What the heck is a Bug Jam?

README

Ok, so now what?

From Friday March 2nd to Sunday March 4th in IRC at #ubuntu-us-pa on
freenode we will be working as a group to help with this event.

On Sunday March 4th from 10am to 6pm at
Hive76 we will have a Bug Event.

If you can get out and join us, please do! No experience necessary.

Heck, even if you want to just hangout, stop on by.

Event info and Registration

Apostrophe Now! — based out of Philadelphia and developed by P’unk Ave — is “a content management system designed for maximum flexibility with a minimal learning curve. The interface is ergonomic, all content-editing is performed in-context.”

Do you have or are you building a website, but you are looking for alternatives to WordPress, Django and other CMS engines? Apostrophe may be right for you!

Come meet Geoff DiMasi and Tom Boutell, two of the lead developers, and find out all the nitty gritty about Apostrophe. They’ll give an overview of the system, design goals, and features, and they’ll also dive into the code to show us how it’s all put together. Geoff and Tom will also talk about other things Philadelphia (the founding of P’unk Ave, the founding of Indy Hall, and the founding of Ignite Philly).

You won’t find this info on Youtube or Vimeo. Come on down to your favorite hackerspace to learn all about Apostrophe and an awesome Philadelphia success story.

Hive76
Wednesday, February 22nd, 7:30 pm
915 Spring Garden, Suite 519

The JayOscillator

I named it the “JayOscillator” after the Korg KAOSCILLATOR, as my thing is a similar sort of notion, written in JavaScript.

You can try it out here for now, though no promises that the URL won’t change in the future.

Unfortunately, I think I have to give up on iPad support. Apple nerfed the ability to auto-start HTML 5 audio tags from JavaScript. Without that ability, their is no way I can keep a continuous tone going.

I’m considering rewriting this as a native app, though. Most of the effort here has been in figuring out the math necessary to get this going. Since that work is done, porting to different languages and platforms is more of a chore in API calls.

Option 1) Lasercut, Laser engrave, and LED-light-up your very own Snowflake

Join us on TUESDAY, December 20th, 7 pm – Midnight

Meet-and-Make, Hive76 and NextFab Studio Members
@ http://NextFabStudio.com/ @ 3711 Market Street

This “Maker Collider” event will be a great opportunity to make awesome stuff.

We had proposed these projects:
All details are here on the Wiki

After reviewing the projects here and those proposed by NextFab members it sounds like we will be doing some form of the Chess boards, the snowflakes, some robotics, and a bunch of laser-engraving. But what if you don’t like those? Come by anyway and you can rally troops for helping you on your own project(s).

NextFab Studio will have these staff members on hand throughout the event:
Chrinstine : Textile and Industrial Design ( fabric knowledge, product design,cad, sewing )
Ian : Electronics (pcb design/fabrication, coding, wiring, soldering, etc.)
Seth : Mechanical Engineer (handtools, cad, product design)
Brandon : Multi-Media Designer ( 3d printing, graphic design, product design, cinematography, cad)

Anything you want to do, you can do. AWESOME.

Check out all their equipment.

Oh, and there will be food too. Be there at 7 pm!!

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

Although motor control is potentially a vast and complex topic, with highly specialized branches, the basics are fairly easy to learn — and they’ll take you pretty far.   So … we’ll be prepared to present the following items:

• DC motors
• H-bridge circuits — these let puny microcontrollers run fairly powerful motors
• Stepper motors — just a little more complex to program than DC motors and they use H-bridge circuits too
• Quadrature Encoders — these are a  simple and accurate way to read the position of something

We’ll also try to discuss some organizational items — like the logistics of future workshops and the use of the MMMM GitHub, so that we can build up assets collectively, share them with the world and manage changes and contributions in a free-and-easy-but-organized way.

If you are coming , please bring:

• Yourself — If you’re a newb, welcome — If you’re an MCU Yoda, then attend you must and wisdom to newbs impart
• Some ideas
• A laptop if you have one
• You may want to install VMWare Player or VMWare Fusion before you arrive
• An MCU development kit if you have one or …
• Some money if you don’t.  We’ll have some development kits that you can buy.  Plan on at least $10 for the kits and some parts that you can use for small learning projects.
• A bread-board if you want to build some live circuits to keep.  We’ll have breadboards to loan, but if you want to take one home, it has to be one that arrived with you.

That’s about it — see you all Monday.  To whet your appetite, there is some prototype code below for reading a quadrature encoded position detector (not really elegant enough for a final effort, but it’s a start).  We’ll have you writing stuff like this in no-time.

This code is part of an effort to turn salvaged InkJet printers into motion controllers.  Most of these positioners let you position an InkJet head to within 1/600 inch — they’re fast, accurate, compact, surprisingly strong … and dirt-cheap.

#include  <msp430x20x2.h>

#define LED0 BIT0
#define LED1 BIT6
#define PHASE1 BIT1
#define PHASE2 BIT2
#define PHASE_MASK 6
#define PHASE_SHIFT 1

int state;     // used to hold current state of encoder bits (00, 01, 10 or 11) 
int lastState; // used to hold previous state of encoder bits (00, 01, 10 or 11) 
int pos;  // used to count steps. A 1/150" encoder (the most common kind) yields 600 steps per inck. 

