Project swarmbots is full steam ahead, plenty of chatter in the evenings going on, and there is still time to join.

The WiFi network is up, if anyone has Radius experience (freeRadius) + WPA/WPA2 Enterprise using PEAP on windows vista, windows 7 let yourself be known but Linux/Mac users you’ll have no problems, and those on windows 8!

The Machine room is beginning to be setup, the table was split in half by our favorite social glasses man Valentin and welded back together!

Tonight we have several presenters all in agreement to keep it to less than the 9 minutes, we also have “Grand Design Magazine” coming down this evening, so dress in your best birthday suit and bring your projects.

=Wednesday Presenters=

theNelson is back for a week, and he’ll be talking about RankBin and his Solar Charger.

Team Swarmbots will be giving us a little update and a way to join the team.

Axel aka Guttertec from FabLab, Cologne co-working space Will be giving us the insight into his latest projects and projects out of FabLab.

Steve Dalton visiting from Gold Coast TechSpace (http://gctechspace.org) in Australia will talk to us about their space and their projects.

=Workshops=

* Portraits of Makers Photoshoot! – 2012/05/24

Dress in your best birthday suit, round 2 of “stars in their eyes” by the Shanghai Strobist Group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist_shanghai/) will be taking place, dont forget to bring your projects. Help us out and sign up so we know how many are coming http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=128

* 机器车竞赛 – Roboracing Competition – 2012/06/24

Ladies and Gentleman it’s time to start your engines, keep a lookout on the wiki page for the latest line follower course, if you havn’t already built a car, Now is the time, for reference the track line is 1″ wide (same thickness as electrical tape) – Sign up if you’re racing http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=110

We believe that this exhibition will draw tremendous media attention and foot traffic given the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship that will take place in June 2012. In addition, it will be the first robotic football exhibition in China where the audience can participate.

Two robotic teams with seven players will play on a special football field (table size or larger). Audience members will be able to remotely control the robots. The robots can also be automatically controlled, allowing the robots to play by themselves or against human players. Each robot will be designed to wear the jersey of the color of the participating teams in the European Football Championship.

We believe this exhibition will get coverage in local media, given the interest in European football, the uniqueness of the robots, and the audience participation.

Sponsorship

XinCheJian is asking for 50,000 RMB from the main sponsor of the Soccerbots Exhibition. These costs are the minimum requirements to cover the basic materials, components, tools and support costs. Due to the extreme time constraints, half of the funds (25,000 RMB) must be provided before May 18th 2012. The overall engineering cost of the Soccerbots exhibition is estimated at well over 200,000 RMB when taking into account the cost of the expert engineering team donated by Xinchejian.

The exhibition will be on loan to a space designated by the sponsor for the duration of the event. Given the transportation costs, the sponsor will need to provide the field based on a design and set of specifications provided by XinCheJian.

XinCheJian will provide four robotic teams of seven players, remote controllers for the audience to play, the special football field sensors, the special game ball, and recharging units for the robots. All robots, playing field, remote controls, and equipment must be returned to XinCheJian at the end of the exhibition.

Soccerbots Swarm Robotics Team

XinCheJian has assembled a team of two senior engineers, Michaelis Lutz and Edward Jiang, with over 10 years of robotics experience. Assisting them to build the robots will be more than 10 part-time engineers and designers.

Project Lead Engineers:

• Edward Jiang
• Edward Jiang is Vice-President of Technology at Tradesparq, the world’s fastest growing trade social network. Edward is a robot enthusiast with multiple robotics projects.
• http://xinchejian.com/2012/03/27/portraits-of-makers-edward-jiang/

Michaelis Lutz

• Michaelis Lutz is technical German translator for ASUSTEK COMPUTER, the PC manufacturer, with 40 years of experience in electronics and robotics.
• See his videos on Youku: http://u.youku.com/lumi3005
• http://xinchejian.com/2012/03/26/portraits-of-makers-lutz/

Xinchejian Project Engineers:

Spencer Featherstone, Mika Lin, Valentin Gauffre, Raymond Walintukan, Tim Lan, Chong Yang, Robin Lee, Chris Carey, Infy Zhang

XinCheJian supporting team:

Ricky Ng-Adam and Kevin Chen (proposal), Otto Mao (translation)

Previously Built Robots:

Mr. Lutz and Mr. Jiang have built multiple robots at XinCheJian including:

• “Insectbot” autonomous robots
• Hacked RC car, turned into an autonomous robot
• R2D2 autonomous robot
• Micro-sized line-follower autonomous robot
• Four-legged autonomous walking robot

View a list of projects and pictures here:

• http://letsmakerobots.com/user/14721/pages/robot

Parting words

At XinCheJian, we believe this would be a unique and attention-grabbing exhibition. This will be the first robotic football swarm game in China, which could draw interest from both traditional media and social media. Most important, we think the robots will attract lots of people who will come to watch the robots playing football!

