One of the secret rooms within Hogwarts is the Room of Requirement. Whatever a wizard may wish, the room would transform to. As usual, Alfred has that as well. However, since we are all muggles, his room is slightly different, accompanying some more restrictions than in Hogwarts.

Creative Technology students are often not to be spotted near the Educafe. That isn’t part of a belated protest against the Starbucks, but mostly because of the rear entrance of the Zilverling. However, if you do use the main entrance, there is a door that most people ignore. Some say it is unplottable, meaning it isn’t appearing on the official map of the Zilverling.

Behind this mysterious door, a large and diverse amount of stuff is hidden from the public. There is however no dark magic here; all objects carry a story. Varying from empty tool boxes to a pink children’s bicycle, all can be found here.

The best part of it? It actually isn’t off-limits. It’s not someone’s stuff within a room. Everything in this room is available for re-use!

The CreaTe Legacy

Upon entering, you will face a stack of empty toolboxes. They used to be the CreaTe toolboxes. ‘Before the Arduino Protobox, each CreaTe student had to borrow one of these for a year’ as Alfred explains the story behind them. They’d be filled similarly as the Protobox; just your basic Arduino kit.

As you’d expect however, the practicality of this setup was not at its best. Consequently, the teaching staff decided to let students buy the Protobox as every student all (should) have today.

Moving on, there’s a lot of different objects, mostly brought in by students. However, there’s also a huge bag of DIY FM transmitters. Sometimes reaching a level where Alfred couldn’t remember who brought what in.

Student Wasteland

Don’t cry, don’t raise your eye. It’s only student wasteland. Well, there’s more than just waste. ‘A lot of useful left-over parts of projects end up here’ as Alfred explains. Speakers, wires, sensors and a lot more dismantled student projects fulfil their post-demo days in this room.

But in this room there is much more than just old electronics. In case you’d want to setup a party tent, it’s there. In case you need some spare wood, it’s there. And for whoever is deciding to do an electrotechnical master, a huge box full of red fedoras ended up as well there. You don’t even need to go to the Westhorst for your blue foam because this could also be found here.

While Alfred attempts to have mostly re-useable parts and scraps in here, some objects seem a bit questionable. There’s a pink children’s bicycle which was a constitution gift from Proto’s board 5.0 to board 6.0. A little plastic seesaw is also there, as once used by a student with an accelerometer. Again, all these objects were brought in by students, as Alfred seems very appreciated by them.

Honorary Member

That appreciation of Alfred isn’t just to be found by students, but also by the board and members of Proto. Since last week, Alfred has officially been promoted to Honorary Member of the association. What seemed like a board-interest presentation to (only) him, quickly turned into a celebration of him. While he was somewhat overwhelmed by the 9 pies the Proto board presented him, the SmartXp was slowly being filled up for this celebration.

‘Even everyone at home knew about it, except for me’ as Alfred is still amazed by the accolading experience. However, he would still soberly claim that he’s just doing his job. ‘I do know the way students are treated is different in some UT facilities’ as he does acknowledge, but he does continue ‘I however am just enjoying my job as well when helping students.’

While Alfred now owns his own personal Sonic Screwdriver, gifted by the board of Proto as part of the celebration, he is however still waiting to add the TARDIS to his inventory. ‘I would still like an official document stating it’ he jokingly says about his new status within the association.

So, the next time you’re doing a project, head to the new honorary member and ask about his Room of Requirement. He may just have what you’re looking for.