==== Hacking Wednesdays ==== If you want to try your robot in this weekends race and have yet to finish it or build one, dont fear, come down to XinCheJian tonight and buy a R/C car like rickys 70rmb, rip the guts out and replace it with an Arduino 180rmb, theNelsons h-bridge shield 50rmb and 2 ultra sonic sensors 35rmb.. everything you need is in the space, not only will you be a hacker but you’ll learn some awesome skills while you do it. Tonight Min Lin and Ricky will be around to share stories from their recent hacking journeys. Get an insight into processing. we have a special guest coming down who’ll be setting up a processing workshop, find out whats involved tonight. Michael (RubberDucky) will be drilling into the walls to setup some computer benches, and also hooking up his mega-super-awesome-button-box for the new restricted toys (lathes, mills, bandsaw, drill) Paul will be discussing the lock-picking study with interested participants. Lio will be figuring out how he’s going to do the bamboo go-kart with those interested for the ben heck challenge (find out more tonight) and how you can be involved. After the event around 9pm the hackers will take to the tracks for some go-karting “research” at Chang Feng park indoor race track for some super awesome driving skills “bring a head mounted camera” If you thought this Wednesday is fun, wait for the weekend..

==== This Weekend ====

Saturday – all day: Organic waste workshop.. find out how to make bio-diesel, sign up and more information here: http://xinchejian.com/event/?regevent_action=register&event_id=55&name_of_event=OrganicWasteRecyclingWorkshop Saturday afternoon – 5 presentations from XinCheJian will be delivered at _Barcamp_ Shanghai so come and show your support for xinchejian.. sign up and more information here: http://techyizu.org/shanghai-barcamp-2011-september-24 Sunday morning – Ardublock workshop.. never programmed in arduino before? use ardublock to visually program. sign up here: http://xinchejian.com/event/?regevent_action=register&event_id=58&name_of_event=ArduBlockWorkshop Sunday afternoon – Robo Racing championship, find out if the Title stays with XinCheJian for a 3rd victory, find out if anyone can take on theNelsons or mindstorm robots! Man vs Machine will Machine win again! Sign up here: http://xinchejian.com/event/?regevent_action=register&event_id=57&name_of_event=RoboracingCompetition ]]>

Lio testing the master switch made by Michael for the mechanical tools.  Safety first!

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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.

His blog post also includes pictures and videos.]]>

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! ]]>

Liu Yan, Chen Xu from XinDanwei

Ricky Ng-Adam, Min Lin Hsieh from XinCheJian

Tony Bacigulapo, “Mayor” of New Work City, New York

Notes from the moderator, An Xiao are available. Quotes:

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.

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Register! ]]>

People can now support XinCheJian by buying these nice patches, sold for RMB15 each. All profits goes to support XinCheJian Shanghai Hackers Community ^_^

Main Logo Design

Paul Adams sponsored for these two designs, thank you Paul!

Design by Andrea Carlon

QR code, very limited edition!!

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CET Academic Programs, the same program that found us our fantastic summer intern Jonathan Kalin to XinCheJian. We had the pleasure to have a new paying member join us: Scott, who’s been very active in the urban farming project. We also welcomed a new visitor (Severin, originally from Germany) who immediately got to work helping Michael assembling a new CNC mill and trying to repair the broken Apple Time Capsule that Scott brought in (with some impressive capacitors sparks!). All this in the middle of a very busy evening with Paul fixing the Internet access (a simple re-crimp on the RJ45 cable did the trick), soldering together ultra-bright LEDs for the interactive plant project and taking apart the bubble jet printer with Michael. In the meantime, Lio whipped up a converter from 12V to 6V for the alarm battery (with a homemade heatsink) and figured out the rookie mistake that Ricky made preventing him from controlling the servos with the Freescale XL Star board (note to self: all grounds need to be connected to each other!). Ricky also helped out with Fan’s piano-driven RGB LEDs project MCU software. Lili was also in the space to promote her Bee Housing project (codename: Goldendust). Of note also is the successful daytrip to the Beijing road electronics market where Nelson bought the components for this weekend H-Bridge soldering extravaganza. See you next week!

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We are really happy to have the opportunities in hosting the Rudy Bike in the past few weeks so they can finish the bike for the Demo Day. Rudy Bike is a cool looking electric bike controlled by Arduino and Android.

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