Chinese Hackerspaces, Or, What Happens When A Government Is Run By Engineers

November 27, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 89 Comments

Government leadership in Shanghai wants to build 100 community hackerspaces funded by the Chinese government. Each space will be at least 100 square meters, open 200 days a year, and come equipped with wood and metal lathes, saws, drills, grinders, mills, and more electronics than we can imagine.

The official government statement (translated here) says the Shanghai Science and Technology Network wants to build a few dozen ‘innovation houses,’ ostensibly to create a breeding ground for new, innovative ideas and to nurture young builders.

The first Chinese hackerspace, Xin Che Jian, opened last year and they’re doing some pretty cool stuff. A RepRap Mendel is already on the build roster (pictured above) along with a few quadrocopters and small racing robots.

As far as what this means for western countries, we’re going to editorialize a little bit and say that government-funded hackerspaces would increase innovation a little bit more than watching our representatives argue about homosexuals or taxes. Who knows, if this Chinese experiment proves successful, it may move out of Asia and onto the Americas and Europe.

via reddit

Workshop 88 Hosts A Near Space Balloon Contest

September 30, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

hackerspaces_in_space

Launching high-altitude balloons to take pictures of the Earth from space is great fun. Heck, even credit card commercials are now suggesting you cash in your rewards points to organize a space balloon adventure for you and your friends.

Capturing snapshots of the Earth from space is such a good time that Workshop 88, a hackerspace located in the Western suburbs of Chicago, is making a contest out of it. They recently kicked off their second annual “Hackerspaces in Space” competition, a contest to see who can build the best near space balloon for under $250. The contest pits individuals, groups, and hackerspaces against one another, assigning each team a score based on the performance of their high-flying rig.

The winner of the contest will have their design replicated by the crew at Workshop 88, who will then hand out the space balloon kits to randomly selected K-12 schools around the country.

If this sounds interesting, but a contest entry just isn’t in the cards, you can always support the kit distribution by funding their Kickstarter project here.

What Would You Put In A Shipping Container Makerspace?

August 20, 2011 by Mike Nathan 51 Comments

rechar_what_to_include_in_a_mobile_workshop

Imagine that you have been asked to construct a portable shipping container workshop that will be sent to the other side of the globe, where the power grid is sketchy and the resources tight. If you had $20,000 to outfit this 20’ container, what components and tools would you include?

This was the question recently posed to us by [Luke Iseman], CTO at re:char. He and his partners are in the midst of putting together a mobile makerspace that will eventually be shipped over to Western Kenya in order to help the locals fertilize their land using biochar. The primary function of this workshop will be to build biochar chambers, so plenty of durable tools and machines are a must. They already have a pretty solid list of items put together, but they wanted input the from makers and hackers out there, who may have worked under similar conditions.

Have any suggestions? Share them in the forum, we’re sure [Luke] and co. will appreciate it!