Many of you know I exhibited at OpenSauce and I had a good time! I got to meet a few creators, saw so many awesome projects, and even met a few people that watch my channel!

I called the booth "Calculator Hacking" and it was a major success! I estimate over 300 people stopped by each day and the vast majority actually interacted with the display, asked questions, or just told me about the calculators they used "back in the day".

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I designed the booth to be very interactive. Next to each calculator I had a laser engraved piece of wood that provided some context for each project. On the left stand I had calculators that were projects in some way:

• Blue TI-84 Plus CE with wireless charging (still works perfectly), backlit keys (these only flickered a little bit so the overheating problem is solved!), and a speaker (area was too loud to hear it though). It was running a DVD screensaver I made a long time ago.
  
• TI-84 KE running TI Boy CE on day 1 but the ROM got corrupted when the battery died so it ran Celeste on day 2.
  
• Nspire CX II -T CAS running Doom. This was one of the favorite attractions. Everyone was stunned how smoothly the game ran.
  
• HP Prime displaying a Windows XP picture to represent someone else's achievement of running Windows on it. Younger people were mind blown that HP makes calculators at all and the old-timers loved that it still supports RPN.
  
• Solar module for the TI-84 Plus. Unfortunately even with 3 panels, the lack of sunlight meant I needed a lamp blasting the calculator with light to generate enough power to run the calculator. This still impressed many people that it worked at all and they found the size comical.
  

Front and center:

• I took my calculators that were broken (TI-83 Plus, TI-84 Plus, TI-84 Plus CE) and screwed them to some clear acrylic so people could pick them up and see how they work on the inside. This was very popular since many people wanted to know what CPU calculators use. The TI-83 Plus was perfect since it was an older hardware revision so the z80 was separate from the RAM and clearly marked. These also helped me explain to people how some of my modifications worked without taking the actual projects apart.

On the right stand I had a collection of various calculators:

• On the top row were my Zero prototypes. People seemed happy to hear they would be less expensive than a TI but people's main concern was it being allowed on standardize tests.
  
• On the bottom row I had a TI-81, TI-83 Plus, and my prototype metallic red TI-84 Plus CE.
  Having the older calculators on display was a great idea since people of all ages could point and say "I used that calculator" or "these were after my time, have you ever heard of X?..." or "wow, they haven't changed much".

On the far right:

I had a competition to win 2 TI-84 Plus CEs. This turned out to be a fun idea. Having two calculators going at once was perfect and some people got really invested in the game sometimes spending over 10 minutes trying to get the high score.

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I learned a lot and have some thoughts for next year.

• I'll get three people minimum to help with the booth. The first day I just had one friend helping me and we were so busy taking care of the booth (which you're not allowed to leave unattended) that we hardly saw any booths, talks, or creators. That really put a downer on the first day despite the booth being a success. The second day I had a third person help and it made the event so much more fun! While two people manned the booth, the third could walk around and enjoy all OpenSauce had to offer!
  
  
• People seem to like a booth with a story. Although people think it's neat when you say "this has wireless charging and backlit keys", they seemed to appreciate the projects much more when you say "I thought the mini USB charging cable was stupid so I made it charge wirelessly instead. Also, I thought it would be easy to put LEDs in each key so I could use it at night, but it actually took 24 hours of work!".
  
  
• Something I'm glad I did was tie some of the calculators (mostly the protos) down with steel wire. Some people will just immediately grab anything and everything they see but the wire kept the calculators securely on the display stand. It also made those people feel foolish when they suddenly noticed the "ask before touching" sign.
  
  
• Try to design everything to fit in a suitcase. Mine just happened to fit in a suitcase and it made everything so easy. I just checked the bag at the airport (with a tracker) and I was able to set up in 2 hours and pack up in 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure getting this suitcase tag from the airport is like getting an achievement in a game.
  
  
  
• Bring lots and lots and lots of water. There's refill stations but I was refilling my 22oz water bottle every 45 minutes with all the talking. I very nearly completely lost my voice the first day. Also, food is super expensive ($18 burger, $6 basket of fries) so bring your own snacks.
  
  
• If I do anything that requires constant power, I'll need to remember to bring a UPS. A few times the booth's electricity went out or seriously undervolted which destroyed a few other booth's sensitive electronics.
  
  
• Laser engraved QR codes are not reliable.
  
  
• Even though I really hate cities, I'm glad I stayed a few extra days. San Francisco has some beautiful areas and fantastic food. I got to see the golden gate bridge, Alcatraz, Lombard St (the most crooked street in the world), and roads so steep they feel almost vertical!

My phone camera does not do this view justice

Next year I'd love if Cemetech could dust off the old Makerfair displays and bring them to OpenSauce. I think a booth full of knowledgeable Cemetechians would be even more successful than one calculator nerd plus two friends who mostly just know a few talking points!

TLM 2000th post!

Nice, wish I could have been there! Were you able to show off lwip?

Unfortunately I didn't have time to set up a demo but I did mention it to those who asked about connecting the calculator to the internet!

Cool, hopefully, we can get some more work done on TINET and LWIP. Thanks for telling people about the projects!

This is lovely- great work representing the community, as always, TLM. I’d love to join you at a future event, pending availability. Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the nation for me!

A few ideas:

• I don’t think the coolness&durability of laser-cut text justifies their illegibility, especially for this crowd.
  
• Definitely separate the things people can touch from the things people can’t touch. Acrylic is cheap- putting such things under an acrylic box is universally recognized as the sign to not reach for something.
  
• This con definitely has a hardware-hacking bent; to feed into this, it would be nice to have a printout of a labeled PCB which shows what the various parts of the PCB are for. I seem to remember one floating around for the CE (possibly made by Dnar in like 2018?), though this is far more interesting for the calcs which are not all baked into an ASIC.
  
• Some extra thought should be given to market this to people who used to have experience tinkering with Z80 computers, as well as those who might have done some BASIC programming in a different dialect.
  

It was on the other coast as well for me too! That's why fitting everything into one suitcase was so nice. I'd be happy to have you help out next year!

Almost all your points are things I considered too late to act on.

The laser engraved text finished the night before I left. They worked well enough that people had to lean in just a little bit to read them. My friend printed out all the qr codes and we had people scan those instead if the laser qr code didn't work.

The right display stand was meant to have an acrylic cover over it but I finished building the stands about three days before I left and still had the front and center model to build.

I really wanted to print out stickers to point at interesting parts of the pcb but again, I just ran out of time.

I also think people would probably enjoy some more z80 projects. Occasionally I had the TI-83 Plus running a game but I typically opted for the more flashy color calculators. Next year I can re-organize the table to allow more projects.

This is great! I'm happy that you were able to bring calculator hacking to the masses and represent the community.
I would also love to join you for a future event.



The projects on display at Maker Faire were mostly Kerm's, so getting any of those to opensauce would be up to him (either being in attendance or loaning the project), although I would not recommend displaying projects if the maker is not present.

You should get a hub rover to show off. Other than that this sounds really cool.

I am definitely interested in showing up in the future! San Francisco is much easier to get to for me than New York! I haven't really been able to any kid of tips lately, but once money starts happening again that is a thing I can think about!
I probably don't really count as a "knowledgeable Cemetechian" but I very much liked the experience that I had at maker faire in 2017 and would like to do similar things again~