Hive76 sure made the rounds at this year’s Maker Faire. With 2 tables in the 3D Printing Village, we had a steady stream of visitors both
days, ranging from Chocolateers, Digital Artists, to young children asking about 3D printing toys and parts for their projects. Discussion started about 10 minutes after we left Maker Faire for what to do next year. Check out the album for some quick snapshots of this year’s events including Karaoke, Thumb Wrestling, and of course, the occasional interview.
At Makerfaire in NYC this Saturday, Hive76 will be running a race to test the quality and speed of any 3D printers that would like to participate.
We will have an announcement and official start in the 3D Printer village at noon on Saturday. But the basic premise is this:
Besides this 3D printer vs Man race, I think this is the first race of it’s kind! I hope you participate and I’ll see you there.
Here are the videos from Open Hardware Summit 2012, it was a great meeting again this year.
And here’s my talk about using RepRap 3D Printing for basic research in Regenerative Medicine. Thanks again to the awesome members of Hive76, especially Chris Thompson and Rob Vlacich.
Hive76’s own PJ Santoro will be doing the “Main Presentation” at
the Philadelphia Area Computer Society‘s kickoff meeting, Saturday,
September 15th.
His topic will be “Arduino: Where It’s Been, Where It’s Headed, and Why You Should Care”.
After the main presentation, a beginner class will be taught in the Linux SIG.
PACS Schedule available here.
Tom Avril came for the awesome bioengineering work that Jordan did at Penn and Hive76, but he stayed to write an awesome article about us and the Philly hacking scene. Here is the awesome article that’s also on the front page. And below is the awesome video Inky photographer Clem Murray shot during one open house. Hack on!
Soldering is an essential skill to learn if you’d like to build your own electronic circuits. Come on in to Hive76 and we can teach you how to solder using Mitch Altman’s Trippy RGB Waves kit!
This specific circuit has a red-green-blue (RGB) LED that slowly changes colors over time. When you wave an object (like your hand) over it, you reset the color-changing pattern. With several boards laid out before you, this creates a wave-like effect.
You can check out a video of the circuit in action here!
When: Saturday, September 8th, 1-4PM
Where: Hive76
Cost: $20 (covers kit and instruction)
Rob Bishop, a developer with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is going to be taking a short tour of US hackerspaces. We are pleased to announce that Hive76 has been included on that list!
Because we are expecting a very high level of interest in this event, we have decided that our studio space is a little too small to accomodate the number of people we are expecting to attend. Philadelphia’s University of the Arts has graciously offered up some space for us to meet in. There are only 30 spots available, so act fast; this will sell out. Ticket purchased are limited to 2 per person. You’ll find the link below.
If you’ve been wanting to get a taste of the Raspberry Pi (:P), you will not want to miss this event. The event is free to the public, but space is limited! Rob will have Pi(s) for sale at $35 per board. They are still on back-order from major distributors, so now is your chance to grab one!
Here is what to expect:
Rob Bishop from the RaspberryPi Foundation is touring popular hackspaces in the US throughout September 2012 with the aim of giving talks and workshops about the RaspberryPi to both the hackspace members and also RaspberryPi users in the local community.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charitable organisation founded with the aim of promoting the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level. The Foundation is responsible for the design and sales of the popular RaspberryPi single-board computer. You can find out more about the Foundation and the RaspberryPi here.
The event at each hackspace will informally consist of the following;
- Talk:
- RaspberryPi: Past, Present & Future – An introduction to the RaspberryPi, including an overview of its history and development, details on the technical specification and an outline of future developments with many cool tech demos along the way. Followed by a Q&A session.
- Tech Demos:
- A chance to demonstrate various OS’s and other demos
- Workshop:
- A chance to play with the RaspberryPi hands-on.
- Show & Tell / Prizes:
- An opportunity to display RaspberryPi projects from the community with prizes for notable projects.
The tour will be blogged/vlogged on the RaspberryPi website and we hope to attract RaspberryPi enthusiasts and hackers/makers from across the areas we will be visiting, allowing us to meet and support our community.
Here are the details on where we are meeting and at what time:
University of the Arts, Terra Hall, 5th floor
211 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
Monday, September 24th, 7:00PM-10:00PM
I recently decided to make a proof-of-concept for a simple hydraulics kit. Ultimately you would be able to take this kit, get some standard PVC pipe from the local hardware store, and very quickly build your own simple hydraulic devices. Use it to learn about the principles of hydraulics while staying cool on a hot summer day, or use it to power your homemade tools like simple presses, lifts, or even an articulated digging arm.
The pressure in your typical garden hose is nominally around 40 psi or so, so my first hydraulic cylinder should be able to develop about 125 pounds of force if it had really good seals. This is a proof of concept so I didn’t bother with o-rings or anything, so it leaks like crazy and thus is unable to develop quite those kinds of pressures, although it is quite strong. Moving from a 2″ to a 3″ hydraulic cylinder would bring this up to about 282 pounds of force, not too shabby for garden hose power!
The hydraulic cylinder is made of standard PVC pipe (2″ for the cylinder and 1.5″ for the ram), although I had to use my lathe to turn down a 1.5″ pipe cap to fit inside the outer cylinder. The control valve is made of 1/2″ CPVC fittings and tubing, with the exception of the spool which is a length of 1/2″ solid PVC rod. I had to turn down the spool on my lathe to the appropriate profile and also had to drill out the valve to fit it. The fit is fairly poor but it shows that the concept definitely works. Eventually I am hoping to be able to have all the custom parts injection molded to get the unit cost down cheap enough that it would make a good toy for DIY doodlers and budding engineers everywhere.
Whoa! Fosscon is tomorrow and Hive76 is going to be there!!
What’s fosscon? From the fosscon crew:
Fosscon 2012 is a free and open source software conference, and will
include six general-interest talks, and workshops on topics including
development, community building, hackerspace activities, and more.
Learn about 3D printing, security, and protecting your privacy.
Network with the local tech community and discover new technologies.
Whoa, workshops?! That’s right! Some of which will be conducted by Hive76! We’ve actually been given an entire ROOM for the conference, so be sure to stop by when you’re there!
The workshops that we’ll be running cover Intro to soldering, Intro to Arduino, Build Your Own Flat Panel Speakers, and several workshops on Building Your Own Simple Square Wave Synthesizers.Several? Yeah, Sean will cover using 555 timers, MSP430s, and also Arduinos!
The costs for these workshops will vary from $10-$30 to cover instruction and also cost of materials used.
Make sure to register for fosscon! Seating is limited! If you’d like to financially support fosscon (you should, it’s awesome!), it will only cost you $25 and you get some nice swag! Otherwise, fosscon is a free-as-in-beer event, but you still have to register!
I know I certainly had a really fun time last night with everyone.
