新车间 [Xinchejian]

YN460 is a nice Chinese made flash for photography. The first hack is to enable controlling the power and flash trigger with Arduino. In the following video, the Arduino runs a 3 second step that trigger at its 7 power level.

Next step, adding network capacity to the flash and control it from iPhone!

Camera, Roll, Action!

A 1 day full workshop to encompass scripting, directing, filming, and editing, brought to you by XinCheJian, run by French filmmaker, director, and producer Jérôme Laniau. An opportunity not to be missed. Please check HERE for details. Seats are limited, please register and reserve your spot today!

XinCheJian will be closed on Jan. 21st and 22nd due to Chinese New Year. We will reopen again on Jan. 25th. Thank you all for your support and participation in the past year! We wish you a Happy Chinese Spring Festival! See you again in Dragon Year!

Lio and Gilbert won the first place with total load of 7.65kg! The winning team got an Arduino UNO board and some components!

Sherry and Min Lin won the second place with total load of 5.48kg!

CSTD team won the third place with total load of 3.61kg!

Congratulations to first 3 winning teams and thank you all for participating! A Special thank you to the people at TechYiZu for sponsoring the event.

About XinCheJian

新车间是一个开放式社区，吸引并集聚了各方硬件高手，电子艺术家，设计师，DIY爱好者，以及所有喜欢动手捣鼓各种东西的人。在这个实验空间里，大家不仅可以和兴趣相投的人一起拆拆装装各种电子和物理产品，而且还可以共同实施一些好的设计和想法。

“新车间”与第4届《觉》音乐＋艺术节将于2012年3月9日－25日共同为您呈现一次艺术与电子的碰撞盛宴，而Dorkbot即是这场盛宴的开胃菜。

What is Dorkbot？

Dorkbot是一场艺术家，发明家，电子爱好者的“集会”，是一个轻松氛围下互相间交流作品，想法与技术的平台。2012年3月，新车间与《觉》会共同举办一个以“艺术与技术”为主题的Dorkbot，邀请来自《觉》的艺术家们，以及坐在电脑前的你一起。

Looking for Presenters

成为我们的Dorkbot活动发言人，你将可以：

• 向大家展示你的作品，给予大家熟悉了解你的机会；
• 结识志趣相投的朋友，组建自己的艺术（产品）团队；
• 吸引对作品（产品）感兴趣的展出方或投资方。

除了Dorkbot上的发言，我们同样欢迎你来开办工作坊，以动手实干的方式让大家更加深入地了解你的作品和技术。

＊请将您的发言主题与主题相关的作品（产品）发至：info@xinchejian.com；

＊请尽快联系我们，以便为您安排最佳时间日程。

Looking for Sponsors

赞助的形式可以是资金支持，或是硬件设备赠予。

成为我们的活动赞助方，您将可以：

• 在“新车间”与“觉”的Dorkbot上向艺术家与电子爱好者展示您的技术与产品；
• 通过举办工作坊的形式让艺术家与电子爱好者进一步了解您的技术与产品；
• 近距离体察用户体验，及时获取到来自潜在用户的反馈信息；
• 寻找未来的艺术或技术上的合作伙伴。

＊获取更多信息，请发邮件至：info@xinchejian.com；

＊请尽快联系我们，以便为您安排最佳时间日程。

A few days ago Michael sent out this update about the 3D Printer:

Sorry for the lack of updates on the 3D printer.  The white ABS [Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene; a thermoplastic] is horrible.  Use the grey PLA [polylactide; thermoplastic aliphatic polyester] from now on.  I reinstalled the old nozzle (made a new one and promptly burned it out the same day) and was able to print without making any changes.  It actually sticks to the platform and to each other.  Was able to get 1/3 of the 2cm box before it sheared off.  Still have problems with flow control, but happy that it works better.  The toothed gear may be too sharp, since it jams up with plastic after a while.  Need to clean it out every so often, but it still pulls filament even when jammed.  Also started to wrap up the wiring.

I’m going to be out of town for a while, so who ever wants to take over and get it flowing better, be my guest.

We (Ricky Ng-Adam and Min Lin Hsieh) were invited by Professor Benjamin Koo from Tsinghua university to make a trip to Ningbo last Thursday to visit one of the university that Professor Koo is helping.  The Ningbo Polytechnic is located in the Beilun development zone. It’s a 3.5 hours drive away from Shanghai. Ningbo Polytechnic is at the top of the list of vocational schools in China, working hard to become an alternative to more well known brands in China with a focus on practical skills.

