers wish to give it a shot. We’ve seen other highly innovative and beautiful underwater designs as well, like body-length undulating fins and articulated soft arms.

We do notice that since it lacks a “front” — it might be a challenge to decide how to mount something like a camera. If you have any ideas, share them in the comments.

Sitting in front of a computer all day isn’t exactly what the firmware between our ears was tuned to do. We’re supposed to be hunting and gathering, not hunting and pecking. So anything that makes the computing experience a little more pleasurable is probably worth the effort, and this premium wireless scroll wheel certainly seems to fit that bill.

If this input device seems familiar, that’s because we featured [Engineer Bo]’s first take on this back at the end of 2024. That version took a lot of work to get right, and while it delivered high-resolution scrolling with a premium look and feel, [Bo] just wasn’t quite satisfied with the results. There were also a few minor quibbles, such as making the power switch a little more user-friendly and optimizing battery life, but the main problem was the one that we admit would have driven us crazy, too: the wobbling scroll wheel.

[Bo]’s first approach to the wobble problem was to fit a larger diameter bearing under the scroll wheel. That worked, but at the expense of eliminating the satisfying fidget-spinner action of the original — not acceptable. Different bearings yielded the same result until [Bo] hit on the perfect solution: a large-diameter ceramic bearing that eliminated the wobble while delivering the tactile flywheel experience.

The larger bearing left more room inside for the redesigned PCB and a lower-profile, machined aluminum wheel. [Bo] also had a polycarbonate wheel made, which looks great as is but would really be cool with internal LEDs — at the cost of battery life, of course. He’s also got plans for a wheel machined from wood, which we’ll eagerly await.

If you want to get started in microfluidic robotics, [soiboi soft’s] salamander is probably too complex for a first project. But it is impressive, and we bet you’ll learn something about making this kind of robot in the video below.

The pneumatic muscles are very impressive. They have eight possible positions using three sources of pressure. This seems like one of those things that would have been nearly impossible to fabricate in a home lab a few decades ago and now seems almost trivial. Well, maybe trivial isn’t the right word, but you know what we mean.

The soft robots use layers of microfluidic channels that can be made with a 3D printer. Watching these squishy muscles move in an organic way is fascinating. For right now, the little salamander-like ‘bot has a leash of tubes, but [soiboi] plans to make a self-contained version at some point.

If you want something modular, we’ve seen Lego-like microfluidic blocks. Or, grab the shrinky dinks.

An electric typewriter is a rare and wonderful thrift store find, and even better if it still works. Unfortunately, there’s not as much use for these electromechanical beauties, so if you find one, why not follow [Konstantin Schauwecker]’s lead and turn it into a printer?

The portable typewriter [Konstantin] found, a Silver Reed 2200 CR, looks like a model from the early 1980s, just before PCs and word processing software would sound the death knell for typewriters. This machine has short-throw mechanical keys, meaning that a physical press of each key would be needed rather than electrically shorting contacts. Cue the order for 50 low-voltage solenoids, which are arranged in rows using 3D printed holders and aluminum brackets, which serve as heat sinks to keep the coils cool. The solenoids are organized into a matrix with MOSFET drivers for the rows and columns, with snubber diodes to prevent voltage spikes across the coils, of course. A Raspberry Pi takes care of translating an input PDF file into text and sending the right combination of GPIO signals to press each key.

The action of the space bar is a little unreliable, so page formatting can be a bit off, but other than that, the results are pretty good. [Konstantin] even managed to hook the printer up to his typewriter keyboard, which is pretty cool, too.

IBM mainframes are known for very unusual terminals. But IBM made many different things, including the IBM 3151 ASCII terminal, which uses a cartridge to emulate a VT220 terminal. [Norbert Keher] has one and explains in great detail how to connect it to a mainframe.

It had the 3151 personality cartridge for emulating multiple IBM and DEC terminals. However, the terminal would not start until he unplugged it. The old CRT was burned in with messages from an IBM 3745, which helped him work out some of the configuration.

If you’ve only used modern ASCII terminals, you might not realize that many terminals from IBM and other vendors used to use a block mode where the computer would dump a screen to the terminal. You could “edit” the screen (that is, fill in forms or enter lines). Then you’d send the whole screen back in one swoop. This is “block” mode, and some of the terminals the 3151 can emulate are character mode, and others are block mode, which explains its odd keyboard and commands.

[Norbert] gets the terminal running with a virtual mainframe, but along the way, he explains a lot about what’s going on. The video is about an hour long, but it is an hour well spent if you are interested in mainframe history.

Of course, you can always get the real deal to connect. If you don’t have your own virtual mainframe, you are missing out.

Many years ago, audio equipment came with a tone control, a simple RC filter that would cut or boost the bass to taste. As time passed, this was split into two controls for bass and treble, and then finally into three for bass, mid, and treble. When audiophile fashion shifted towards graphic equalisers, these tone controls were rebranded as “3-band graphic equalisers”, a misleading term if ever we heard one. [Gabriel Dantas] designed one of these circuits, and unlike the simple passive networks found on cheap music centres of old, he’s doing a proper job with active filters.

The write-up is worth a read even if you are not in the market for a fancy tone control, for the basic primer it gives on designing an audio filter. The design contains, as you might expect, a low-pass, a bandpass, and a high-pass filter. These are built around TL072 FET-input op-amps, and an LM386 output stage is added to drive headphones.

The final project is built on a home-made PCB, complete with mains power supply. Audiophiles might demand more exotic parts, but we’re guessing that even with these proletarian components it will still sound pretty good. Probably better than the headphone amplifier featured in a recent project from a Hackaday writer, at least. There’s a build video, below the break.

 

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