Our organization has positive visibility in the local media including magazines and TV media, many online social networks (such as Weibo) and our own blog. Our sponsor can gain positive exposure by associating itself to this ambitious and attractive project.

We have a strong self-interest in seeing this project succeed and driving traffic to our sponsor to build an audience for the project and enhance our reputation as a creative and innovative space.

概念图Concept Proposals

Figure 1: Audience members watching the Soccerbots playing football.

Figure 2:  Proposed 3D model shell for the soccerbot robot exterior.

Figure 3: Concept of external skins for soccerbots, based on European Football teams.

This was a very successful first Makercarnival, at the Contemporary Modern Art of China (CMODA). An event where makers and hackers from around the world and China came together to show off their projects, do talks and lead workshops.

Biggest thanks to Beijing Maxpace with a lead role by Justin Wang (王盛林). Thanks to the help of many students from various Chinese universities in Beijing.

Thanks to the organizers for arranging the space, inviting interesting speakers and attendees from all around the world, providing us budget for travel and hotel costs, preparing wonderful t-shirts and very pretty event booklets. The volunteers were also a big help with last minute shopping for us and providing us with food and water.

Thanks to Mitch Altman for being such a leading figure of the Hackerspaces and inspiring us.

Thanks to Min Lin for being an essential part to making XinCheJian participation to this event successful.

Congratulations to the spectacular DFRobot table who went all out with a really cool and busy table in addition to all the help they’ve provided to XinCheJian and projects.

Thanks to our XinCheJian members who take time and energy to go there, explain our projects and space to visitors: Lionello Lunesu, Paul Adams, Mika Lin, Edward Jiang, He Qi Chen, Min Lin Hsieh, Ricky Ng-Adam.

Special Thanks to Lio for helping out in the workshops, at the table and hacking together solutions for many of our problems.

Thanks to those who’ve done workshops for XinCheJian: Sunny Sun (Squishy Circuits), Mika (LED Heart), Edward Giles (Arduino keyboard), Edward Jiang (line follower and useless machine), Min Lin Hsieh (Insectbot), He Qi Chen (Ardublock).

Also, thanks to both Andrea Carlon and Russell Giles for assisting in many workshops.

We are grateful to have had so many patient and enthusiastic participants to our workshop.

Congrats to our members who had exhibits at the Makercarnival: Paul and Clemence (mini interactive worlds and rat trap), Lutz walking robot and Angie’s monster bin.

Pictures by: Ricky Ng-Adam, Andrea Carlon, Mitch Altman, Paul Adams

Volunteers (organization, project management, translation, graphic design, etc) can also be recognized for their sustained efforts to support the community with free membership. Please send us a request to be considered a staff member.

A special thanks to all past and current volunteers who’ve made what XinCheJian is today possible!

Current members in good standing:

1. Andrea Carlon
2. Chris Carey
3. David Li
4. Edward Giles
5. Edward Jiang
6. Francis Lam
7. Habib Belaribi
8. IHan Cheng
9. Infy Zhang
10. Jorke
11. Kevin Chen
12. Lionello Lunesu
13. Lutz
14. Maksim
15. Michael Liao
16. Mika Lin
17. Min Lin Hsieh
18. Paul Adams
19. Qichen He
20. Raymond Walintukan
21. Ricky Ng-Adam
22. Ricky Ye
23. Rockets
24. Scott Ballantyne
25. Silvia Lindtner
26. Spencer Featherstone
27. Svend Erik Hansen
28. Valentin Gauffre
29. Wenjia Zhou
30. Ziyun Peng

If you’re missing from the list and you believe you should be on it, ping me privately – the spreadsheet may be inaccurate!

Thanks to all our members!

