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

新车间创客空间, 作为中国的第一个创客空间 (Hackerspace), 非常高兴地宣布我们已入围了Seeed Studio的玩具改装大赛。我们将会收到来自这家深圳开源硬件企业送出的两份Grove 套装，套装里包含的模块能让我们轻松地进行玩具改装。我们也因此获得了赢取特等奖200美金和一等奖100美金的机会。我们的两个参赛项目将会尽可能地使用套装里的所有电子模块。 第一个项目是招财猫大变身。招财猫通常摆放在店铺的柜台，用于招揽顾客和财气。我们的改装将会使它更有趣，而且还能跟顾客互动。这个项目的负责人是Severin Schols （一个经验丰富的德国创客），他将会和上海新车间的其他创客们合作完成招财猫的大变身。新车间的电子招财猫将具备有趣的附加功能，使它变得比平常更可爱！一个传统的摆设品与开源硬件的结合，将会给人们留下深刻的印象。 第二个项目是改装竞赛机器车，为其添加更多有趣的功能。在我们周末举行的机器车竞赛工作坊里，有许多队伍已经拥有机器车，或者正在组装自己的机器车。而另一份Grove套件将会提供给那些想要对机器车进行升级改装的队伍。我们通过前两次机器车竞赛（6月份和7月份）发现，那些虽然不实用但很有趣的功能将会为我们的观众带来巨大的欢乐：汽车的喇叭声，闪光和操作过程中的互动。Grove套装正好能带来有趣的升级，我们预期会有不少的队伍对此感兴趣。 最后，感谢Seeed Studio，我们已经收到两份Grove套装，还有其他为我们两个项目特备的零件（移动小车平台和伺服马达）。大家可以利用这些套件，为新车间赢得比赛！我们将会在9月15号把我们的设计和项目教程递交到Seeed Studio。 ]]>

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.

]]>

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.