hackerspaces | supper

JANUARY 30th 2012 – 8 PM
dorkbot.bln
„People doing strange things with electricity.“

OFFICIAL PARTNER EVENT TRANSMEDIALE 12 & CTM

Host: Frank Rieger (raumfahrtagentur Berlin)
ENTRANCE FREE
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotbln/

*** Fritzing – André Knörig
http://fritzing.org/
Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics. We are creating a software and website in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, developing a tool that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and to create a pcb layout for professional manufacturing.


*** Tworse Key – Martin Kaltenbrunner
http://modin.yuri.at/
Martin Kaltenbrunner is Professor at the Interface Culture Lab, University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria, and is known as co-creator of the Reactable, an electronic musical instrument with a tangible user interface. Martin will present his latest exercise in Interface Archeology, the “Tworse key”, which can directly send twitter messages through a classic morse key.


*** Klackerlaken – Mey Lean Kronemann
http://meyleankronemann.de/
Mey Lean Kronemann is an artist, designer and researcher based in Berlin. Mey will talk about her Klackerlaken workshops, where children and grown-ups learn to design and build their own solderless, glowing vibrobots.


*** etib – Milosch Meriac
http://etib.org/
A new hackerspace is coming up in Berlin! We proudly present etib, the Electronic + Textile Institute Berlin.
Milosch Meriac from etib will talk about the new hacker space. He is also Co-Founder of active and passive RFID open source projects like Sputnik/OpenBeacon.org, OpenPCD.org, OpenPICC.org and committed to RFID related security research.


*** raumfahrtagentur Berlin – Gismo C.
http://hackerspaces.org/
Concept and presentation of recent projects of Berlin’s based raumfahrtagentur.


More information on http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotbln/

New Printer, right next to sawdustgenerator

Here at Hive76, my desk sits right next to the wood working station. Normally, this isn’t an issue because my computer uses passive heat management, so there is no risk of getting dust clogged up in the fans. But I recently bought a new printer and want to keep it nice and clean. I initially thought of buying a dust cover, but serendipitously completely forgot to even look for them before I left the store. So, necessity being the mother of invention that it is, I was stuck in the space, not wanting to hop back in the car for a silly little dust cover, when I realized that I had a useless cardboard box that I was about to discard that was almost the exact dimensions of the printer itself. Duh! The box it came in! I cut one side off of the box, taped the corners down, left the hole from the missing flap for the wires coming out of the back of the printer, and voila! A free dust cover. I suppose if the color ever bothers me I can just spray paint it a solid color. This solution is actually better than a real cover because now I can stack papers and other lite objects on top when the printer isn’t in use and not have to worry about them sliding or rolling off because of the somewhat round top of the printer.

A few simple cuts

How convenient

Christopher Wilmer from Northwestern University just got published in a leading chemistry journal, Nature Chemistry. Congrats Christopher! To convey his scientific findings to a broader audience, he designed this artwork that made it on the cover of the journal. Open source science and art FTW…

Check it out!
http://www.blendernation.com/2012/01/27/blender-used-to-make-cover-art-for-nature-chemistry/

And here’s the Nature Chemistry paper.

Cover art Summary:
Randall Snurr and co-workers describe a computational approach for simulating every possible metal-organic framework (MOF) that can be built from a given set of building blocks (metal clusters and organic ligands) — represented conceptually on the cover using Tinkertoys. Some of the properties of MOFs can also be simulated to uncover structure–property relationships or materials suitable for specific applications. The MOF shown on the cover was identified for its methane storage capacity — a property that was subsequently confirmed experimentally.

Paper Abstract:
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous materials constructed from modular molecular building blocks, typically metal clusters and organic linkers. These can, in principle, be assembled to form an almost unlimited number of MOFs, yet materials reported to date represent only a tiny fraction of the possible combinations. Here, we demonstrate a computational approach to generate all conceivable MOFs from a given chemical library of building blocks (based on the structures of known MOFs) and rapidly screen them to find the best candidates for a specific application. From a library of 102 building blocks we generated 137,953 hypothetical MOFs and for each one calculated the pore-size distribution, surface area and methane-storage capacity. We identified over 300 MOFs with a predicted methane-storage capacity better than that of any known material, and this approach also revealed structure–property relationships. Methyl-functionalized MOFs were frequently top performers, so we selected one such promising MOF and experimentally confirmed its predicted capacity.

