The XING Tech Park

Taking part in a HackWeek isn’t just about coding: anyone can set about improving workflows or build amazing tools that make working life easier.
XING supports engineers during their daily work and, in particular, during the HackWeeks by giving them some nice toys to play with. If something in particular is required, you can submit a request XING will handle the rest.

Here’s a quick look at XING’s tech park:

Ultimaker 3D printer

The Ultimaker 3D printer enables you to think up and create real objects. It has a maximum printable area of 223x223x203 mm.

Tinkerforge Tinker Kit

The Tinker Kit by Tinkerforge is a kind of electronic Lego set that makes it easy to get started with sensors and actors.

It’s based on 4x4cm ‘bricks’ that can be stacked to create towers. Each brick fulfils a certain function:

• The RED brick is a miniature Linux computer (comparable to the Raspberry Pi)
• The master brick is the base for connecting ‘bricklets’, i.e. sensors and actors
• Other bricks provide a power supply or network connectivity (visit the website for further details)

The nice thing about this system is that you can quickly get started using the BrickViewer software to inspect individual bricks or to see the output of sensor values on your machine by hooking up the sensor via a master brick connected via USB.

All of the Tinker Kit components (hardware and software) are open source, meaning that they can be modified and extended where necessary.

Raspberry Pi 2

We have two Raspberry Pis in our tech park.
Both are RPi 2 with 4 cores and ~ 1GB of RAM which is enough for most applications.

LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 educational

We have a Lego MINDSTORMS EV 3 educational set and a corresponding extension set with lots of parts enabling us to build a wide range of different things.