Category: Events

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Hive76 Open House at NextFab Studio — A very Hacking Wintertime

We are excited to announce a very hacking winter-time Hive76 open-house hosted by NextFabStudio:

Hive76 Open House
December 20th, 7pm – Midnight
@ http://NextFabStudio.com/ @ 3711 Market Street

This Hack-tacular event will be at NextFabStudio and will get us free access for the night to some of their most awesome tools, such as: CNC plasma, CNC embroidery, e-textiles, electronics, 3D printers, shop bots… Check out all their equipment.

There will be food too.

So Awesome.

Now we need to brainstorm project ideas, let’s start things off in this email thread. Please reply-all so the proper NextFab people (cc’ed above) can tell us if this is possible and, if so, the logistics for how to make it happen.

All details are here on the Wiki

I’m proposing the first project (we can have many of them!!)…

A double-set of Hive76 chess pieces and boards. This will make use of their lasercutters, embroidery equipment, and possibly the electronics and 3D printers too. I really want a double-set (4 different colors) so we can play Bughouse Chess (You will love this game)

If we get really creative maybe some magnetics and electronics could be enabled as well.

Let’s get hacking!

To Join in on the Discussion, please join our mailing list

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MMMM: Monitoring Motion

Eyes!
photo by peej

That time is once again upon us! This coming Monday, October the 10th, is our second installment of the Monthly Monday Microcontroller Madness series!

 

This month’s workshop will feature the concept of motion sensing in relation to microcontrollers. We’ll be taking a look at passive infrared sensors (PIR) for motion detection, ultrasonic range finders for distance measuring, and even looking at how to integrate a webcam into your Arduino project for motion analysis. These sensors and techniques are great for adding to your Halloween projects (wink, wink).

 

In addition to talking about motion, we will be offering our usual advice and guidance to those currently working on projects, or looking where to get started. All skill levels are welcome and we look forward to seeing you on Monday!

 

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Arduino Reference page for the Parallax ultrasonic sensor and a code page for the Parallax PIR.

Manufacturer information can be found here and here, respectively.

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Flying Robots At Hive

Yesterday we had the Philadelphia Robotics Group (PHROG) stop by for their monthly meeting. We demoed a few robots, talked other projects, and we also talked about the possibility of having classes and workshops in the future.

This robot requires 4 rotors to compensate for the amount of torque it generates.

The coolest part of the night was when Glen Adukas demoed his flying quadrotor robot. It still needs a few tweaks here and there, but he was able to get it off the ground.

Our next meeting will be October the 13th. Feel free to join us!

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Hive Cleans Up

As mentioned previously, on Sunday, the 5th of September, members of Hive76 spent time cleaning up the street at 915 Spring Garden St. The work proved to be hard but rewarding. While there are still significant areas of garbage and weeds, we made a big impact on the areas in which we worked, paving the way for future improvements.

As the coordinator for this particular activity, I really want to give my deepest thanks to our members Mike Hogan, PJ Santoro, and Dan Toliaferro for coming out and busting their asses in the 80+F weather. I also want to thank Dave Sharp for providing some supplies as well as one of our fellow tenants at 915 Spring Garden St. for bringing us water while we were working.

More cleanup efforts are still to come, we really want to develop the garden box and maybe add more garden boxes around the building. We’d also like to spiff the place up a little it with some local art, any sort of standing sculptures that can live permanently in our new garden. If you would like to donate to our cause, with plants or dirt or trees or money to buy such things, then please contact us at hive76@hive76.org.

In the meantime, check out the before and after pictures:

The sidewalk had weeds poking through the cracks and lots of cigarette butts and broken glass.
More sidewalk weeds

 

A completely overgrown garden
The garden from another angle
So we got to work!
PJ was ready!
And jumped right in
All of the weeds are gone from the sidewalk
And the garden is now cleared out of all of the weeds.
Ready for some flowers or maybe some grass
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Monthly Monday Microcontroller Madness @ Hive76

Pile of Arduino things. by Andreas Wetterberg
Pile of Arduino things. by Andreas Wetterberg, on Flickr

Starting at 7 PM on Monday, September 12, Hive76 will be starting a new ongoing monthly workshop focusing solely on the wonderful world of microcontrollers.

