During COVID, we’ve kept open-house restricted to members and those who pre-registered via email. As vaccinations become widely available, we’re beginning to ease back on those restrictions. Starting this week, non-members interesting in touring Hive no longer need to pre-register via email – you can just show up. Our COVID rules still remain in full effect, so you’ll need to wear a mask and we’ll still be enforcing a maximum occupancy at the space.
We’ve made a number of improvements to our woodworking space. That includes a brand new table saw, as well as two new workbenches, a tabletop jointer, and a variety of hand-woodworking tools.
As the pandemic evolves, management has update our COVID-19 rules:
Mandatory Masks: masks should be worn all times within the space, even if you’re the only one there. You can take your mask off for eating/drinking.
10-person max occupancy: number of people in the space will be limited to 10 people, and members are encouraged to social distance as possible while in the space.
Wipe down touchpoints: cleaning spray and paper towels are provided through the space. Wipe down contact areas after use as part of cleanup.
Wash your hands: Hand-sanitizer is provided at both entrances in addition to the soap and sink in the bathroom. We recommend washing hands frequently, including when arriving and before leaving.
We’ve been busy upgrading the space. We recently shifted our soldering station to it’s new home near the classroom. With that comes new wire organization, improved task lighting, and less dust from the woodworking projects. It also frees up space in our front room for bigger projects.
After a good run at Bok, Hive76 is moving! Starting next month, we’ll be located at 1821 E Hagert St. In the meantime, open house will continue as usual – assuming no more freak snowstorms, that is.
This time around, we have the opportunity to build out the entire space ourselves, and we’re taking full advantage of it. More details to come very soon, but here’s a sneak peek at what we’re working on:
Thursday October 12th at 7:30 PM join us for an evening of learning and exploration! In this class students will be taken through the basic fundamentals of electricity all the way to creating circuits and experimenting. Every student will get a comprehensive kit of parts with designs for a variety of different circuits. The class is open to people of all skill levels with a suggested age of 16+. This is a ticketed event please see the ticketleap link below.
The format of the class will be a short lecture followed by a hands on workshop using the kit of parts. The kit of parts include a wide variety of resistors, LEDs, capacitors, integrated circuits, transistors, and diodes etc. Each of these components will be introduced in the lecture and have accompanying circuit designs showing how they work, please bring something to take notes.
For mobility accommodations please contact the organizers in advance of the event, thank you.
Attendees must purchase a ticket through our Ticketleap event page https://
Charles Affel has taught electronics workshops at Hive76 as part of DIY Music night.
Join us for our monthly Saturday Open House on October 7th. We are participating in POST, Philadelphia Open Studios, and we will be open starting at noon. Drop on by some of our members will be working on projects and some will be ready to show visitors around the space. See you there!
Also Intro Electronics class is October 12th 7:30 PM See here for tickets to that class https://hive76.ticketleap.com/introelectronics/
Computer Aided Design is the way we interact with the digital tools that make things. Do you want to try 3D printing or laser cutting? Ever want to CNC mill something from a chunk of aluminum? The first step is getting your idea into the computer.
Fusion 360 by Autodesk is a powerful parametric CAD tool that is free to use for makers, educators, and even most startups. It rivals SolidWorks in its functionality, but adds features found in many standalone tools. Your instructor Chris Thompson is a certified CAD professional with experience teaching digital making to beginners and professionals alike.
In this class you will learn the basics of most CAD systems and the intricacies of the Fusion 360 interface with hands-on demonstrations. The evening will begin with a general overview of CAD. There will be a structured walk-through of the program where every student creates the same model. This is followed by individual work where students explore the numerous different ways to make any one shape. Do you build up feature-by-feature, or would you rather carve away piece-by-piece? The class will reveal the hidden pitfalls of the program and any caveats. We will cover exporting your files for the next step in making. Any remaining time in the evening will be dedicated to answering any questions you have about CAD or making.
The class is Thursday, June 1 2017 from 7pm – 9pm at Hive76
Tickets are $50 and can be purchased from our ticketleap page. Members, don’t forget your discount!
Students must bring their own laptop with Fusion 360 installed and a 3 button mouse (left, right, scroll wheel button.) Please bring some paper for sketching and notes too.
Students will also need a free Autodesk account to save their work. Please follow these instructions to get set up with a free account.
The Hivelord made an appearance at the STEAM Fair at the Barnes, in his new business friendly attire, along with Hive76 members Chris Terrell and Mike Barretta! In case you didn’t know, STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics, ie all the good stuff. Mike was there to entice visitors into the STEAM lifestyle with his custom portable gaming machines based on the Raspberry Pi and emulationstation, while the Hivelord took photos of unwitting participants using his face, and thus stealing a tiny portion of their soul (as it is told in The Legends). Click the link below to see the photos from the Barnes!
-> Click here to see the Hivelord’s Photos from this event! <-
Following up on suggestions from the board meeting to look at Stripe for charging member dues, I found a couple Rails tutorials and deployed via Heroku… it works with a few lines of (rails) code! The reason to maybe not use “gravity forms + stripe” just yet is because I think it is $200/yr — you need a Gravity Forms Developer License according to:
http://www.gravityforms.com/add-ons/
Yikes. Is that right? Different sites report different $$ so until someone at Hive tries it we may never know!
Well, we can just make our own embedded form, and Stripe can also deal with subscriptions painlessly, apparently. Try it with the herokuapp link below:
*****WARNING: it will actually charge your CC $1. I promise to deposit it back to Hive*********
http://members-hive76.herokuapp.com/
Heroku is great, you deploy via github so we could also make the forms public (our private Stripe key is configured only in heroku and is NOT in the github repo). Here’s the rails app on github so we can collaborate; I put all the details for how I did this in the README.md:
https://github.com/jmil/member-dues
Thoughts?
Some more to think about:
1) Let’s make a member application fee of $1.00. This will ensure prospective members have Stripe setup BEFORE they become a member! Much better than if they are voted in but never actually pay…!
2) I think we should charge the Stripe fees *to the member*. This way we have dependable operational costs. You can see attached that a $5 charge results in only a $4.55 net gain because of the stripe fees, but this is still low cost and dependable for now (Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). So we would need to charge users fee*1.029 + $0.30 (rounding up by cents; Stripe only charges whole cents) for each fee we designate. Then if Stripe changes fees in the future we just update this amount and Hive still has dependable operational costs.
3) Stripe is nice! Your CC will properly process whatever we write into stripe, here’s how it shows up on my card statement:
4) Right now funds get deposited into my personal checking account (!!) since I don’t have the Hive76 bank account number. Does someone want to give me that? Or I can coordinate this with the treasurer. Again, I promise to deposit your test charges back to Hive.
5) Obviously it needs beautification, choice between member rates, a way to subscribe, etc. But that’s all optimization for later, this rapid hack was about feasibility. It’s feasible to use stripe!
Here’s what you see in the Stripe Dashboard:
