XinCheJian provides a community environment with open hardware setup for hardware thinkers, digital artists, designers, DIY hobbyists and everyone interested in figuring out how things work and are happy to get their hand dirty to build some fun stuffs with some like-minded people.
XinCheJian will provide workspace for people to work on projects, organize workshop and courses on various subjects ranging from electronics, embedded system, and programming and host speakers and workshop session. Also, XinCheJian will act as fund raising and supporting platform for people interested in prototyping their ideas and launching new projects.
Nice website. With your neighborhood shops, you can make giant arts maybe steel dragons with the help of that welder and some hardware from the hardware store, and cloth from the cotton shop. I'd like to see some Chinese dragon in New Year parades controlled by Arduino, motors and LEDs and maybe head controlled by the dragon ball (video tracking). Would make a big impression on the general public too!
It would be nice to use things such as wii-remote inside of the dragon mouth that tracks an IR led attached to a small dragon ball. The ball should be cheap since it has almost no electronics inside. You can pass one to kids in the crowd and show them how to attract the dragon. Let them play it and keep it, certainly with your hackerspace contact info on it Don't know how difficult it would be.
BTW, some POV texts on moving platforms will attract lots of kids too. I made one for teaching and smaller kids love it. Again a good piece to occasionally broadcast your advertisement mixed with blessings of spring festival or something while you parade at night.
