We’re going to be trying to make our own ferrofluid on Tuesday night to have available to play with on Wednesday night. If our efforts are successful, then for Open House we’ll show you how to make it using old audio cassette tapes and acetone. I don’t know what kind of results to expect, but here’s a video giving an idea of the extreme:
Neighborhood Cleanup 9/5
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.
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.
In addition to the electro-etching, we also had some fun toys to play with.
And then I just had fun taking photos of stuff.
Stop by next time when we bust out the big guns and… it’s a secret! Come by and find out!
Art at Hive76
It’s not all about circuits and microcontrollers and chemistry at Hive76; we love art and we love making art in an incredibly dynamic environment that has become a second home for many of us. With the hustle and bustle of an active workshop, not a lot of people notice the artwork scattered around our humble space. Some is from our members, some is from artists in our building, and all of it is a delightful expression of the duality of art and engineering that makes us what we are: hackers.
MAKE Blog Love for Dave Sharp
One of our members, Dave Sharp, recently showed up on the MAKE Magazine Blog in their post on the Lockheed Samarai. You can see Dave piloting the maple-leaf-inspired drone in the video after the jump.
Dave joined us back in early February of this year. He does amazing work with raw fabrication of contraptions. For our exhibits at the PAFA “Grossed Out” event, he built a giant pantograph used with a USB-microscope to etch small designs on microscope slides. It was one of the most complete “DIY” builds I’ve ever seen; extremely clean and professional. Just like Dave.
We love having him as a member and look forward to seeing what else he comes up with.
Open House for 8/24
This Wednesday night, during Open House, we’re going to be doing some basic electro-etching. The technique is very simple–requiring little more than a 9v battery, some wire, a cotton swab, some salt water, and nail polish–and takes very little time to get very good results (actually, it works so quickly that you have to be a little careful of eating through thin materials).
I did this earlier today with the back of my Zippo, though I was a little sloppy and went a little too long. I’ll be trying this out with a knife blade on Wednesday, as well as the lid of my computer. Bring your stuff in and let’s have some fun personalizing our stuff.
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
A bunch of faces where in our spaces last night.
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:
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!
Philly Tech Week Wrapup
Sorry to everyone for how long it took me to get this write-up out. The perils of starting a new job, I guess. Luckily, we had plenty of notes taken for the entire week, so very little was lost to the black hole that is my memory.
Our arrangements for Philly Tech Week were pretty impromptu, but we managed to pull off a number of fun things.
Monday, 25th: Open Work Night
Open Work Night turned out to be an extension of our spring cleaning from over the weekend. We got the space nice and tidy for everyone who would be visiting later in the week. One visitor came by and helped us put together a few shelves, which was incredibly handy as they required some “lite modification” with a hacksaw before they would fit in our ceilings. Oh, I know! Our ceilings are freaking tall, what was up with the shelves?
Tuesday, 26th: Micro-controller Show and Tell
The evening had a pretty light showing as people hadn’t really quite caught on to what we were doing. However, some of our members (Mike, Chris, and PJ) did get a start on a mirror-and-laser text display system. Very cool.
Wednesday, 27th: Regularly Scheduled Open House + Late Night Karaoke
On Wednesday night, we hosted a number of guests for what is normally our Open House night. These normally turn into social gatherings of sorts, and Tech Week was no exception. We found out that one of our guests is getting ready to launch a new social networking site, another who has started a vending machine company focusing on local goods (http://snacklikealocal.com), and another kind soul looking to donate a Smithy Lathe!
PJ got his MIDI Nintendo Running pad working. Basically, the old running pad controller used with the NES is interpreted through an Arduino to send MIDI signals back to a host computer, where it is used with any MIDI capable software, in this particular case Ableton Live.