7pm – free @ XinCheJian 2.0 1035 Changle Rd, 2nd floor – 上海徐汇区长乐路1035号2楼 see here for a map and directions: http://xinchejian.com/contact-us/?lang=zh

=Wednesday Presenters=

Tonight we have Lisa Juen, who will be showing off how she is integrating electronics into jewellery design for her brand proonk, www.proonk.com

=workshops=

新手创建3D模型 – 3D Modeling for Newbies – 2012/05/12, http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=125

During this workshop you’ll get introduced to the opensource tool Autodesk 123D and start modeling with easy step by step guides.

=Recent changes at XinCheJian=

Membership is now Just 100rmb per month per member, for an additional 200rmb a month you can also store your projects/stuff in the space in a box that is no bigger than 50x50x30cm, you can contribute more money if you want as a donation. Failure to pay membership will result in your junk being stored at XinCheJian becoming a donation to the space. XinCheJian will no longer offer community parts but instead sell them in sets, for example 10 resistors for 1rmb to cut down on waste. Members will have access to the space and the tools, strangers must be accompanied by a member at all times and will be responsible for that friend during that period at XinCheJian. For Full details see http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy or http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy/zh

=A quick blurb about XinCheJian=

XinCheJian is a community run hackerspace located in the heart of Shanghai, without your support with time, workshops, donations and memberships we would not be able to keep the space alive and in the same form as it is today, think about giving back in any way you can and help alleviate the financial burdens of those few who are funding the space.

=Volunteer Jobs at XinCheJian=
As a Volunteer you’ll earn your membership, you’ll also be expected to joinStaff meetings at least once a month. Only apply if you’re serious. Without the generosity of the current volunteers and 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 <strike>have your own calculator</strike> we’ll provide you a calculator. 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 from the bank account
- We’ll even send you to business accounting with the government (we’ll pay for this)
- 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.

Makercarnival is the first of its kind in Beijing, at the Contemporary Modern Art of China (CMODA). An event where makers and hackers from around the world and China came together to show off their projects, do talks and lead workshops. The event was mainly organized by Beijing Maxpace with a lead role by Justin Wang (王盛林) and the help of many students from various Chinese universities in Beijing.

For the four main days of the event there was talks scheduled daily. The first day had the keynote speech, the second day I missed and supposedly not very well attended with 10 persons maximum. I participated in the Monday talks on the third day which had a sizable audience. Although the audience was mostly Chinese and many came from the general public, the talks had an international flavor to it with more than half executed in English. Speakers came from Germany, France and both coast of the USA.

I kicked off the presentations with a talk about Lophilo, the ARM+FPGA development board that we are developing. Lophilo found it’s inception in XinCheJian so it was natural to combine both subjects. The talk started with some background about myself, how XinCheJian was created, how me and Shyu Lee met, how the idea developed for the project and what it was exactly.

Jihyun Song was after me and was doing a presentation on the Seoul Hackerspace, talking about their projects, the people they have and the challenges they face. She had this video from a foreigner excited at visiting the electronics market in Seoul. This reminded me that we could do more organized visits of our own electronics market at 668 Beijing East Road in Shanghai.

During Jihyun Song presentation, I was asked by Zhang Hao from Beijing Maxpace Hackerspace to take over the introduction of other people’s presentation.

The next topic was by 林欣杰 (Lin2 Xin1 Jie2) who topic was “New Media Art=Energy Conversion” with the accompanying statement: “The important element of Being new mentioned in the concept isn’t the sole or even primary determinant during the art creation”. As the talk was in Chinese and I was researching other following speakers, I missed some of the elements of the presentation.

Tobias Schneider followed as a presenter from the Computer Chaos Club Munich in Germany. He was accompanied by Sophia Schillai. They talked about their electronic name badge (the “r0ket“), how it came about and more generally about the Hackerspaces in Germany. r0ket is quite an interesting little platform and seems like a lot of fun for something started as a reusable electronic badge. One key improvement I could see is to figure out a bigger display as the name is barely visible on the current one.

刘得志 (Liu2 De2 Zhi4, Kevin) had a talk entitled “From Love to Work” translated into English as “A maker’s life”. He’s founded an “Hackerspace” in 广州(Guang3Zhou1) called d+dimension in 2009, although I think it was never really opened to the public. He showed a very impressive “Hello Kitty Robots” interactive installation that looked quite sophisticated.

