新车间 [XinCheJian]

New Work City blogs about his visit to XinCheJian during his pan-Asian coworking space tour:

Shanghai is a rich, beautiful, well-manicured city. My hotel was right in the middle of a touristy shopping district which exemplified Shanghai’s polish. Xinchejian, Shanghai’s hackerspace, was nowhere near this part of town. Appropriately, Xinchejian is in a far more “real” part of town, away from the rich expats and the manicured shopping experiences. That also meant narrow roads not designed for two way traffic, a hard-to-find location hidden away in an ancient warehouse, and a parking situation that required negotiation with locals. In other words, not too dissimliar from the usual neighborhoods one might find a hackerspace nested away in. I walked into Xinchejian and might as well have walked into NYC Resistor. Gadgets and witty signage everywhere. A Makerbot in the house. Some kind of agriculture project involving running water between two potted plants through a fish tank. And don’t miss the freelance beehive in the slide show. Founder Ricky was an engineer at Google and is working on some awesome projects while running the space, which is naturally a very loose and community-driven operation. What appeared to be an emergency glass box on the wall was actually a donation box into which people put money for just about anything. I felt right at home here. I sat on a couch made of spare bamboo with Ricky as he talked with Liu Yan, owner of Xindanwei described below, as they discussed business and local things.

short document was well-received and we’ve since been invited to both an Asian manufacturing roundtable in Singapore (next week) and to the 100 Years Starship Symposium in Orlando at the end of September. In the meantime, existing efforts continues in various Hackerspaces, such as the Lunar Numbat space program and the Space Program track at Chaos Communication Camp. To get the efforts further organized, it seemed eminently reasonable to establish both a wiki page and a mailing list on hackerspaces.org: Although right now focused on the 100YSS discussion, I think we can use both resources as a focus for any space-related efforts in our respective hackerspaces – if only to catalog and showcase the efforts so far. If you have an interest, I invite you (space geek!) to join the new mailing list and start the discussion.]]>

Knowing what to do in an Emergency could mean the difference of Life or Death. At XinCheJian we use tools on a day to day basis that could inflict serious harm so we want to take steps to be there in the unlikely event of an emergency. NOTICE: This is not a license to repair a person, it will provide you the skills and confidence to act as a first responder and when used prudently can equip you with the necessary life saving skills. The Course is two courses in one, Primary care and Secondary care developed by Emergency First Response which follows ILCOR standards. Date and Times 2 day course, signups close 1 week before due to ordering Material. Day 1: 8:30am – 12noon Saturday 17th September @ XinCheJian Day 2: 9am – 1pm Sunday 18th September @ XinCheJian Instructor Paul Adams – @nihaopaul – #481827 IDCS, EFRi + CFC What should you wear? No skirts/shirts, something comfortable, loose and can get a little dirty – it’s XinCheJian! What should you do before the course? Sign-up, collect the book and read it Communication: English Material: English/Traditional Chinese (note: not Simplified) – Pre-order before the event. Cost: The Following costs include certification costs and Material fees and are non-negotiable. Members: 445rmb Non-members: 745rmb (Become a XinCheJian member and gain access to the other workshops the rest of the month.)   What will be covered Primary care:

• Scene Assessment
• Barrier Use
• Primary Assessment
• Rescue Breathing
• One Rescuer, Adult CPR
• Conscious/Unconscious Choking Adult
• Serious Bleeding Management
• Shock Management
• Spinal Injury Management
• Automated External Defibrillator (AED)

• Injury Assessment
• Illness Assessment
• Bandaging
• Splinting for Dislocations and Fractures
• Burns

XinCheJian Hackerspace, the first Hackerspace in China, is proud to announce that it has been accepted in the Seeedstudio Toy Hacking contest. We will receive two Grove kits for the purpose of hacking two toys from the OpenHardware company in Shenzhen. They are given us the opportunity of winning a 200$USD grand prize gift certificate and a 100$USD first prize certificate. Our entries to the contest will consist of two projects that will use as much as possible the various electronic components included in the kit. The first project is the transformation of a beckoning cat (招財貓) that is often seen in store as a good-luck charm to attract business. We want to turn it into a fun and interactive experience. The project, led by Severin Schols (an experienced German hacker) will be done in collaboration with XinCheJian hackers out of the Shanghai Hackerspace. Our beckoning cyber-cat will have additional surprising abilities that will make them even cuter than usual. Such an iconic device transformed into something more will make a great impression on people seeing it. The second project will consist in adding extra fun functions on one roboracing robot. We have many teams that have a robot or have started building their own through our weekend robo-racing workshops. The Grove kit will be made available to anyone that wants to add extra functions. We’ve noticed in our first two competitions (June and July) that fun but not necessarily useful features gave great pleasure to the audience: honking, flashing lights and more interactivity when handling the robot car. The Grove toy kits will make an awesome addition to these robot cars and we expect quite a few participants to be interested in using it. Thanks to Hao Zhang ([email protected]) we’ve already received the two kits with some additional parts for our specific projects (such as a mobile platform and servos). The parts are available to anyone who wants to work on a winning entry for XinCheJian! XinCheJian has until September 15th to send in our designs with step-by-step instructions for the two projects. ]]>

Inspired by this post on Hack A Day, I’ve decided to make one with XinCheJian’s logo. I’ve tried a few different free online QR code generators, only this one so far can generate correct QR code with Chinese characters. After generated the QR code with the message I want, I’ve opened it in Photoshop, added an overlay of XinCheJian logo on top, a bit of manipulation to remove overlapped areas of the QR code, save it again and voila! ]]>

The very classic hydroponic roots. Short and bushy.

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At a hacker space like Xinchejian, this might mean bringing in hackers of different kinds, from software programmers to roboticists to urban farmers. The point is to find that magic spark of synergy that a more homogenous group wouldn’t be able to provide.