We did get Late Night Karaoke going, and it was a blast. Adam rocked out with the Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”. Sean sang Gershwin’s “Foggy London Town”. PJ wooed everyone with The Temptations’ “My Girl”. Corrie set us all rolling laughing with Gayla Peevey’s “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas”. Chris fiiiiinaly got up to sing Soul Survivor’s “Expressway To Your Heart”. And Brendan was Brendan with Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”.
Thursday, 28th: DIY/Electronic Music
We had a good mix of newcomers and members for our music night. One person brought in a completely hand-made, 7 sting electric guitar he built. The thing was sick, really wish we had gotten pictures. We jammed out with various synths and drum machines. Sean further extended his Atari Punk Console with a low-pass filter to give it a rounder tone, then blipped and buzzed along with everyone else. Brendan rocked out on the guitar, and Dan was really tearing it up on the keyboard. Definitely a fun night, and we will be looking to do more such nights in the future.
Friday, 29th: “Bricks and Grips” – Arm Wrestling/Puzzle Game Tournament
This night, we actually had more guests than members show up. The first two challengers for Arm Wrestling Tetris were Sean McBeth (the creator) and Robert Cheetham, founder and president of Azavea, a GIS software firm in Center City that is doing some extremely revolutionary work (I know, I used to work in the industry). We also had a bit more electric music jamming, which was a great time.
It was a real team effort getting the game together, between Brendan’s sound track, PJ’s voice over work, and Sean’s programming and construction, it all fit together perfectly. Next up, Punching Bag Double Dragon!
Saturday, 30th: Artemis Game Session
The developer of Artemis just released a new version that includes canned missions. We played the first mission with Sean as Captain and survived to tell the tale.
While en route to our primary mission objective of observing anomolies in a nearby nebula cluster, we encountered a squadron of Krellians lying in wait, having prepared for an ambush against us. Lt. Commander Santoro showed great skill and initiative in destroying the three ships in mere seconds with two well-placed nuclear torpedoes.
After the brief battle, we intercepted a distress call from Deep-Space 49 as they took fire from another battle group of Krellians. Running low on energy and weapons, we barely scraped by and defended the station after a core-burning sprint at maximum warp that nearly left us depleted of energy. Lt. Peterson performed admirably in her duties managing power levels and surely is responsible for our survival.
DS-49 provided us with much needed supplies as we returned to our primary mission: scanning nebulae. We returned to the cluster to find another hidden flotilla of Krellians. This time, we were completely out of nukes and were unable to deal with them handily as we did before. We managed to warp out of weapons range before any serious damage came to the ship. Our second sortie against the Krellians fared better, we damaged them, but had not completely destroyed them. Running low on weapons, Commander Toliaferro performed commendably in maintaining a flanking position on the enemy, allowing Lt. Commander Santoro to dispatch the enemy with beam weapons.
Completely depleted of forward torpedoes, running low on energy, we were ambushed by a third squad of Krellians while under way to DS-45 for supplies. While we managed to warp into a nebula for cover, the nebula destroyed our shields and we were stuck with the enemy between us and our safety. Having nothing but mines left, Captain McBeth hatched a plan. We would fly through the center of the squadron, diverting repair crews and energy to protect critical systems as we bore the brunt of the frontal assault, then dropping our mines in the middle of the squad as we passed through them, to warp away to safety on the other side. The plan required a high level of coordination by all crew members. As Commander Toliaferro deftly navigated at close quarters through the heart of the beast, the first pass dealt great damage to the enemy, but they weren’t quite finished. Rather than coming about for another pass, Captain McBeth ordered all-stop in the middle of battle. Allowing the enemy to come in to weapons range, Lt. Commander Santoro dropped the last few mines, while Lt. Peterson delicately balanced the needs o the repair crews, shields, weapon systems, and engines largely under instinct, not having time to run the proper load balancing calculations. As a result, the final Krellian fleet was completely destroyed while the S.S. Artemis flew home under her own power, completely undamaged, back to DS-45.
Another mission accomplished.