c-base Partner-Event der transmediale 12
Fr, Sa + So Live performance & audiovisual installation by Stickman feat. Fauxtone Collective
Vernissage: Fr 20:00, Sa + So ab 17:00
Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Stickman teams up with the Fauxtone Collective to bring an immersive audiovisual experience to the stage, exploring synergies and interactions of tones and photons.
Ab 22:00 gibt es an allen 3 Tagen ein Live-Concert by Stickman feat. Entlet

Stickman
Fauxtone Collective
Entlet

Das vollständige c-base transmediale Programm findet ihr unter http://c-base.org/transmediale/12/

c-base Partner-Event der transmediale 12
Fr, Sa + So 21:00 Improvisationstheater Live Perfomance der Improbanden
“Im/probabilities”
Improtheater ist spontanes Schauspiel, das heißt nichts ist vorher abgesprochen, die Szene entsteht im Moment auf der Bühne. Dazu lassen sich die Improbanden Themen oder Vorgaben vom Publikum geben, die dann als Startpunkt oder Leitfaden für die Szene verarbeitet werden. Dabei erforschen wir Möglichkeiten Medien und Webseiten in die Szenen einzubeziehen und die Interaktionsmöglichkeiten für das Publikum zu erhöhen.
www.improbanden.de

Das vollständige c-base transmediale Programm findet ihr unter http://c-base.org/transmediale/12/

This month we’ve got some notable new books for members to read in Nottingham Hackspace.  The classic ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence’ by Betty Edwards claims to be the world’s most widely used drawing instruction book and has cracking reviews. We also have a brand new book, ‘How Round Is Your Circle?: Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet’ by John Bryant, which describes some beautiful physical models you can build to explore mathematical problems from an engineering perspective.

These donations were made by David Hayward (and by me). If you have any interesting books gathering dust on your home bookshelf, please consider lending or donating them to the hackspace. I will leave you with these descriptions of our new books, from their publishers:

“Whether you feel you have little talent and you doubt you could ever learn, or you enjoy drawing but have not been able to get much beyond a childlike level, this book will give you the skill you have always wanted. If you are already drawing as a professional artist or artist-in-training, it will give you greater confidence in your ability and deepen your artistic perception. This 20th-anniversary edition of ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ has been dramatically revised, with more than fifty per cent new material, including: Recent developments in brain research that relate to drawing. New insights on the use of drawing techniques in the corporate world and education. Instruction on self-expression through drawing. Ways to step beyond black-and-white drawing into colour. Detailed advice on applying the five basic skills of drawing to solve problems.”

How do you draw a straight line? How do you determine if a circle is really round? These may sound like simple or even trivial mathematical problems, but to an engineer the answers can mean the difference between success and failure. How Round Is Your Circle? invites readers to explore many of the same fundamental questions that working engineers deal with every day–it’s challenging, hands-on, and fun.

John Bryant and Chris Sangwin illustrate how physical models are created from abstract mathematical ones. Using elementary geometry and trigonometry, they guide readers through paper-and-pencil reconstructions of mathematical problems and show them how to construct actual physical models themselves–directions included. It’s an effective and entertaining way to explain how applied mathematics and engineering work together to solve problems, everything from keeping a piston aligned in its cylinder to ensuring that automotive driveshafts rotate smoothly. Intriguingly, checking the roundness of a manufactured object is trickier than one might think. When does the width of a saw blade affect an engineer’s calculations–or, for that matter, the width of a physical line? When does a measurement need to be exact and when will an approximation suffice? Bryant and Sangwin tackle questions like these and enliven their discussions with many fascinating highlights from engineering history. Generously illustrated, How Round Is Your Circle? reveals some of the hidden complexities in everyday things.

The MAKE blog recently posted a notice of an event being held this weekend–Art Hack Day–that I find very intriguing. I’ve been bandying about an similar idea, in part inspired by the Bravo Channel’s reality TV series Work of Art. The show has the typical “Top XYZ” format of elimination challenges. What strikes me about the show is that their work space looks very much like a hackerspace, and once the artists settle in to the work format, they start producing some extremely intriguing pieces.

In a lot of ways, the artist’s studio and hackerspaces are very similar; indeed, we here at Hive76 have made a former artist’s studio as our fire-retardant-home-away-from-home here at 915 Studios. So with that in mind, we are putting together a similar event to the Art Hack Day. We would like to make it an open build session with recycled materials. Stay tuned for the full details in an upcoming blog post (honestly, I will write it, really, I will).

Rendered My Little Pwnies in Blender.

Last Call for tickets to this class this weekend.