Mitch Altman followed with theme common to all his talk: “do what you love”. He’s also inserted some interesting predictions about what he felt the global trends were. He predicts a crash of the American financial system and strongly suggested that China needed to become a creative economy.

Astrida Valigorsky (Astrid) from Wonderbred and an active hacker at the NYC Resistors Hackerspace showed up too, this time with a edible piano called a Jeltone. Jeltone is an interactive music instruments made out of Jello and fruits. One of her key observation is that there’s always some strong conflicts in developing a new idea; it’s normal and you just have to push through!

肖文鹏 (Xiao1Wen2Peng2, nicknamed FlamingoEDA) talked about “Electronic Bricks”. He’s been a big driver of OpenSource and OpenHardware in China and is a co-founder of the Beijing Maxpace (which was originally called FlamingoEDA). He talked about some of the newer products and some of the innovations they have in the pipeline.

高磊 (Gao1 Lei3, nicknamed Whaleman) came out next. He’s an interaction designer and CEO of IMLAB with a strong interest in the area of health. He does a lot of research into this area and has a very clear design process called Tamagome to make his own products.

Greg Saul presented the OpenSource software he’s working on: “SketchChair“. Funded in large part by a very successful Kickstarter campaign. It’s a really impressive tool that allows users to design their own furniture. Not only that, but you can actually test the stability of the chair using a built-in physics model! Quite impressive and sophisticated. It’s also one of my favorite subject: local and customized manufacturing. Greg finished the talk with Piccolo, a tiny open-source stand-alone and modifiable CNC-bot for under USD$70.

Dr Garnet Hertz from UC Irvine followed. He’s a Fulbright scholar and contemporary artist (http://conceptlab.com). His presentation was originally scheduled to be about Dorkbot, an event for which slogan is “People doing strange things with electricity”. He’s one of the organizer in LA. XinCheJian has hosted two such events so far in the space and we’re hoping to do more. But he decided instead to show videos from his previous projects. The first one disgusted quite a few persons in the audience as it showed a robot driven by a giant cockroach! Very cool even if the project is already a few years old. The next one was a cool retro-arcade racing game dynamically generated from the actual road. His conclusion was that having an idea is more important than the technology; we shouldn’t start with Arduino or any other piece of hardware, we should start with an idea. He also did an aggressive broadside attack towards the Hackerspace Space Program, pointedly criticizing taking funds from DARPA and equating it to making weapons. I think that last one was directly addressed to me…

Antonin Fourneau from ATOCorp talked about HCI (Human Computer Interaction) experiments that he is doing, often modifying consoles such as Nintendo to do so. In addition, he talked about the Makerfaire-like event he’s organizing in France called ENIAROF but with a slant towards being similar towards old-time “faire”. They have a fairly complex and extensive set of rules for participants which I found interesting as a key cultural difference when compared to other hacker cultures.

Devon Sean McCullough was the final presenter, but since he had left the room without explanation we decided to gather all the presenters that were still in the room and get them on a Q&A panel for the audience. It was cut short when Devon showed up later and asked to do his presentation.

Tonight we’re open but not unpacked, we have lights, but no light switches and we have power but no power sockets.

7pm – free @ XinCheJian 2.0 1035 Changle Rd, 2nd floor – 上海徐汇区长乐路1035号2楼 see here for a map and directions: http://xinchejian.com/contact-us/?lang=zh

=Wednesday Presenters=

Tonight we’re going to hear a little from a few members of foulab in Canada who have formed Wyld Collective and are solving a few problems in Bangkok with a little twist that save lives and use local workforce!

Lio from XinCheJian will be giving his view on the Gadgeteer an Arduino board compatible .net wielding device that has a processor that outdoes the Arduino and maybe a sneak-peak at his head counting application built on it.

=Recent changes at XinCheJian=

Membership is now Just 100rmb per month per member, for an additional 200rmb a month you can also store your projects/stuff in the space in a box that is no bigger than 50x50x30cm, you can contribute more money if you want as a donation. Failure to pay membership will result in your junk being stored at XinCheJian becoming a donation to the space. XinCheJian will no longer offer community parts but instead sell them in sets, for example 10 resistors for 1rmb to cut down on waste. Members will have access to the space and the tools, strangers must be accompanied by a member at all times and will be responsible for that friend during that period at XinCheJian. For Full details see http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy or http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy/zh

=A quick blurb about XinCheJian=

XinCheJian is a community run hackerspace located in the heart of Shanghai, without your support with time, workshops, donations and memberships we would not be able to keep the space alive and in the same form as it is today, think about giving back in any way you can and help alleviate the financial burdens of those few who are funding the space.

