Category: Other

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Hackers In An Organ

Hive76 member and quartermaster Brendan Schrader got his fellow Hive members an awesome field trip last Saturday. A journey into the inside of the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, the worlds largest working pipe organ. Many thanks to Brendan and Andrew, the Curator’s Assistant for giving us this once in a lifetime experience. It really was amazing.

The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest operational pipe organ in the world, located within a spacious 7-story court at Macys Center City (formerly Wanamaker’s department store). The largest organ is the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ (which is barely functional). The Wanamaker organ is played twice a day, Monday through Saturday, and more frequently during the Christmas season. The organ is also featured at several special concerts held throughout the year, including events featuring the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ Festival Chorus and Brass Ensemble.

We also got a sneak peak behind the scenes of the Macy’s Light Show, which Brendan helped build.

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Philadelphia Robotics Group Meetup Tonight!

Well it’s time again for the monthly Philadelphia Robotics Meetup Group tonight at Hive76. Stop by for some robotics and electronics chat. We’ll be talking about our Quadrotor project, a flying robot. The event starts at 7:30 PM. Hope to see you there!

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AVR Micro Controller Class Dec. 12th

On hiveavrDecember 12th FUBAR Labs member Keith Chester will be giving an AVR Mico Controller class. You will receive all the tools and training you need to work directly with micro controllers. No matter the project – from interactive art to physical computing to robotics – the use of micro controllers can vastly expand the power and interactivity of your project.
By mastering the basics of the popular AVR micro controller (which is used in popular platforms such as the open source Arduino platform) you can put a lot of power into your project for less than a few dollars!

The class comes with all the hardware you need to begin developing your own micro controller projects and several sensors, allowing you to make real-world interactive projects immediately after the course is done!

The class will last three hours.

Included in the kit:

  • Atmega88
  • USBtinyISP (Assembled)
  • Power Supply
  • Breadboard
  • Temperature Sensor
  • Piezo
  • IR Range Finder
  • Tiltball Switch
  • LED’s

So, you’ll be going home with roughly $60 in parts.. all yours for the hacking.

Prior knowledge of C programming is encouraged – some programming background required. If you know Java or Wiring (Arduino programming language) then the transition to C should not be too difficult.
A laptop is required to take the course.
(Linux, Windows, and Mac can all be used)

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BarCamp Philly is this weekend

barcampphilly2Bar Camp Philly is Nov 14th (This Saturday already). It’s Philly’s version of the Bar Camp un-conference scene, and is going to be jammed with webby and invent-y people talking about what is going on in Philly.

Or if you just want to party on, you can just rock out at the Geekadelphia party. I think tickets are sold out, or close to it, so get your tickets (or not). I myself will be working the sign in table on Saturday, so if you are coming, say hi to the guy in the weird hat signing you in.

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heated build stage success!

our custom made heated build stage for our MakerBot CupCake CNC is working extremely well. here you can see 4 pulleys being printed at the same time. there’s no raft (saves time, plastic, and headache), and ZERO warping. excellent! the etched acrylic may stick a bit too well. we’ll have to try regular, unetched acrylic next (which will be less expensive anyway).

say hello to mass manufacturing.

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Hive76 gets a Larger Space!

We are proud to announce that we have acquired a new space to be awesome in. It’s just down the hall from where we are were, and 2.5 times the size. We’ve been around for less than a year, and this is a big step forward. Keep an eye out for more details on an Open House event.

Interested in becoming a member? Check out our wiki entry for more details.

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MakerBot recommended Extrusion Temperatures for different materials

NopHead is a lead designer of the RepRap 3D printer, and designed the Skyhook that we’re using all the time while printing at Hive. He’s worked out some good temperatures for extruding different materials in this RepRap guide for Newbies, which i’m reprinting here for posterity:

HDPE.raft_temp = 200
HDPE.first_layer_temp = 240
HDPE.layer_temp = 220

PCL.raft_temp = 0 // no raft
PCL.first_layer_temp = 130
PCL.layer_temp = 120

ABS.raft_temp = 200
ABS.first_layer_temp = 215
ABS.layer_temp = 230

PLA.raft_temp = 0
PLA.first_layer_temp = 180
PLA.layer_temp = 160

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heated build platform for MakerBot

check out our work on making a heated build platform for MakerBot. The primary goal was to make it as light as possible since the stage is actively moving, so that means just some nichrome, a thermistor, and some silicone as a carrier. The silicone is also an insulator (very important!!) so no kapton tape is needed and we can see clearly what’s going on inside because the silicone is also clear. we currently use a reprap motherboard and extruder to drive the heat, looking at simpler electronic design soon (but this setup has the excellent PID in the extruder firmware 1.6!).