Multithreaded Banjo Dinosaur Knitting Adventure 2D Extreme

Along with being highly neighborly, and slightly insane Travis Goodspeed is also great reverse engineer. He is consistently a bringer-of-weird things to conferences (and the parties that inevitably follow). Many of those cool & weird things are objects designs and/or builds himself.

So It’s not a huge surprise to see him hacking on an amazing collaborative project to make an interactive tapestry creating game. As far as I can tell, as people play the game the winners custom designed image is added to the end of the tapestry. The game appears to be an scroller/shooter game, which is controlled by waving around RFID tags. Geez. And here I was, thinking having #15 high score on Hive’s Spy Hunter machine was cool. One more amazing projects from an awesome Philly resident.

Hive76 is on NPR!

No Joke! Jon Kalish from NPR visited our space for a raucous open house last month, and witnessed the amazing font of Chaos that is Hive76. This week, he featured us in his Weekend Edition piece about American hackerspaces!  Whoot! The segment features Brendan and Chris’ boombox suitcase, Chris’ Meatcards, and Jack’s USB Typewriter, among other great Hive76 projects.  Have a listen and hack on!

Bristle Bots

Tooth brushes, vibro-motors, and batteries, oh my!

For Wednesday’s Open House, we made little Bristle-Bots. A Bristle-Bot is a little robot consisting of a vibrating motor–similar to one found in a pager or cell phone–taped to a tooth brush head, that runs around a table like a little rodent or insect. They’re really easy to make, a ton of fun to play with, and a great time to extend and hack.

The basic, smallest design:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPC-IC0RFo0

A larger motor needed two brush heads:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67zDMdlS2hk

The bigger motors tended to drain the batteries really quickly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5qLKNw4v6Y

This was probably the best one, the builder actually soldered parts of it together. It now lives on in the “Trophy Case”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4Q1ezT_zds

Next time, we’ll be making Christmas decorations based on the MSP430 microcontroller.

Officers and Elections, and Board Member departure

Last night was elections at Hive76. It’s my pleasure as the previous Instigator to announce our new slate of Management, who were elected with 100% of all the members that voted. If you need to reach them with questions or feedback, they are available at Management@Hive76.org

Quartermaster – Brendan
Brendan has been around for quite a while, and us the longest standing member of Management. He’s been Quartermaster as long as we’ve had the position. He keeps the space clean and usable, and makes great amps and audio tools.

Book Keeper – Jack
Jack is one of Hive76’s Co-founders, and is the brain (and hands) behind USBTypewriter. He was previously our Events Coordinator, and is now going to be keeping our books.

Chief Technological Officer (CTO) – Adam K.
Adam is one of the powerhouses behind making Hive76 awesome. He’s done a great job as CTO setting up tools to make the organization run smoothly. Above and beyond his officership, he invests a lot of time keeping Hive active, and getting things done. He’s also our #1 print-ninja for our Makerbot.

Secretary – Chris T.
Chris is a designer, artist, and maker at large. He continues his post as Secretary (aka secretarat). He’s also an expert in cutting things into meat with lazzzors.

Instigator – Mike Hogan
Mike is an gentleman and a Maker of first degree. If you’ve taken a micro-controller class or electronics class at Hive, you’ve probably met Mike. He’s also our inside source for MSP430’s.

Events Coordinator – Sean M.
Sean is a developer, zombie-dummy maker, and now our Events Coordinator too. He has some great ideas for 2011, and some cool classes are already in the planning.

Congrats! *ding* to all our new officers, and thanks to all our old officers. If you want to reach them all at once, you can always drop them a line at they are available Management@Hive76.org.

On a sadder note, Adam Elkins has retired from the board of Hive76. He’s done some great projects (like the Free Spirit Stickers), and has constantly brings the coolest water-rockets to the Make:Philly picnic. We wish him the best of luck with whatever cool project he’s onto next.

We are now accepting nom-nom-nominations for a new board member for the open seat on the board. We are open to hearing nominee ideas from anyone. If you have a good idea for a nominee (even if you are not a member) feel free to drop a note on our discussion list with the name of the person, and why they would be a good board member. The members will consider the nominees, and vote to choose the best board member they can decide on.

Open House and Elections!

Come to Hive 76 for our last open house for November, this Wednesday the 17th. As always, there’s a ton to see and a boat-load to do.

  • At 7:00PM, we’ll be updating our Scrum board with the latest status of our projects.
  • After the Scrum meeting, we’ll be holding elections for our management team.  If any members wish to cast a vote but are unable to attend the meeting, please check the Member’s group discussion for instructions.
  • At 8:00PM, we open the doors for our regularly scheduled Open House meeting. There will be free pizza and soda, and maybe even a few college drinks for sale in the ‘fridge as well.
  • Continuing our new tradition of Mini-Projects For Open Houses, we’ll have parts available for any visitors to make Bristle Bots. If you didn’t come out to make glow sticks last week, then you missed a ton of fun.
  • Adam will be showing off the MakerBot and training any interested parties in its basic operation,
  • and Sean will be bringing the skull of the Flaming Zombie Dummy to the Hive 76 “Trophy Case”.

As always, it will be pure, crystallized awesome. What else are you going to do on a Wednesday night, watch reruns of MythBusters?

Open House Tonight (Wednesday)!

Tonight (Wednesday) at open house we have some special events planned.  Starting at 7:00, we’re going to have a round-table ‘scrum’ to discuss projects we are each working on, ideas for collaborations, and most importantly a vote on our leadership for the coming 6 months.  By 8:00 the scrum will be over and the full-on open-house madness will ensue.  Adam is demo-ing his mad scientist skills by showing us how to make our own glow sticks.  Meanwhile, Brendan and Chris will be working on their Boomcase prototype, Sean will be playing with heads-up displays, and Jack will be mocking up a new board game.   Guess what else — both the 3-D printer and the Craft Robo came back on line this week after a long hiatus — come by and you can help us make some celebratory prints!  And the best part:  there will be food and drinks for all!  If you’ve never been to an open Hive76 meeting before, this is a great opportunity.

Movie Night on November 15th

Next Monday, on the ides of November, Hive76 is hosting a Sci-Fi Movie Night for all of Philly geekdom to enjoy.  You provide the soda, beer, snacks, and your own wonderful selves — Hive76 will provide the movie, the pizza, and the 20′ projection wall theater experience that will melt your face.    We’ll be showing Danny Boyles “Sunshine,” which will start around 8:00, but show up at 6:30 and have some drinks and food with your Hive buddies beforehand.    If you have any questions, contact your hosts, Sean and Jack.

Make Philly on Nov 11th

Make:Philly is back after a summer vacation, and is kicking off a fall round by events by hosting Peter Bressler of Bresslergroup. From the Make:Philly website:

Peter’s expertise includes user research, human factors application, manufacturing processes and innovative criteria conflict resolution. Peter has authored or co-authored over 60 design and utility patents and has received over 40 national design awards. He is a Past President of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

Make:Philly is happening on a new time and date, (Thursday night, at 7PM sharp) instead of the classic Sunday afternoon, but the place ( University of the Arts, 211 S. Broad Street, Terra Hall, 5th Floor) is the same. And the Make:Philly meetings are still 50% a great talk by local maker and 50% build challenge, where you build something on the spot to meet a challenge announced at the start of the meeting.

In Short:
What: Make Phily with Peter Bressler
Date: Thursday, November 11th*, 2010 (revised date)
Time: 7PM sharp!
Location: University of the Arts, 211 S. Broad Street, Terra Hall, 5th Floor
ID: Bring your ID with you to sign in at the front desk
Cost: Free!