January 28th, 1-6 pm @ Hive76

If you’ve been waiting to get your ticket, now’s the time to do it!

Download or create a 3D model of your choice and the free and open source Blender (v2.61 or later, http://www.blender.org/) and I’ll take you through the process of texturing, lighting, rendering, compositing, and post-processing to make a photo-realistic 3D render.

You’ll learn the ins and outs of the interface in Blender, a professional strength, free and open source program for 3D rendering, animation, modeling, texturing, compositing, and post processing.

For all the details, click here to see the previous post…

At a recent meeting I had a chance to sit down and check out Bill’s “Simple serial display” which, true to it’s name, is simple, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting one badly! Watch the vid to see it in action, and check out Bill’s earlier post for more info!

Music: Eric Skiff, Resistor Anthems – HHavoc Intro

The meetup was great, we had a blast!

We watched “The City on the Edge of Forever“, and then played Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator (with a Star Trek mod) 5 times. We faced many Klingon, Romulan, and Orion ships in battle. Special nod to Captain Johnston, the best captain of the night. Nods to Lieutenant-Commander Kalup, as she was able to warp us out of danger many a time; and to Mr. Williams, for keeping the photon torpedo bays hot and ready to fire.

Our next meetup will be Sunday, February 12th, where we’ll be having a double episode watch (TOS & TNG) and more of Artemis with the Star Trek mod.

I’m going to try and put together a crew for the next meetup, if you’re interested in joining Captain Johnston, Lieutenant Williams, Lieutenant-Commander Kalup, and I (Chief of Communications Toliaferro), please email me at “d.toliaferro@gmail.com”. We really need an engineering officer, and a science officer. Captain, helm and tactical applicants are ok too, because we can rotate people in and out.

Live long, and prosper

Did you know that you can cut letter press relief or intaglio plates on the NYCR laser cutter? The laser cut acrylic holds a decent edge and is far less expensive than copper plate. Here is a short guide to how to do make engraved invitations using the intaglio process:



First the plates need to be cut. Using inkscape with a thin font like Zapfino, layout the text and vector art. Briar Press is a great source for EPS that can be converted to PDF to import into inkscape. For intaglio process the etched or cut pieces will be black; relief process is the opposite and will be another post.

For best results the text should be solid black and raster cut at 80% power, 20% speed, while the artwork with fine lines should be vector cut at 5% power, 10% speed. The cuts do not need to be very deep (unless you want to emboss without any ink), so the low speed is to ensure that the laser cutter’s steppers make smooth lines.

The first rule of making printing plates is to be sure to flip the entire page. Otherwise your prints will be backwards!

The second rule of making plates is to include registration marks on the outside border. The paper will be larger than the final size since it is very difficult to align while placing it on the plate. These registration marks can be used once the paper is dry to ensure that all the pieces have consistent centering.

The third rule of is that the piece of acrylic plate should be much larger than the resulting paper. It is easier to handle if it has extra space and produces better results if the paper is able to lay flat without being bent across the edge.

Scrub the plate after it is cut to remove any acrylic residue and dry it well. Then apply a small dollop of etching ink, such as Speedball Printmaster, to the plate. You don’t need very much, but there isn’t any harm in over applying. With practice you can figure out how much is necessary so that you don’t waste ink.

Using tarlatan cloth (or rough paper towels), wipe the ink into the etchings with circular motion until the entire plate is covered. A soft spatula can be used to help spread the ink, but metal ones can scratch the acrylic and leave unsightly marks on the resulting prints.

Using a clean piece of tarlatan, wipe the plate clean with the same sort of circular motion. Occasionally refold the cloth to get a clean corner and keep wiping until it is spotless. The ink in the grooves won’t be picked up by the cloth, so keep scrubbing.

Adjust the pressure setting on the press. This will require adjustments based on the thickness of the plate, the paper and the amount of padding. Be sure that both sides of the press have the same value! Expect to adjust many times during the setup until the best value is found.

Put the plate on the press with the ink side up and a slightly damp piece of paper cut slightly oversized over the etched area. To dampen the paper I’ve found that placing it between two damp paper towels for a few minutes while I ink the plate has the best results. Expect to make a few dozen test prints before figuring out the right level of dampness. To prevent the damp paper from sticking to the sacrificial newsprint, I like to use a layer of aluminum foil above the paper.

Smoothly cover the plate and paper with the newsprint and felt, then crank the press’ wheel. Intaglio needs lots of pressure, so it will be difficult to push the plate through the roller. If the gear train skips, adjust the pressure a few mm and try again.