All universities in China have their own hotels, travel agencies, on-site restaurants with copious amount of food (always too much)… Impressive for foreigners that are not used to this level of luxury on campus! We visited the rest of the campus where they host many exchange students from Africa and elsewhere. We also saw a wonderful violin making studio (they have a store with price tags next door) and an absolutely HUGE CNC (computer numerical control) room that is used to produce mechanical parts of all size and shapes.

The main objective of our visit was to check out Toyhouse, a Hackerspace-type space located on the university campus and created by Professor Koo. As their name implies, as a whole bunch of toys (lots of RC copters). They were also recently the host of a quadcopter workshop. Afterwards, we visited a film studio fully equipped to produce entire movies literally across the street from the university in a large technology park.

During our visit, we and Professor Koo had a discussion about creating a new university program to make it possible for students to find their passion and be as desirable candidates as possible  to employers and investors when they come out of the program. Our suggestion is to build a project-centric program with guests hackers from around the world.

Techyizu and Xinchejian are proud to issue a challenge of supreme nerdiness: Who among you can build the mightiest bridge? Who has the superior spaghetti engineering skills?

For those of you brave enough, register to join the fun THIS SUNDAY!
DATE: Sunday January 15 @ 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
LOCATION: Xinchejian Hackerspace
Anhua Road No.76 suite 301, near Jiangsu Road (http://xinchejian.com/contact-us/)

Form your own team or join one, and get ready to architect and construct a bridge made out of spaghetti. Bridges have to be able to cross a 50 cm distance, and hold as much weight as possible. Techyizu and Xinchejian will provide you one box of spaghetti, glue guns, and glue. You provide the nerdpower.
See the full list of rules (http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=91) on the Xinchejian website.

PRIZES: ARDUINO sets will be given to the teams with the bridges that can support the most weight.

REGISTER: Go to the Xinchejian website to register. The first 12 teams to register will get a reserved place.
Sign up NOW! (http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=91)

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Announcement #2: BARCAMP on March 3

Calling all techies, entrepreneurs, and innovators — get ready for Techyizu’s BARCAMP on March 3.

BarCamp is a fun, user-generated “un-conference” that started in Silicon Valley as a response to formal, exclusive, and boring tech conferences. If you are interested in technology, startups, design, or social innovation, you can’t miss this event!

BarCamp consists of passionate 15-minute presentations on any topic. Anyone (yes, anyone!) can sign up to present on anything (but please, no advertisements for your company). Just let your own energy and nerdiness shine through. All presentations are followed by time for discussion. You can expect to have amazing discussions on cutting edge technology and trends.

The event is free and open to everyone! Go to the techyizu.org website for more event details.

Shanghai BarCamp is being presented to you by TechYizu, an organization that aims to organize Shanghai’s lively startup and tech community.

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Bridge building rules:

1. Each group is to build a bridge made from spaghetti and hot glue. The object is to construct a bridge that will carry the heaviest load while still meeting specifications. Bridges will be loaded until they fail.

2. The bridge is to be built from and only from the given materials:
* 1 bag of spaghetti (500g)
* 5 hot glue sticks
* 1 metal hook for weight attachment
* 2 hot glue guns that cannot be used in the bridge structure

3. The bridge shall be free-standing and must span two level surfaces which are 50 centimetres apart.

4. The edges of the level surfaces cannot be used in any way for support.

5. The bridge must incorporate the given metal hook as part of the structure. The testing weight would be attached to the hook. Any structure that forbids attachment of the testing weight would disqualify the bridge.

6. The maximum vertical depth of the bridge, from the highest point in its structure to the lowest cannot exceed 50 cm.

7. The highest point of the bridge cannot be higher than 40cm above the two level surfaces, the lowest point of the bridge cannot be lower than 20 cm below the two level surfaces.

8. Only the first 12 registered teams would be eligible to enter the competition, each team is allowed up to 4 participants.

Judging rules:

A. Any bridge that fails to stand on its own and span the two level surface would be disqualified.

B. A spring weighting scale would be attached to the hook, and a empty bucket would be attached below the weighting scale. Any bridge that failed to support the weighting scale and bucket would be disqualified.

C. Participants will be adding weight to the bridges themselves, judges would make recordings of the weight loaded.

D. The last recorded weight from the spring weighting scale before the bridge structure fails would be counted as the result (total loaded weight) of that particular bridge.

E. A bridge structure would be considered failed if:
* Bridge fails to stay free standing between the two level surfaces
* 50% of the bridge structure falls off from the main structure to the ground
* The lowest point of the bridge is more than 10cm below its lowest point in free standing position

F. Teams will be ranked on their result, the total loaded weight measured, bridge supports the most weight wins.

G. The judge have the last undisputed say on the out come of the competition. Judge has the right to disqualify any team at any given time without any reason.

