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To counter the harsh Sun of Shanghai summer, a Sun Shade Cover is added.

Also, 100 earth worms are added to help process the organic matter in the system. Hope they can survive with constant ebb and flow.

Finally, over 300 Chinese green, tomato, cucumbers, eggplants, and sun flowers are transplanted and we should be ready to harvest in about 4 weeks.

The basils and chives transplanted into the system are growing amazingly.

My outdoor aquaponic farm survived well through the typhoon Haikui hitting Shanghai. The few plants in the grow bed did well and starting to show amazing growth.

The basil at the middle are growing beautifully. Basil are not used much in the home cooking. Anyone who like to taste some aquaponic basil, let me know. I will bring some to the space.

The system is still showing some sign of the young aquaponic system, a bit iron deficiency. Chelated iron has been added to improve that as well as a bag of coral skeleton is added as PH buffer.

XinCheJian is on the December issue of “That’s Shanghai” with Gilbert on the cover.

XinCheJian is proud to host Dorkbot Shangahi #4 on Sunday May 29th. Dorkbot is a group of affiliated organizations worldwide that sponsor grassroots meetings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors, and anyone else working under the very broad umbrella of electronic art. The dorkbot motto is “people doing strange things with electricity”.

There were 4 artists who presented their work:

Wu Juehui // Juehui is a New Media Artist. In recent years, Wu Juehui operates on the potential interface between art and science, between body and media in close collaboration with research institutes for neural engineering, automatic control and computer graphics.

Harald Haraldsson // Harald is the founder of Wonwei and presented some of their latest work, he also talked about how creative coding can be applied to computational design.

Wang Changcun // Media artist based in Hangzhou, with works exhibited in China, France, Netherlands and Belgium. He talked about his creative process using Max/MSP, Processing, and Flash.

Jingni Wang // Media artist based in Shanghai. She graduated from China Academy of Art, Intermedia Art Department and has completed artist residencies in Netherlands, Belgium, and China. Jingni Wang presented her wearable computing project called Lover’s Instrument. She also talked about social sustainability.

More pictures

Pilot FIRST® Tech Challenge Robotics competition in Shanghai

Time: Saturday, April 23, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm

Location: Shanghai American School, Pudong campus

International school team robots will compete in the pilot FIRST® Tech Challenge high school robotics competition, developed by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a U.S. based non-profit. Teams design, build and program robots to compete in an exciting, sports-like challenge. Reaching 250,000 students in grades K to 12 worldwide, FIRST engages students in science and technology learning and leadership and provides an opportunity to apply classroom concepts to ‘real-world’ engineering problems, work on open-ended challenges and create their own solutions. The event is free and open to the public. Contact Paula Joseph at pjoseph@ptc.com for more information.

For more information, contact Shelly Shen at qishen@ptc.com 13564738316 or Paula Joseph at pjoseph@ptc.com 18601794144

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Rocking with Brad Ferguson‘s CNC’ed Bamboo Guitar and Vacuum Tube AMP

That combo sounds AWESOME!

Photos by Lutz and David

RoboPeak from Shanghai

We are so glad that RoboPeak, a robotic R&D team has agreed to be one of the speaking at our reopening event on March 26. We ran into this team founded in 2009 on Sina Weibo and are very impressed by what they are doing. We look forward to seeing their presentation.

Quoting from their web site:

RoboPeak is a research & development team in robotics platforms and applications, founded in 2009. Our team members are Software Engineers, Electronics Engineers and New Media Artists that all come from China.

RoboPeak develops both software and hardware, which include personal robotic platforms, Robot Operating System and related devices.

Our vision is to enrich people’s daily-life with the ever-changing development and innovation in robotic technologies.

From their blog, they are doing very impressive work with Arduino and Robotic. Here is a picture of their robot. Definitely check out the blog! Click on the image to read more about their works.

iPad controller

XinCheJian’s Neighborhood

I have recently been asked quite a lot of questions about hackerspace, hacker culture and impact of hackerspace in China. This has gotten me starting to think a lot about what it means to run a hackerspace. I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and find anything that’s related to makers. The following pictures are shops with in 500 meters of our new location in Anhua Lu. It’s a typical Shanghai neighborhood and quite interestingly how many maker related shops are around us.

Welding on the street

Bike modding? The guy is attaching a new rack to the back of the bike to carry more goods.

Window Frame Maker

They got good collection of aluminum windows frame and can cut it to any size we want.

Glass shop

Cotton Shop

This is a surprise fouind.

Lock Smith

Hardware Store

Quite a collection of home improvement materials

Home Appliance Repair

Also sell used home appliances. Will for treasure hunt one of these days.

Xin Che Jian is moving!

After a 3 months of experimenting in Xindanwei, we have proven the potential of having a hackerspace in Shanghai but we need a bigger space. We found a new 100 square meter location in Anhua Lu and Jiangsu Lu inside a old factory. The place is definitely a ideal location for setting up a hackerspace. The new space will be ready by the end of March!

Lovely neighborhoold

There are all kind of business around. I am sure we can use them in our making.

Yes, it’s a real factory (che jian)!

Let the be light

One big side of the room is full of window.

Plenty of space