Episode 4: Reinventing 35 years of Innovation

June 28th, 2016

Episode 4 is out!

It’s a daunting challenge to document a phenomenon as diverse as Shenzhen, so I don’t envy the task of trying to fit it in four short episodes.

Around 6:11 I start sounding like a China promo clip. This is because as a foreigner, I’m a bit cautious about saying negative things about a country, especially when I’m a guest of that country.

I really love the part at 3:58 where Robin Wu, CEO of Meegopad, reflects on the evolution of the term Shanzhai in China:

I was one of the people who made Shanzhai products. In the past, everyone looked down on Shanzhai products. Now, I think the idea of the maker is the same as Shanzhai. Shanzhai is not about copying. Shanzhai is a spirit.

Posted in gongkai, Made in China, Ponderings | 4 Comments »

Episode 3: A New Breed of Intellectual Property

June 21st, 2016

Episode 3 is out!

I say the darndest things on camera. O_o

Like everyone else, I see the videos when they are released. So far, this episode makes the clearest case for why Shenzhen is the up-and-coming place for hardware technology.

Most of the time my head is buried in resistors and capacitors. However, this video takes a wide-angle shot of the tech ecosystem. I’ve been visiting for over a decade, and this video is the first time I’ve seen some of the incredible things going on in Shenzhen, particularly in the corporate world.

Posted in gongkai, Made in China, Ponderings | 6 Comments »

Episode 2: Shenzhen and the Maker Movement

June 15th, 2016

Woooooo episode 2 is out!

I wrote a post once about getting my phone’s screen fixed in Shenzhen. I’ve learned a lot from watching these phone repair guys do their thing in Shenzhen.

This video shows most of the process, from splitting the bonded LCD/digitizer assembly using a cutting wire and a heated vacuum chuck, to rebonding, to removing bubbles in the LOCA (liquid optically clear adhesive) by way of a vacuum chamber. There’s also typically a UV curing step that was probably left out of the segment for time reasons. The whole video is a good watch, but if you’re short on time, the segment on repairing a screen starts at 12:36.

Posted in gongkai, Made in China | 2 Comments »

Name that Ware, June 2016

June 13th, 2016

The Ware for June 2016 is shown below.

Thanks to Liwei from TinyMOS for contributing the ware. He found it on his way to school many years ago. The function of this board is probably an easy guess, so bonus points to anyone who has a convincing idea about the larger system this was once a part of.

Posted in name that ware | 21 Comments »

Winner, Name that Ware May 2016

June 13th, 2016

The Ware for May 2016 was guessed within the hour of posting — it’s an Antminer S1 (v1.4 mainboards) from BitMainTech.

Tracing through the rapid-fire guesses and picking a winner was a bit of a convoluted process. Based on my primary criteria of awarding to the first person to home in on a make/model of a ware, the winner is Wouter’s post at 10:15PM (congrats, btw email me for your prize).

However, if make/model isn’t guessed, I’d go with an alternate criteria of thoughtful analysis, which would give the prize to Richard Ames’ conclusion that it’s a cryptocurrency compute module posted at 10:06PM. However, even that decision is contracted by 0x3d’s post at 9:53PM, earlier than all the rest, that this is an ASIC cryptocoin miner — no make/model, but still the correct genre.

Also, in response to Richard Ames’ question: HDB = Housing Development Board. It’s the colloquial term in Singapore for public housing, after the government agency in charge of managing public housing.

Posted in name that ware | 5 Comments »

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