Only run the plate through once. If it is backed through the roller a second time there is a chance that the paper will skip and a second impression will be made.

Carefully lift the felt and newsprint to reveal the printed paper. If all goes well, it will have transfered everything to the paper with no missed spots or water bleed.

But, for your first few plates it probably won’t be perfect. The one on the left was too dry and the paper was not pushed far enough into the etched grooves to pickup the ink. The one on the right was too wet and caused the water soluble ink to bleed. The one in the middle was just right.

If you realize that you’ve made a mistake in the artwork or text, rinse of all the ink, turn the plate over and use the laser to etch the other side. 3mm acrylic is strong enough that the etchings on the reverse side will not be transfered through, so you can reuse the piece.

Some inks aren’t right for etching. This Caligo Carbon Black formed “threads” when the paper was removed from the plate — the engraved ink should be smooth and shiny as it dries. Some inks don’t contain drying agents, so they will still rub off several weeks later. Also, for ease of clean up, you should only use water soluble inks.

Stay tuned for another blog post on relief printing, coming sometime soon.

We all bring our own ideas to the table of what hackerspaces are about. For some, it’s a place to work. For others, it’s a place to socialize. For me personally, hackerspaces are a place to do work for the community in ways that are unique and effective for engineers and scientists.

I’ve participated in a lot of community service work in my life (voluntarily!) and I found that traditional community service organizations tend to mostly require manual labor from their membership. As you get more involved in the organization, there are other, minor administrative duties that you can take over, like publishing a print newsletter or keeping financial records. Some of the larger organizations have different divisions of state- and national-level management infrastructure that long-time committed members may participate in, for the greater governance of the organization.

But none of these things have any particular bearing on science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. I found myself feeling like I wasn’t contributing as much as I possibly could, because I wasn’t using my strongest skills (in my particular case, I’m an expert programmer with strengths in technical project management). While I certainly appreciate the need to just have bodies that can move trash, it seems a bit wasteful to perform traditional community service duties when you have a group of highly technical people on your hands.

But that is also just me. A lot of people have completely different ideas about what it means to have a hackerspace. Ultimately this is the beauty of the model: the hackerspace is incredibly malleable, independent, and always current. I’m very interested in knowing the variety of opinions from our readership on this very question – what DOES hackerspace mean to you? There may be an aspect of Hive76 some of our readership find intriguing that we fail to advertise to others.

New in the NYCR vending machines are Teensy 2.0 boards. They have ATMega32U4 chips, which have the built in USB drivers and, via LUFA, can appear as any USB device, not just a serial communications device. Want to make a MIDI device show up as a USB keyboard? Or a core memory as a mass storage device? You can do that! The USB doesn’t consume a UART, so there is still a serial port available for interfacing with GPS or other external RS232 devices.

PJRC makes the Teensyduino plugin for the Arduino IDE and a set of compatible libraries so that you can use it with your Arduino sketches. Or you can drop into straight C and take full advantage of all of the AVR pins.

Update: They are very popular! Three were bought during Craftnight tonight.

Nottingham Hackspace will play host to the 48 hour Global Game Jam

The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world’s largest game jam event occurring annually in late January. GGJ brings together thousands of game enthusiasts participating through many local jams around the world. GGJ is a project of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).
You need to register for this event on Eventbrite as entry will be by ticket only!

GGJ 2012 is scheduled for January 27-29, 2012.

Hailing frequencies, open…

Attention all Trekkies, Hive 76 is hosting another meetup for the Philadelphia Star Trek Meetup Group! We’ll be watching an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series and then taking part in an immersive starship bridge simulation, so bring your laptops!

The event is happening this Saturday (Jan 21st) at 5 PM. Sorry for the late notice, but if you can make it, please sign up to our meetup group and RSVP.

Boldly go where no one has gone before, with us!

Saturday the 28th of January 2012 marks TOG’s 3rd birthday. You know
what that means.

PARTY!!!! And yellow rubber ducks.

The plan is to start at around 19:00 in TOG. Our last few get togethers
have been a great success and keep getting better so let’s try to top
them all. Make it passed 05:00 this time!

Hacking, eating, drinking, making, gaming, singing, dancing, arranging
rubber ducks into various positions – whatever takes your fancy.

So come one, come all. Bring your good self, your friends, your family,
vagrants, strangers, pets, more rubber ducks, plastic army men and
anything else you think may or may not be appropriate. Everyone is
welcome.

We hope to see you all there.