Philly Tech Week Events
For Philly Tech Week, we’re opening our doors every night of the week at 8pm, extending our normal Open House format to the entire week, for this week only. We have a variety of different activities planned. Check it out.
Monday, 25th: Open Work Night
For the first night of Tech Week, we’ll be working in the space on projects together. Come stop by and say hi, lend a hand, or just to jibber-jabber about your own projects. This is a little different than normal Open Houses in that we typically curb work sessions for the night.
Tuesday, 26th: Micro-controller Show and Tell
Have an Arduino, MSP430, Propeller, or other MCU project that you want to show off? Want to learn some basics of gettings started with the MSP430? Come out this night and have fun with bit-twiddling, speaker beeping, and LED-blinking.
Wednesday, 27th: Regularly Scheduled Open House + Late Night Karaoke
Our regularly scheduled social hour. We have a hacktastic “karaoke machine” running on a Macbook that lets you queue songs through our IRC channel. We don’t usually start the Karaoke until 10pm, but if enough people are interested we’ll get it started early.
Thursday, 28th: DIY/Electronic Music
Step-tone generators, electric guitar effects pedals, sequencers, keyboards. Whether you’ve made your own instrument or not, any way you want to make music tonight, come on down and jam with us.
Friday, 29th: “Bricks and Grips” – Arm Wrestling/Puzzle Game Tournament
Based on a similar concept that we are not permitted to mention due to trademark issues, this game is a standard 2-player, head-to-head Tetrimino Puzzle Game, where players manipulate their pieces through an arm wrestling competition on a specially designed arm wrestling table-shaped controller.
Saturday, 30th: Artemis Game Session
For all you trekkies out there, Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator is a networked multiplayer game that simulates a spaceship’s bridge; much like what you’d see on Star Trek®.
User-Literate Technology
This is a broad-concept idea that I’ve had in my head for a while and have discussed with a few people. This post is mostly a direct adaptation of those discussions. I’ve taken to calling the idea “User-Literate Technology”, mostly because, in the same way we might say that a particular person is technology-literate, we should also be able to say that a particular technology is user-literate.
In some ways, this is similar to “user-friendly”, except that it places the burden on the technology to adapt to the user, rather than the technology making it easy for the user to adapt to it. Does some particular technology in question create its own gestures and idioms, while seeking to make them easy to learn, or does the technology capture idioms that are common in the culture for which the technology is intended? If the technology errs more on the latter side, then it is “User-Literate”, more than “User-Friendly”.
Before systems can become more User-Literate, they largely need to dispense of their most prevalent interface: the keyboard and mouse. The keyboard is a text and data entry tool, but as an interface into consumer computing, it is roughly 150 keys of confusion, distraction, and indirection. For example, why do we still have a Scroll Lock function on our keyboards? Scroll Lock hasn’t been a useful feature for the last 20 years; in other words, one of the most important and significant markets for consumer computing has never lived in an era that needs a Scroll Lock. It’s like issuing every new driver a buggy whip with their driver’s license.
Mice are nice for tasks that involve precise selection of elements on a 2D plain. It was designed in an era when graphical displays were not much larger than 640×480 pixels. Nowadays, I have a laptop with a native resolution of 1600×900, and I can hook up a second monitor to it to double that space. We’re talking about screen real estate that is five to ten times larger than when the mouse first became popular. To give you an idea of what that means, take a look at the 640×480 highlighted area on my desktop screenshot (and yes, I paid for Photoshop).
Computing has seen more huge leaps and bounds in usability than it has incremental improvements. Check out this screenshot of the Xerox Star GUI. I remind you that this is from 1981. Try to identify any functional elements from modern computer interfaces that are not in this image (protip: from a technical perspective, there aren’t any, they are all adaptations of concepts shown here).