“What’s a microcontroller,” you ask? Let’s take a quick glance at the Wikipedia page!

“Yeah, so?? Why should I care?”

“What if I’m familiar with microcontrollers, and I’m just looking for a place to talk shop, jump-start a stalled project, or help other folks learn a thing or two?”

  • Come on down!!! (up, or over also apply here)

Great! Now that you’re coming, what can you expect?

You can expect to be welcomed into a friendly environment and you are encouraged to bring your ideas, aspirations, projects, and most importantly, your questions! Individual projects, group projects, build challenges, basic skill instruction, hardware buying guidance, and experts on hand! I would like to emphasize that this workshop is open to complete beginners. No prior experience with electronics OR programming needed! We’ve all got to start somewhere!

PIC, Basic Stamp, MSP430, Arduino, etc… no microcontrollers will be turned away! This is an all-inclusive, open workshop to promote learning!

The Fine Print: Materials will be available for use within the space and a limited amount of hardware will be available for purchase. If you’ve got a laptop or netbook handy, please bring it along. Instruction and guidance will be available free of charge!

(Donations are always appreciated)

 

This workshop is brought to you by: KBI, Inc.

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Neighborhood Cleanup 9/5

le broom

The block on which our building for our space sits is a bit of a… wayward soul. There is a lot of garbage tumbleweeding through the street, giant weeds poke up through the sidewalk everywhere, and a smattering of graffiti makes someone’s presence known.

Well, we’ve decided to clean it up. All of it. Next Sunday, September 5th, from 12pm to 5pm, we’ll meet at the space and just start doing. We originally planned to do it this weekend, but the IMPENDING DOOM NAMED IRENE has forced us to postpone.

Bring what you can, plastic garbage bags, shovels and rakes, brooms, leftover paint, etc. Don’t forget some heavy gloves, there are a lot of broken glass and other sharps in the area.

If you can’t make it to this date but still want to help out, we will have other dates in the near future, so stay tuned to the blog for future announcements.

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Open House 08/24/2011 Recap

For Wednesday’s Open House, we experimented with using simple, house-hold items to etch common, metallic objects. We found that candle wax, melted in a thin layer on the surface to be etched, worked as an excellent resist material. The firmness of the wax helped to keep the scratch lines straight, while the thickness of the paperclip made for a consistent stroke. We also tried acrylic paint as the resist, but it quickly dissolved under the cotton swab. We also tried the ink of a permanent “Sharpie” marker, but that was also easily dissolved under the cotton swab. We had other resist materials available to us, but these were the only ones that were “household” items.

Once the resist is set and the design is scraped out of the resist, the anode (negative terminal) of a 9v battery is attached to a bare metal area of the object, and the cathode (positive terminal) is attached to a cotton swab soaked with very salty (NaCl, common table salt) water. Within a few seconds, the electrolysis process creates a weak hydrochloric acid solution that eats away the steel of the object. After etching to the desired depth, the polarity of the connections can be reversed to oxidize the bare metal, as the now-anode cotton swab will produce oxygen molecules out of the electrolised water.

Here are some photos of our efforts.

Wax was at first a little difficult to scrape away consistently

 

I etched a little wine glass on my bottle opener. I believe this is nickle-plated zinc, hence the pinkish-brown color.
Matt made a negative etch of our hexagon on the bread box.
Brendan added a classic message to our bread box.
I managed a very clean etch of my monogram on my pocket knife. After etching to the desired depth, I then reversed the polarity of the setup to achieve the black color of the letters.

 

In addition to the electro-etching, we also had some fun toys to play with.

