Hivelord at the Barnes STEAM Fair

The Hivelord made an appearance at the STEAM Fair at the Barnes, in his new business friendly attire, along with Hive76 members Chris Terrell and Mike Barretta! In case you didn’t know, STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics, ie all the good stuff. Mike was there to entice visitors into the STEAM lifestyle with his custom portable gaming machines based on the Raspberry Pi and emulationstation, while the Hivelord took photos of unwitting participants using his face, and thus stealing a tiny portion of their soul (as it is told in The Legends). Click the link below to see the photos from the Barnes!

-> Click here to see the Hivelord’s Photos from this event! <-

December 26, 2016

Testing credit card charges with Stripe in a simple Rails app

Following up on suggestions from the board meeting to look at Stripe for charging member dues, I found a couple Rails tutorials and deployed via Heroku… it works with a few lines of (rails) code! The reason to maybe not use “gravity forms + stripe” just yet is because I think it is $200/yr — you need a Gravity Forms Developer License according to:
http://www.gravityforms.com/add-ons/
Yikes. Is that right? Different sites report different $$ so until someone at Hive tries it we may never know!

Well, we can just make our own embedded form, and Stripe can also deal with subscriptions painlessly, apparently. Try it with the herokuapp link below:
*****WARNING: it will actually charge your CC $1. I promise to deposit it back to Hive*********
http://members-hive76.herokuapp.com/

Heroku is great, you deploy via github so we could also make the forms public (our private Stripe key is configured only in heroku and is NOT in the github repo). Here’s the rails app on github so we can collaborate; I put all the details for how I did this in the README.md:
https://github.com/jmil/member-dues

Thoughts?

Some more to think about:

1) Let’s make a member application fee of $1.00. This will ensure prospective members have Stripe setup BEFORE they become a member! Much better than if they are voted in but never actually pay…!

2) I think we should charge the Stripe fees *to the member*. This way we have dependable operational costs. You can see attached that a $5 charge results in only a $4.55 net gain because of the stripe fees, but this is still low cost and dependable for now (Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). So we would need to charge users fee*1.029 + $0.30 (rounding up by cents; Stripe only charges whole cents) for each fee we designate. Then if Stripe changes fees in the future we just update this amount and Hive still has dependable operational costs.

3) Stripe is nice! Your CC will properly process whatever we write into stripe, here’s how it shows up on my card statement:

4) Right now funds get deposited into my personal checking account (!!) since I don’t have the Hive76 bank account number. Does someone want to give me that? Or I can coordinate this with the treasurer. Again, I promise to deposit your test charges back to Hive.

5) Obviously it needs beautification, choice between member rates, a way to subscribe, etc. But that’s all optimization for later, this rapid hack was about feasibility. It’s feasible to use stripe!

Here’s what you see in the Stripe Dashboard:

July 14, 2015

Our New Laser Cutter!

The new laser cutter station in our classroom.

We are very happy to share that Hive76 is now home to a 45W H-Series laser cutter from Full Spectrum Laser! Members now have the capability to cut complex 2D shapes in wood and plastic in thicknesses up to 0.25 inch. If you can draw it on a computer, the laser can cut it. It’s great for engraving too:

We’ve just begun making test cuts and machine break in. Our next step is to develop a class for members to become laser cutter certified. I can’t wait to see what kind of cool projects our members will use this tool for. In the mean time, stop by our open house Wednesday nights 7-10pm to see it in action and find out how to become a member!

April 14, 2015

Hydroponic Gardening

On Tuesday April 28th Chris Anderson will be instructing a lecture and demo on Hydroponic and Aquaponic gardening. If you are interested in learning alternative farming and gardening techniques this class will introduce a more environmentally friendly process for growing your own produce. Generally, the hydroponics approach is beneficial because although the initial costs are higher, on a long term outlook the process is exponentially less expensive. Hydroponics also takes up to 50% less land use, therefore is much less intrusive to the environment, minimizing clearing of woodlands and soil degradation. The soil-less process of hydroponics also uses up to 90% less water and up to 60 % less fertilizer and pesticide use.

Join Hive76 members to learn more about how you can build your own sustainable farming/ gardening hydroponic or aquaponic system. The instructor will be providing the Basic items for the wicking system being built but please bring any supplies you have that may enhance the design. Chris Anderson will help guide the class in how they can optimize their gardening system with their suggested materials, exploring the creative possibilities in using recycled products. That class will cost $8, CASH ONLY. For more information check out the class in the Hive76 Calendar. Please comment below if you are interested and will be attending. Can’t wait to see you there!

Take a tour of Chris Anderson’s classroom design.