=Volunteer Jobs at XinCheJian=
As a Volunteer you’ll earn your membership, you’ll also be expected to joinStaff meetings at least once a month. Only apply if you’re serious. Without the generosity of the current volunteers and 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 <strike>have your own calculator</strike> we’ll provide you a calculator. 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 from the bank account
- We’ll even send you to business accounting with the government (we’ll pay for this)
- 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.

7pm – free @ XinCheJian 2.0 1035 Changle Rd, 2nd floor – 上海徐汇区长乐路1035号2楼 see here for a map and directions: http://xinchejian.com/contact-us/?lang=zh

=Wednesday Presenters=

No Presentations scheduled for tonight

=Coming up soon=

Processing class (English instructions) – 2012/04/28 -  http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=114 Has been postponed, if you are interested please send an email to mlhsie@gmail.com

=Recent changes at XinCheJian=

Membership is now Just 100rmb per month per member, for an additional 200rmb a month you can also store your projects/stuff in the space in a box that does not exceed 50x50x30cm, you can contribute more money if you want as a donation. Failure to pay membership will result in your junk being stored at XinCheJian becoming a donation to the space. XinCheJian will no longer offer community parts but instead sell them in sets, for example 10 resistors for 1rmb to cut down on waste and mess. Members will have access to the space and the tools, strangers must be accompanied by a member at all times and will be responsible for that friend during that period at XinCheJian. For Full details see http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy or http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy/zh

=A quick blurb about XinCheJian=

XinCheJian is a community run hackerspace located in the heart of Shanghai, without your support with time, workshops, donations and memberships we would not be able to keep the space alive and in the same form as it is today, think about giving back in any way you can and help alleviate the financial responsibilities.

=Volunteer Jobs at XinCheJian=
As a Volunteer you’ll earn your membership, you’ll also be expected to joinStaff meetings at least once a month. Only apply if you’re serious. Without the generosity of the current volunteers and 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 <strike>have your own calculator</strike> we’ll provide you a calculator. 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 from the bank account
- We’ll even send you to business accounting with the government (we’ll pay for this)
- 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.

7pm – free @ XinCheJian 2.0 1035 Changle Rd, 2nd floor – 上海徐汇区长乐 路1035号2楼 see here for a map and directions: http://xinchejian.com/contact-us/?lang=zh

Unfortunately those wishing to hack tonight will not have all of the tools normally available, but nothing stopping us from getting them out and putting them away when we’re done!

=Wednesday Presenters=

James Tichenor, interaction designer from Rockwell Lab (http://www.rockwellgroup.com/lab) has just flown into Shanghai and will present tonight at XinCheJian on some of his crazy-out-there projects he’s worked on using electronics and arts!

Qichen and Rockets will present their Home Sous Vide machine that they hacked together in 20 minutes, along with some egg tasting which i hear is out of this world.

=Coming up soon=

机器车竞赛 – Roboracing Competition – 2012/04/22 – http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=110
Are you ready!? Line followers, Autonomous’rs and remote specialists, take part in the 2nd race of this year, come show us what you’re made of! the 2012/04 track has been published on the wiki and demo’d at Barcamp! http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/RoboRacing

Processing class (English instructions) – 2012/04/28 – http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=114
Finally, given the huge success of the Ravens Processing classes in chinese, he’s -beenforced- agreed to run the class in English! he is doing some awesome stuff.

=Recent changes at XinCheJian=

Membership is now Just 100rmb per month per member, for an additional 200rmb a month you can also store your projects/stuff in the space in a box that does not exceed 50x50x30cm, you can contribute more money if you want as a donation. Failure to pay membership will result in your junk being stored at XinCheJian becoming a donation to the space. XinCheJian will no longer offer community parts but instead sell them in sets, for example 10 resistors for 1rmb to cut down on waste and mess. Members will have access to the space and the tools, strangers must be accompanied by a member at all times and will be responsible for that friend during that period at XinCheJian. For Full details see http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy or http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Policy/zh