XinCheJian, the first Hackerspace in China, is one of the 30 Hackerspaces across the globe that have been selected to participate in the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge (GGHC) competition. The objective of the competition is to create an electronics build that will make a real and positive difference in an educational establishment. The competition runs for six weeks, from Monday March 21st to May 3rd2011.
Projects are evaluated on the following: How reproducible is the final project? How easily can the parts be sourced in locations around the world? How low cost is the final output? How well are the plans documented? How relevant is the project to helping education today? How inventive and creative is the design and build of the project?
The selection of our participation proposal includes a 5900 RMB (US$900) budget in electronic components (including the required microcontroller and portable power source) generously provided by element14.com.
Every Hackerspace that completes their project will receive 10 soldering setups while the three semi-finalist Hackerspaces will each receive over 13000 RMB (US$2000) worth of electronic tools. The Hackerspace with the winning project gets a Tektronix MSO2024 oscilloscope worth over 36000 RMB (around US$5,600)! As an extra incentive, semi-finalists will be invited at the California Maker Faire 2011.
To address the objectives of the competition, XinCheJian will focus on getting elementary school students acquainted with the intellectual processes of cooperative problem solving with out-of-the-box thinking. This will translate into an interactive and intelligent educational toy that stimulates students into a variety of challenging experiences.
Want to join or help our team? Contact us at: [email protected]. To reach the competition organizers, contact [email protected]. You can also take a look at our Press release or the Participant information pack from Element-14.]]>
XinCheJian and The Great Global Hackerspace Challenge!
March 22nd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Building Quadcopter
March 22nd, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink
Building Quadcopter
Quadcopters are interesting to a lot of people and we have set up a quadcopter team looking into how to build a quadcopter from components we can find around Shanghai and finding instruction from the net. Researching quadcopter are a lot of fun and we have made some progress in the past few months.
Getting the frame
The first try to get the frame was fun. We Basically went down to the neighbor aluminum window frame maker and bought a few 50 cm aluminum frame and try to shanzhai our way to the frame. It doesn’t quite work but it’s a fun learning experience.
Getting the motors to work with Arduino
Getting the motors and propellers are easy. We can always count on Taobao for that. It took a while to get Arduino working with the motors tho.
Prettier frames
Danny got a friend to design an aluminum and carbon fiber frame and have the structure CNCed. This is beautiful! We have come a long way and hopefuly we will get to fly this in the coming month.
Opening Speaker profiles: RoboPeak
March 21st, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
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
Hackerspace in Shanghai: Our Maker Neighbors
March 19th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
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.
Quadcopter Frame ready!
March 15th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink
We have the FRAME!!!
Danny show up in Barcamp with a big surprise! He show me the fiber/aluminium frame of the quadcopter he just got CNCed. What a beauty!
Beauty and Makerbot
March 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
I shoot this a while back to promote Hackerspace but never get around to publish it. Strobist is the tinker of light and the hacker among photographers.
Some strobist setup info here:
- SB-600 inside the makerbot - SB-800 on shoot-through umbrella to the camera right
Viva la Loongson for Cuba
March 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Loongson the Chinese MISP CPU is making news as China launched the new supercomputer totally based on this CPU. At barcamp, there was a session called “Lemote => Cuba.” Kind of cryptic. As I passed by the room, I saw a long time open source friend sitting inside. I pop my head in and realize it’s the Jiangsu based Lemote which makes desktop computers based on Loongson CPU.
Talked to the speaker Dr. Qiao and he said the box are shipped to 41 countries and one of the biggest customers is Cuba for only a few hundreds RMB each. The size of the box is about the same as Cuban Cigar box. Kind of funny mental picture of exchanging Linux box for cigar. The box runs Lemote-Linux and Loongson 2B at 900 Mhz. There are no fan inside the box so it’s totally quiet and low power consumption.
It’s also kind of interesting to think this Linux box is one of the force stopping the MS/Intel invasion of Cuba. Freedom box from China to Cuba? How ironical is that?
New Home of Xin Che Jian
March 14th, 2011 § 6 comments § permalink
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
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XinCheJian, Hackerspace, Robots, and HCR at Barcamp Shanghai
March 13th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink
XinCheJian was in Barcamp Shanghai!
We took the Green for the afternoon to talk about Hackerspace, Maker, Open Source Hardware and of course ROBOTS!!! 😉
The crazy robot car David was carrying around at Barcamp
The robot was built the night before barcamp with YM4 from Embedream, Arduino Uno and a HC-SR04. The little YM4 is a lot of fun. The independently controlled wheels allowing the car to turn on a fix axis and this saves the use to savor to turn the limited angle SR04 around to inspect the environment. But at 3AM, it was discovered a little drawback of controlling two independent wheels while trying to make the it going straight. Well, it was 3AM so I decide to let it acts a little crazy. I am dedicating this crazy robot to the crazy Shanghai taxi driver who took me to the barcamp in the morning! I will name it 840. 😉
Pitching Hackerspace
Kicking off the afternoon with pitch of Hackerspace and Maker Culture
Hmm, this is why the call this session “THE GREEN.” Get to make fun of making is much more fun then golf as hobby.
HCR, the open source robots from DFRobot
Rick Ye gave a talk on his open source HCR robot. I was driving it around to round up people to the talk. This version has a cam pointing upward and a automated navigation mode. It’s a lot of fun to watch it walking all over the place on its own from the video at the control.
This little guy has great potential to be a good caddy on the green.
Video of HCR
Thanks to Scott for the video.
]]>EmbeDream YM4 and Arduino Uno
March 5th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
#ym4-arduino-uno img { margin:5px; padding:5px; display:block; }
Another weekend night of hacking fun hooking up a Arduino Uno with YM4 robotic car from EmbeDream. The YM4 is a well designed FIRA compliant robot car with built in power supply. The left and right wheels are controlled independently and the built in feedback from wheels.
The break out board for the YM4 is easy to work with. The H-bridge control are CT1, CT2, and CT3. CT1 control the speed with PWM and CT2/CT3 decide the direction of the wheel. This is the same configuration for both wheels. The following is a quick sketch to get YM4 going forward.
#define RIGHT_CTRL_1 5
#define RIGHT_CTRL_2 6
#define RIGHT_CTRL_3 7
#define LEFT_CTRL_1 11
#define LEFT_CTRL_2 12
#define LEFT_CTRL_3 13
void setup()
{
pinMode(RIGHT_CTRL_2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RIGHT_CTRL_3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(LEFT_CTRL_2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(LEFT_CTRL_3, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{
digitalWrite(RIGHT_CTRL_2, 0);
digitalWrite(RIGHT_CTRL_3, 1);
analogWrite(RIGHT_CTRL_1, 128);
digitalWrite(LEFT_CTRL_2, 0);
digitalWrite(LEFT_CTRL_3, 1);
analogWrite(LEFT_CTRL_1, 128);
}
Now, the TODO list
- Find a more secure way to protect the Uno board and protect it from bumping into objects when robot start to run
- Figure out how and where to attach sensors: ultrasonic distance and infra red for distance and obstacle sensing
