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

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

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  
}

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.

PLA bushing sliding on precision ground 8 mm rods is actually quite smooth movement. I don’t think it can go as fast as the original Sells Mendel (which was ball bearings sliding over the rods), but it’s only half the printed parts and the z-axis is much smoother motion too. I will try oiling or greasing the bushings to try to get smoother and faster motion without losing steps. So definitely some tradeoffs but overall a super awesome bot. The Prusa is also fully parametric and entirely made from OpenSCAD. All sources are available on github FTW.

As this is the first bot I built that I actually own, I named this awesometown after my HS science teacher, Mr. Sloate, who really got me into Biology and now, robotics for Biology.

What will we print next?

The first, LuxRender is a physically based Light Modeler. It’s currently limited to CPU-rendering only, but it creates enormously realistic lighting scenarios based on physical equations that describe the behavior of light. An amazing new feature here is that it stores the contribution of each light to each pixel during rendering, so you can modify the rendered image photorealistically and non-destructively without having to re-render the entire scene again.

The second, SmallLuxGPU is even more experimental but it is able to harness the full power of your GPU for unparalleled rendering speed of highly photorealistic visual scenes. Even better, with SLG you can interact with your scene in realtime to get just the view you want.

SmallLuxGPU v1.6 (OpenCL) from David Bucciarelli.

And here’s some examples of renders we’ve done in the past few days. Keep in mind, these are entirely synthetic images. Jump over to flickr to see at higher resolution.

We won!

Great news, The Citizen Science Quartely just picked the winner for the Open Science Design Contest, and:
WE WON!!!!!!!!1111!!111one

You can read more about the original entry HERE.

We’ll be using the Ponoko gift certificate to design a housing for the electronics and make it more kit-able. Bench Science FTW!

And definitely check out the Kickstarter for The Citizen Science Quarterly. It’s shaping up to be a really interesting mix of Bench Science in the DIY spirit. From the Kickstarter page:

“We’d like to create a magazine for the scientist in all of us.

It will have simple How-To’s, like extracting the DNA of a strawberry using kitchen materials. But on the next page could have a paper on the validity of using Bacillus Subtillus as a model organism. We’d feature extraordinary citizen scientists who are doing extraordinary things in abnormal labs (aka garages, closets, etc). We’d also give legal and safety tips to inform and protect citizen scientists from some of the dangers they could run into.”

Chris building a BoomCase

Our entire building at 915 Spring Garden is taking part in Open Art Studios this weekend, and we’ll be there too!

Almost 30 studios will be open to the public, including Hive76! There’s a ton of different medias people use, everything from textiles to clays to electronics.

Come join us on Saturday and Sunday, December 4th and 5th, from noon – 5 pm at Hive76. We’ll also be upgrading our MakerBot with a new MK5 Extruder so we’ll be printing in tip-top shape again soon!

…

It was weird to hit the Wednesday Hive Open House and see a handful of original MSP430 projects.  The video above is an LED chaser effect that Chris Thompson whipped up based on concepts from the first session of the MSP430 class.  As the old saying goes — teach a geek to fish and you’ll soon have LED encrusted fish.

Speaking of LEDs, here’s a Morse Code blinker project that Chris did.  Mostly a cut & paste job, but if nothing else, it makes the point that there are plenty of  MSP430 code samples out there and that it’s relatively easy to use them once you know the tools.

Audience

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