The materials for the class are as follows:

Basic items:

2L or 3L soda bottle(s)

Old white t-shirts/towels (washed)

Encouraged items:

Aquarium/fish-tank air-pump, tubing, air-stone

tin-foil

Gravel (any size)

Geolite, Vermiculite, hydrocorals

plastic planter cups

empty plastic squeezable condiment bottles

plant seeds

zip-ties

caulk, silicon, caulk-gun

pipe cleaners

construction paper

aquarium lid with florescent light

power-strip; plug in timers

straws, tubing (any sizes)

Sources:

https://ecopostblog.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/the-environmental-benefits-of-hydroponics/

October 30, 2014

The Hivelord at UArts Design Charette 2014: Cyborgs

Salutations, flatlanders! Your electron based mail message reached my hyper-dimensional lair, I was lured out of the 67th dimension by word of snacks, refreshments, and of course, your attempts to augment your meaty forms with your so called ‘technology.’ The idea: to design artifacts made 50 years in your future. How will they affect the fragile social human construct? More specifically, are these items you’re designing to simplify and enhance your lives creating one step forward in the inevitable march toward a dystopian hellscape? I’d answer these questions, but I’m technically not allowed to break causality.

But I digress, I’m really here to show you all the ~~souls I stole~~ pictures I took with my face. It only took a few years off your lifespan, and there’s a 50/50 chance they were bad years anyway. Thanks for being such good sports!

Click here -> The Hivelord at UArts Design Charette 2014 <-

September 23, 2014

Pics from the Hivelord at Maker Faire 2014

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).

Hivelord at Maker Faire NY 2014

May 6, 2014

Apply Now: AMRI Summer 2014 Fellowships

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.

May 5, 2014

Hack the sky, man! Hive76 helps sky write a message over Eraserhood

When I saw this poster on the right in the lobby of our studio building I thought it looked neat, but it wasn’t until the mastermind Dave Kyu visited that Hive76 was convinced to participate in WriteSky. Well, he mostly convinced me, as I ended up as the only contributor, but I am glad that Hive76 was able to host the collaboration meeting with our fellow group, artists that work in 319 N 11th St, members of Grizzly Grizzly and Tiger Strikes Asteroid.

We met on one Wednesday open house to figure out exactly what message we would write over our neighborhood. I don’t have a lot of history collaborating with other artists, but after the experience I had using Dave’s process and the smart 319 Artists Mary Smull, Jacque Liu, Sarah Kate Burgess, and Jaime Alvarez, I am looking forward to my next collaboration. It was a pleasure brainstorming, discussing, and compromising to come up with what we think is the perfect sentiment to be written in the sky for a few minutes. What message is that?Ah, but ours and the two other collaborative groups’ messages are secret up until the actual writing. We want it to be a surprise.

If you can make it this Saturday, please come to The Eraserhood at 11:30am and look up. Weather permitting, you’ll see three wonderful messages written in vaporized canola oil over the Philadelphia skyline. It will be visible for about 15 miles, but the best view will be directly underneath. If you see the writing in the sky, tag it with #WriteSky and it will appear on the page: http://writesky.com/photos/

Keep looking up!

December 1, 2013

T.E.R.A. Incognita at The Hacktory

Our friends over at The Hacktory (Repurposing Technology, Making Art) are running a Kickstarter to raise matching funds for an excellent project to unite artists with the latest technology to empower new designs. From their Kickstarter page:

Electronics and digital technology can infuse works of art with an element of magic. At The Hacktory we have literally put this magic in people’s hands, through classes and large public events. We want to do more though. We want to make our classes available to artists. We’ve found that they are usually the most excited to take our classes and play with technology, but usually the least able to pay for our classes.

The Hacktory is creating a program called T.E.R.A. Incognita: Tech Education and Residency for Artists. Our goal is to support artists who want to create new work and experiment with technology such as cameras, projectors, sensors, robots, software and circuits. The name “T.E.R.A Incognita” is part acronym, part vision for the program. We want to give these artists an opportunity to learn and explore at the edges of technology and art, literally in unchartered territory, to create new experiences and new possibilities with code, hardware and creative expression.

The Kickstarter ends on Monday, so go check it out and consider making a pledge! Some great rewards are being offered too.

October 21, 2013

Civic infrastructure hacking: laser-controlled streetlight.

Three more things in my house require a remote control now, and one of them is the streetlight in front of my house. Ever since I heard about a hacked streetlight at the Guerrilla Drive in for Back to the Future in 2009, I have been turning off the streetlight on Darien Street by carefully aiming a laser dot at the light sensor on top of the streetlight. The light sensors on most streetlights face west to catch the last photons from the fading sunset before illuminating for the night—and this one faces right into the third floor of my house. It is very important to me to be able to choose to sit in the cozy dark, save my city some money, and not contribute to light pollution for a minute.
Just recently I revamped the process with a new, permanent laser and remote control system. Here it is in action:
I’ll show you how …
Continue reading “Civic infrastructure hacking: laser-controlled streetlight.”