// -- prototype of common bit of code used to compute the present state value 
void updateState(void);

int main(void)
{
	WDTCTL = WDTPW + WDTHOLD; // Stop watchdog timer 
	// --- set up some initial values 	
        pos = 0;
	P1DIR &= ~(PHASE1 + PHASE2); // Set P1.1 and P1.2 as inputs 	
        P1DIR |= (LED0 + LED1); // Set P1.0 and P1.6 to outputs. These are the LEDs on a LaunchPad. 

	// --- get initial conditions so that the first interrupt 	
 // has the right "edge" values and so that position calculations are based on feasible transitions 	
        updateState();
	lastState = state;

	P1IFG &= ~(PHASE1 | PHASE2); // clear interrupt flags for P1.1 and P1.2 	
        P1IE |= (PHASE1 | PHASE2); // P1.1 and P1.2 interrupt enabled 
	__enable_interrupt(); // enable all interrupts 	
 for(;;)
	{ /* just loop forever and let the interrupts do all the work */ }
}

// updateState() calculates updates for the edge detectors used in the interrupts 
// and also updates the "lastState" variable 
void updateState(void){
	state = P1IN & PHASE_MASK;

	if (state & PHASE1)
		P1IES |= PHASE1; // PHASE1 high, then interrupt on falling edge 	
        else
		P1IES &= ~PHASE1; // PHASE1 low, then interrupt on rising edge 
	if (state & PHASE2)
		P1IES |= PHASE2; // PHASE2 high, then interrupt on falling edge 	
        else
		P1IES &= ~PHASE2; // PHASE2 low, then interrupt on rising edge 

	// ---"right-justify" state so that it is in the range 0..3	
       state =  (state >> PHASE_SHIFT);
}

// Port 1 interrupt service routine #pragma vector=PORT1_VECTOR
__interrupt void Port_1(void)
{
    updateState();

    // --- test for all clockwise incremental cases      
 // if we stepped clockwise, then increment the position     
    if ( (lastState == 0 & state == 2)
       ||(lastState == 2 & state == 3)
       ||(lastState == 3 & state == 1)
       ||(lastState == 1 & state == 0)){
         pos++;
    }
    // --- If we didn't move clockwise, then we must have moved counter-clockwise     
 // so decrement the position     
    else{
        pos--;
    }

    // --- record last state     
    lastState = state;

    // --- update LEDs just to help debug     
    // use "state" as intermediate variable so that we can see the output value in the debugger easily     
    // This is just so that we can see the encoder signal. No functional purpose.     
    state = state + ((state << 5) & 0x40);
    P1OUT = state;

    // --- clear the interrupt flags     
    P1IFG &= ~(PHASE1 | PHASE2); // clear interrupt flags for P1.1 and P1.2  
}

And what is RHOK? RHoK is a hackathon and competition to create solutions to pressing real world problems. By gathering the brightest hackers and problem-solvers for weekend hack-a-thons, RHoK aims to use technology to tackle disaster relief, social development, climate change, and human rights.

RHoK Philly begins at 9am on Sat June 4th. Register a team of 2-4 hackers (or join a team there) and Pick one of the dozens problem-definitions. Then design a solutions, dream/scope/layout and hack at it, and see what you can make by Sunday afternoon. The best project will be featured around the globe. If you have a global problem to suggest, get involved in the discussion on the RHoK site (http://www.rhok.org) and submit it.

There will also be a keynote talk by Roger Dingledine of the Tor Project Space is limited so be sure to pre-register.

WHAT: A FREE hackathon to create software solutions to global human challenges.
WHO: Designers, programmers, geeks, hackers, activists, problem solvers and concerned citizens!
WHERE: 3175 JFK Blvd, Drexel University, Philadelphia
WHEN: June 4th and 5th, 2011 starting at 9am. (Reception on June 3rd at WHYY)

Register at http://rhokphiladelphia.eventbrite.com

The first output of this crew is something called gitmarks, based on work by Hillary Mason (of bit.ly). This is a little tool to store bookmarks, bookmark metadata, and page content locally for searching, using, and peer-to-peer sharing. Since it is based on git this system can use a central server, *or* it can share peer to peer. As the name implies, it uses a git backed for data transfer and versioning. It also has the ability to pull down content for a local cache, and for local searching.

This project is in Alpha, and if you want to test the silly thing, the basics work. If you want to help build a cool distributed tool, we could use some help! We need to building a server, building more git tools, xmmp messaging, and browser integration. We also hope to create tools that along the way that make it easy to build systems for Moglen Boxen. Ping FarMcKon@gmail.com, leave a comment here, or hit #hive76 in IRC if you want to help.

• People being too loud or just socializing will be politely asked to go hang out in the lobby.
• Desk-sized whiteboards and some markers will be available to help in brainstorming.
• We will have ‘quite please’ signs. Feel free to take one if you don’t want to be interrupted while you work.
• If you just want to drop in and help, Hive76 will find something that fits your talents that can help the community.
• A white board will be reserved for anyone to write what they are stuck on, to help people find tutors or helpers.
• Lunch will be outside, at about 1PM, for about an hour. Get some sun!
• People working on open source projects get free lunch!

(Photo CC and by Opacity of PS:One)

You will need to bring your own computer (Mac/Linux/Windows) and your curiosity. Bonus points if you bring a snack for the people running the workshop! It’s be quick, it’ll be fun, and you will walk away knowing how to build some cool stuff using your new tools. This class is brought to you by Hive76, specifically by Phillip and Far.

Dive into programming Python:
Mon, February 22, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
915 Spring Garden St (Suite #519) – Hive76 Headquarters