These Nintendo Wii-motes that Brendan is smashing apart will eventually become wands to be used with a Smart Board.
Brendan acquired a sick, Russian, night vision scope.
Brendan cautions one against extended exposure to the eye-piece. Apparently, the USSR did not feel the expense of leaded glass in front of a cathode ray tube was a necessary extravagance for their soldiers.
I found this circuit. I have no idea what it does. It looks to be audio related. Maybe an amp?

 

And then I just had fun taking photos of stuff.

Oscar Mike Golf! We have books!
We actually do occasionally receive post cards. Please! Send us more!
Okay, I showed up in a photo somewhere. Back behind the camera now.
We have one of the best views in the city.

 

Stop by next time when we bust out the big guns and… it’s a secret! Come by and find out!

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Open House 8/17/2011 Recap

It’s been a while since we’ve had something to talk about for Open House! Believe me, I missed activity at Hive76, too. But that’s what happens in the summer, people jaunt away to far off lands for this thing called “Vacation” and forget to send us post cards. You wouldn’t forget to send Hive a post card, would you? (HINT: Our address is Hive76, 915 Spring Garden St., Suite 519, Philadelphia, PA 19123)

Ira Laefsky, Mike Hogan, Ben Sautner (developer of Nimbits, a “free, social and open source platform for the internet of things on the cloud”) and I had a lively discussion on The Internet of Things. Right now, it’s a very informal group of people interested in such things as home automation and data aggregation. If such things interest you, use any of the means available here to contact me and we will get you on the mailing list.

We have a new membeeeeeeerr! WHAAT? We totally did. Everyone give a big, ol’ “Hi-diddly-hey, neighbor” to David Morfin!

Mighty Morfin Power Ranger
Mighty Morfin Power Ranger

A bunch of faces where in our spaces last night.

Chris shaved his beard and wore contacts. He looks so young! Le rarrrr.
Mike has perfected his privacy security measure, dubbed "Quantum Head Rattle".
Jordan got pregnaaaaaaaaant! WHAT?! He totally did.
Brendan is auditioning for the part of STOP TAKING PICTURES OF ME!!!

And I forgot to get any pictures of myself. Guh, sorry. I know you miss me.

I’m working on rebuilding a toy electronic keyboard:

The case was busted, so I'm building a new one.
The original circuitry. I'll probably have to replace the amp, it's weak.

And we also played with some glow in the dark tape and an ultraviolet flashlight.

Also, take note, we’re going to be restarting the Open House Mini Projects very soon. I’ll post a more formal announcement later, but look forward to custom etching anything you own that is metallic!

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Build Your Own Open Source 3D Printer

Build Your Own 3D Printer!

ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT TO SIGN-UP!

In collaboration with NextFabStudio, we are offering a state-of-the-art and upgraded RepRap printer kit and accompanying 3-day Build Workshop from August 26th-28th. The class cost is $998 ($1,200 for non-members) and includes EVERYTHING you need to get up and running, and more importantly, a fully calibrated and fine-tuned robot.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO AND TO SIGN-UP

Check out the time-lapse video below from our first class in Baltimore where we got 10 printers up and running in 3 days.

We’ll help you and a friend or two to build your very own open-source RepRap 3D printer, which has more than 4x(!!) the build volume of it’s closest competitor, the MakerBot Thing-o-Matic. Note that you will save $202 off the class if you’re a member of Hive76 or NextFab Studio. Total class cost for members is only $998. This is a crazy cheap deal! You can’t even buy a MakerBot for that price, let alone learn how to assemble it and fine tune it correctly in just a weekend.

There’s lots of additional bells and whistles on this bot that you won’t find anywhere else: custom machined aluminum motor couplers, linear bearings, the latest RAMPS electronics, and much more!

Any questions or concerns? Click Here to contact Jordan.

First RepRap World Tour 3D Printing Class from jmil on Vimeo.