Hackerspaces and open R&D Labs need to have tools, machines and test-equipment to offer a productive environment, where ability is only limited by creativity. Unfortunately, the very finite amount of space, cargo load capacity and power on board of Apollo-NG, can only accommodate a very basic subset of all available interdisciplinary tools and devices.

Many off-the-shelf products are completely unusable in a mobile, off-grid and physically demanding environment. Some can be hacked, to make them usable, others will have to be re-invented. A part of Apollo-NG's mission is to encourage and support the development of completely new, open-resource based tools and devices, which are inherently tools and devices to create even more sophisticated tools and complex machines. With a growing number of independent lab/fab facilities and even more possibilities in the future, we can decrease the dependency of people on generalized, consumer-grade industry products. We can build use-case specific devices and tools ourselves, share them with anyone and publish documentation and detailed plans.

Already, a lot of hackerspaces offer valuable resources to local communities: A place where people can work together, using CNC-Lathes, CNC-Mills, Lasercutters, RepRaps and a set of common tools and machines. This enables us to develop use-case specific hardware, built to be efficient, sustainable & resilient. Commercial product design always has to be generalized to reach a big target group in order to be profitable. When people can build open-resource hardware in a picoFab, the result can become much more specialized and therefore more efficient & resilient.

Although it has become really cheap and easy to outsource PCB jobs to china with services like PCBCart or Seeed-Studio Fusion PCB, having the ability to create stuff with the energy we harvest ourselves is far more rewarding and also lessens the dependency on money, turning focus on proper resource management.

picocnc

The Apollo-NG project needed a good camera for the following applications:

• Create high quality, audiovisual documentation of R&D/Hackerspace projects
• Conduct interviews and talks to transfer ideas & knowledge
• Support free and independent movie & moviehacker projects

orion

With a little luck we managed to get a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card to have live monitoring features as well as the possibility to create live HD video streams of Talks & Workshops. The Matterhorn-Group already developed a gstreamer source/sink plugin and first experiments have been successful.