The early GUI interfaces like Star and its clones (including Macintosh and Windows) got something very right: they made functionality discoverable. There were two primary ways in which they did this, by providing visual cues on the screen immediately in the user’s field of view, and by providing multiple access points to the functionality to accommodate users who work in different ways. Having a menu option labeled “Help” is very inviting, but advanced users learn to ignore large portions of screen text, so it’s very important to make systems that cater to both the wide-eyed (literally) newb and the hardened veteran.
Regardless, monitors are only good if the user A) has a fully functional visual sense, and B) is able to devote their attention to the display. If the user is blind or distracted by other visual tasks (say, operating a heavy machine) then the display is a large, hot paperweight on the desk.
Luckily, we are starting to see some very basic work in this area hitting the consumer market. Between systems like the iPad and the hacktastic stuff being done with the Kinect, there is a lot going on with removing computing from its keyboard-and-mouse hegemony. Still, in many cases, they often rely on the user being able to memorize gestures and command sequences. If a user has to do something unnatural–even if it is done through advance motion sensing and image processing–then it might as well just be any other button-pushing interface.
This is why I never got into the Nintendo Wii. Yes, the motion tracking of the controller was a wonderful sweet-spot between price and precision. Despite that, few–if any–of the games were doing anything actually unique with it. Instead of waggling a joystick permanently affixed to a controller base and mashing buttons, you were… waggling a joystick in mid-air and mashing buttons. The user still had to learn new motion patterns and adapt to the system.
I think Google kind of picked up on the absurdity of most modern motion-tracking systems with this year’s April Fools prank, the “Gmail Motion“. Also, I think there are some good examples of user-literate technology on the market already.
I have a Wacom tablet here that is not only pressure- but also tilt-sensitive. I’ve found that the primary training hang-up is the disconnect between moving the stylus in one location and the drawing marks showing up in another; without strong hand-eye coordination that can be difficult to adjust to. Wacom has had LCD displays for a while now that have the full touch-and-tilt sensitivity built into them. I can’t imagine how amazing working with them must be (and probably won’t for a while, the smallest one is only 12” across and costs nearly $1000. The one that I would actually want is 2 kilobucks).
There is a weather station ran by MIT with a natural language processor that you can call on your phone called JUPITER. I’ll be damned if I couldn’t figure out how to trip this thing up. Even with a fake southern accent (though reasonable, I’ve spent enough time in the south to know what they actually sound like) I couldn’t baffle it. Anything that it faltered on, I had to admit that a human would have had a hard time understanding me anyway. It’s best feature was context tracking, you could ask for the weather on a certain day in a certain city, receive it, then make an extremely contextual query like “what about the day after?” and it would get it right, “and the next day?” and BAM, weather forecastery in your ear. I heard about this thing over 5 years ago, why don’t we have flying cars yet? I understand the technology was based on a DARPA project that was being used for automated logistics in battlefield scenarios. People getting shot at don’t have time to remember how to talk to a computer. So they built a computer that could understand a screaming, cussing US Marine.
My sister cued me in to a project being developed by a group of high-schoolers in Portland, OR. A team of two 11th graders are developing voice-emotion recognition technology that; they’ve already won the Siemens Science Award in the team category. You talk into a microphone and the computer judges the emotional state you were in when you spoke. The kids are currently envisioning developing a wristwatch for autistic children who have difficulty assessing others’ emotions. The watch will flash an emoticon indicating the emotional state of the person the child is talking to.
So what is the point of all of this talk? I am organizing a symposium/exposition for User-Literate Technology. I want it to be a spring-board for starting to talk about technology that adapts to and understands how people work, rather than having artificial systems that strive to be easy to learn. Hopefully, we can have it going either by the end of the year or by this time next year. I’d like it to be a multi-disciplinary event, with equal participation from industry and academics, from artists and computer scientists and engineers. If you or your organization is interested in participating, you can reach me through the gmail with the name “smcbeth”.
We haven’t seen a major innovation in human-computer interaction in over 30 years. It’s time to start working on the problem.