Dream of writing applications for Android phones? Start it TODAY AT XIN CHE JIAN

Date: Jan. 11, 2012, Wednesday
Time: 8:00 PM to 10:30 PM
Language: English
Instructor: Tapan Thaker, a freelancer/student from Mumbai, India, who is developing Android applications since past 2 years which also includes apps for political parties, One Android game (ICE Hockey), and a application “Proximity Plus Plus” .

Why Android ?

With more than 200 million activations of android , it captures a large mobile market . Also android programming will help you utilize your skills on Accessory Development Kit (ADK) which in turn will help you hack even more !!

Note: This is not a workshop about the ADK it will cover only the basic programs and concepts to get you started with Android

Topics covered in the workshop :

1) Basics of Android
2) Hello World
3) A Simple Calculator
4) Basic Paint Program

Prerequisites for attendees:

1) Knowledge of any one programming language
2) Understanding of Object-Oriented concepts

Before coming for the workshop, please prepare:

1) Install Android SDK Release 11 (decompress in your home folder)
2) Install and run Eclipse 3.6.2
3) Install Eclipse extensions (using Help > Install new software)
4) Install ADT 10.0.1 into eclipse: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
5) Set Eclipse ADT preference to point to your SDK:

Window > Preferences > Android > SDK location

6) Goto Windows > Android SDK  Manager  and install Android 2.1

We’ve had the pleasure of welcoming four students from MIT last Saturday. You can check out the blogs of two of them: Nancy Ouyang, Cathy Wu. These students were on a self-funded, personal visit to China where they visited a number of factories and Chinese makerspaces/hackerspaces. They are members of MITERS, a 30 years old student club at MIT.

Originally founded as a club to give MIT students free and open access to computers, MITERS now features a mill, lathe, band saws, welders, and other hands-on tools, in addition to a host of oscilliscopes, high-end soldering irons, and other EE prototyping tools. It’s a member-run creative haven and build-anything-you-want, if-you-break-it,-fix-it space.

You can see a short documentary of MITERS on Youtube.

The event was very popular and we had a full house. The large audience included MIT alumni Benjamin Koo (and his assistant Jeadon Chen) in addition to a few students interested in opening hackerspaces-type organizations inside their own universities. Throughout their presentation they shared with us how they ran their space and what type of projects they did in addition to their impressions of China.

Happy New Year – Welcome to 2012, this is the first update of the year.

Thank you all for making 2011 a great year, we’re hoping 2012 will be even better.

Wednesday talks
Mariane Petit and Dan osulivan from ITP NYU will be giving a presentation not to be missed, learn more about http://itp.nyu.edu

The awesome TheNelson is also arranging an EagleCAD workshop this Wednesday before he goes back to the US, EagleCAD is used to design your own PCBs, expect it to start around 8pm, register online before the event and save 10rmb http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=92

Wednesday evenings are one of the best times to meet like minded people and build things with, it’s about making something happen.
This week

*Saturday 7th* 2pm – 5pm
InsectBot workshop – This is the best introduction to Arduino and building something that moves – No Programming needed, this little Insectbot will take on what ever your imagination can throw at it. Register online before the event to guarantee you a spot.

http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=93

*Sunday 8th* – 1pm – 5pm
Arduino Programming workshop in Chinese, If you want to dive in the deep end and learn something for 2012 then jump into this course, it will introduce you too and orientate you in one of the most popular micro-controller development platforms out there, the Arduino.
Register online to save yourself 10rmb

http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=90

Volunteer Jobs at XinCheJian
As a Volunteer you’ll earn your membership, you’ll also be expected to join Tuesday Staff meetings from 7-9pm. Only apply if you’re serious. Without the generosity of the current volunteers, sharing tasks in their free time, it would be near impossible to keep XinCheJian alive.

Treasurer
As the Treasurer you’ll be responsible for.. treasure. you need to have your own calculator and some experience with keeping records. the following are what you’ll need to handle on a monthly basis.

• Income/Outgoing spread sheets
• Look after the donation box
• Organizes the rent and bills
• Talks to founders for more money
• Kind reminders to members to pay their membership dues

Journalists
A Journalist will be expected to write at least 1 article a week on a topic of whats going on inside XinCheJian, you pick a project and review it, can be a few hours an evening writing and a few hours in the day interviewing.

• you’ll be given an account on xinchejian.com
• You will need a camera
• English or Chinese – or both is encouraged
• confident and outgoing
• get as much information possible from people in the shortest amount of time.