Hackers! Need to finish your costume and/or decorations before the spooky festivities begin? We will be hosting a Halloween themed open build night this Friday, October 24th, 7pm – late o’clock! Suggested themes include wearables, microcontrollers, LEDs, and blood. Bring something to work on!
WHAT: Halloween Open Build Night
WHERE: Hive76 Global Headquarters
WHEN: October 24th, 7pm – ????
WHO: Wizards, witches, warlocks
WHY: ?????
Hello, meatbags! Perhaps you saw me at Maker Faire, jukin and jivin and havin a time. You probably wondered “where did this guy get his slick get-up?” And, “is it possible for me to build something similar in his glorious image?” And then your dreams were consumed each night by a vivid nightmare of a distant planet, covered in entirely in evergreen trees and a deafening roar. “What is this place, and why am I forced to wander it every night?” No? Well consider yourself one of the lucky ones then.
Anyway, this is part one of the build log for the Hivelord costume. The inspiration was based on the scramblesuit from the novel A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K Dick, which is a suit that anonymizes its user by constantly projecting a changing image of different people on the outside of the suit. I figured that’s not technologically feasible, but making a mask version certainly is. I originally wanted to record short videos of the inside of the mask, with different people wearing it, but as I built the mask it became obvious that it wouldn’t be feasible, or as cool as using it to take photos. There is a raspberry pi running some python code to control the slideshow and picture taking functions along with an arcade button connected to the raspi’s GPIO. Pressing the button puts the screen into preview mode, which shows what the camera is looking at. When the button is released, the picture is taken and added to the slideshow.
Parts list:
This first post will focus on creating the screen. I was surprised to find many vendors on ebay selling boards that will convert the proprietary pinout of the laptop board to something useful, such as HDMI or VGA. If you have an old screen laying around, you can even make a new monitor for yourself for $35.
Take the case off the screen and read the model number from the back. Look around on ebay for a converter board. It seems like most of them are made to order, so if you don’t find a listing, try contacting a seller. Below is a picture of the board I used, which runs off 12V. Thankfully I found a 12V wall wart in the space to test it.
The converter board came with all its own cables and its own separate board to control the screen functions, like resolution, alignment, and an on/off button.
Once everything is plugged in, turn it on to test it out. The screen worked perfectly, and automatically configured itself to the correct resolution. There was enough cabling for me to run the wires outside of the original laptop screen case, so I just put everything back the way it was, with the converter board hanging off. All the electronics will eventually be mounted to the wooden frame of the mask.
Next, connect everything together, screen to converter to raspi, and power it up. Here I am testing out the camera after I changed all the settings to portrait mode.
I then connected it all to a bench supply so I could see how much power the whole set up consumed. It uses just about an amp at 12v. I found a 7 amp-hour 12V lead acid battery on amazon that did a decent job, though I’d probably buy a spare since I did run out of battery at maker faire. There’s a 5V downcoverter thrown in there too, to power the raspberry pi off the 12V supply.
Thanks for reading! Next post will be on the making of the frame.
The theme of this weeks open house?
Yard sale Giveaway!
Hive has been accumulating a lot of stuff, and now its time to pass it on to you!
We have all sorts of stuff!
A blender for blending your things!? A George Foreman Grill for Grilling them?!
A working stereo system could be yours! Do you like printers? We have two of them for you!
Get your Halloween presents NOW!
Hello, mortals! Perhaps you saw me at Maker Faire NY over the weekend; I was the orange dude with the screen head taking your picture with my face. Well not only did your souls add a few thousand years to my already infinitely long lifespan, they got uploaded to the internet, where myself and others can browse them at our leisure from the comfort of our own time traveling spaceships. Have a look yourselves, and I’ll see you all in the past (or in the future, from your puny human perspectives).
Come out and support us on the museum’s PAY WHAT YOU WISH ADMISSION night. For as little as a penny, you can see some amazing art and play our 12-foot high Connect Four in the grand stair hall!
On Wednesday, July 30, our friend and co-founder Brendan Schrader died of a cardiac issue. Brendan had lived with Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome his whole life with occasional visits to the ER with a racing heart. On Wednesday complications from this syndrome took him from us. He is survived by his loving partner Elana, his mother Mary, and hundreds of family and friends. Details of the funeral service on Tuesday can be found on his obituary page. You can sign and read a guestbook there too with some wonderful sentiments.
Hive76 s a family in many ways, and that made Brendan the dad. He was a driving force in our hackerspace by pushing members to make awesome projects, sharing his knowledge with anyone that visited, and brightening the space with his unconventional sense of humor. In his honor, we will continue to live up to our motto: Make Things Awesome, Make Awesome Things! We hope you will as well.
We love you Brendan, and we miss you.
Restored on September 15, 2018 thanks to Archive.org!
We are thrilled to announce our Razorbots class August 10-17! Razorbots are small, simple R/C robots that wield razorblades against one another to pop their opponent’s balloon. They’re good fun even for the most seasoned roboticist and a great entry point for anybody who wants to learn about robotics, electronics, or DIY tech in general. Sign up here! Continue reading “Razorbots Class!”
I regret to have to cancel tonight’s microcontroller night, but I am out of town and won’t be able to make it in this evening. We’ll pick MMMM up on July 14th.
See you then!
We have an open call for Summer 2014 Fellowships at Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute (AMRI), hosted at Rice University in the department of Bioengineering.
We are soliciting applications for the following projects:
Project 1: e-NABLE 3D Printed Prosthetic Devices
In collaboration with the worldwide e-NABLE group, and Gloria Gogola, M.D. at Shriners Hospital for Children, Fellows will aid in the design, 3D printing, testing, and refinement of open-source prosthetic hand and finger designs. This unique fellowship will bring 3D printing into the clinical setting, working closely with Dr. Gogola and her patients in need.
Project 2: Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)
Fellows will augment and refine the open SLS design pioneered by Andreas Bastian last year. SLS machines typically cost $50k or more, we built ours for under $15k. This year we will focus on powder manufacturing and powder handling, as well as characterization of SLS parts via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and mechanical testing.
Project 3: OLED 3D Photolithography of Living Tissues
Related to Anderson Ta’s exciting digital light projection (DLP) photolithography last year, Fellows will investigate and program organic light emitting diode (OLED) screens as a light source for 3D photolithographic printing of living tissues. Chemical functionalization of glass surfaces will also be investigated to passivate the screen surface and aid in detachment and 3D printing from the light source surface.
Project 4: Open Source Ink Jet Printing of Bacteria
A continuation of Steve Kelly’s inkshield augmentation of RepRap motherboards to print living bacteria, Fellows will investigate fluid mechanics, python scripting, and multicolor printing to create interacting bacterial colonies on top of and within agar gels. Fellows will also learn how to insert genes of interest into bacterial colonies for protein production. Steve’s 2013 AMRI Presentation is available here.
Check out all the details, and be sure to apply by May 15th:
http://amrinstitute.org
Questions can be directed to amri@rice.edu.
