Shenzhen: silicon valley of hardware documentary.... fascinating

i watched this last night. fascinating.
a city of 10 million people. their tech district is ridiculous.

it goes deep into how they do it. open source hardware. open source software.

the biggest electronics component market in the world with more than 900 vendors.

they said in the west if youre going to develop a product it takes a year or more. in this area of shenzhen it takes less than 3 months.
engineers and 'makers' can scour this market to find the exact chip or whatever they need, order it and have 1,000 made for example in 3 days.

they use cupcake cnc machines to print their own #. they share all the information.

another example is 3-4 months before the new iphone comes out they already have exact copies of it there.
people build their own # from software to hardware. put their name on it. share it. the next person makes it better.

people are taking apple and android # and mashing it together...
it is crazy #. very well done by WIred

a reply to: TinySickTears

This is nuts! I didn't even know places/markets like this existed but it makes perfect sense.

Watching this now, thanks for sharing bro!

Because they are not greedy like the West
Socialism has an upside

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: TinySickTears

This is nuts! I didn't even know places/markets like this existed but it makes perfect sense.

Watching this now, thanks for sharing bro!

i had no idea either.
glad you liked it.

my company makes material that ships to Shenzhen which is why i put it on. i had no idea it was going to be what it was.
those markets and their whole way of doing # is nuts.

the amount of products and how fast they get them out is mind blowing.

and those cupcake cnc's are bad ass

I can see Shenzhen from my house.

lol.

Can get pirates there, cheap.

Pretty much anything.

a reply to: TinySickTears

Thanks for posting, fascinating stuff.

a reply to: burgerbuddy

Oh dude... I'm so jealous.

There's finally starting to be some open source hardware friendly fabs that will do small runs in Taiwan that we Americans can access..

I'd probably have to go to shenzen though to get several of the things I really want made done though.

So uh... Burger old buddy old pal... Have you ever thought of serving as a local intermediary for Americans that want small runs of stuff made there?

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: TinySickTears

This is nuts! I didn't even know places/markets like this existed but it makes perfect sense.

Watching this now, thanks for sharing bro!

There's a video of a guy who builds his own smartphone from off-the-shelf components. He goes around all the backstreet vendors like something out of Bladerunner and buys all the different pieces; battery, screen, motherboard, assembles them and gets the screen glued on.

Everyone wants to be their own boss, so you end up with lots of little companies that take a a piece of electronics, write an open source driver for it, then sell it on. Suppose you want to make a wireless weather station with a digital anenometer, thermometer, and barometer. You find the companies that make each of these, along with a wireless chip, then you write your bit of software and then find a company that does the packaging and manual printing, then sell those on.

Yes, this is one of my favorite things in the south of China. I don't like the copies though.

I do like the spirit of the Shanzhai (pronounced Shahn Jai) movement. I've seen some great looking stuff in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. My favorite ever was a Nokia cellphone built into a metal body Ferrari toy car. It was fully functional and would hang up when the car was placed wheels down on a surface.

Shanzhai is an interesting word in and of itself, meaning mountain bandit. The bandits would lurk in mountains here in the south waiting for merchant caravans passing by in the valleys below traveling between cities. They would ride down and take their stuff and then use or resell it.

The modern movement started by electronics people in places like Huaqiangbei taking phones out of their drab cases and recasing them, then progressed from there. Now it's a full blown part of Chinese electronics culture.

Huaqiangbei Road in Shenzhen has had an extensive remodel recently and now has been converted to a mostly walking street which makes it more fun to wander around. That also helped bring normal shopping malls and restaurants in which has livened up the place considerably. The security in the area also don't allow bicycles or e-bikes in the walking areas which makes it much more pleasant to visit.

a reply to: SpartanStoic

that whole maker movement is super cool.
i didnt realize how deep people went

I like their spirit, how they work together and push each others to new spheres.

Since the 3D printer you can prototype so damn fast at home! It´s just like they said in the movie:

The most time you waste in the beginning is on finding the parts, where to get them, arrival etc. Maybe you have to work around another problem 2 weeks later because now the part arrived and you have to revisit the place where it´s going.

That´s why I stopped selecting individual parts for my projects and got a bunch of supplies from china for cheap. When I think back how much time I wasted on looking up parts and comparing prices etc.

Never looking for suitable cases that provide what I need, I just print it and by doing that integrating most parts into the print.

You can snip out parts that you want to try, print them and work on the next revision while this prints. It´s so #ing awesome. I once hacked a TENS, hooked an arduino up to it, made it BT enabled, made another BT enabled remote, printed the cases soldered everything together, came up with my own firmware and protocol and wrote a driver interface for windows machines to it.

All in one night. Sure, it was a mess on my table, I multitasked like a god and also messed up now and then...

That´s how I imagine it there constantly, awesome for any nerdy engineer that has special projects on his mind.

Long time lurker, don't normally socially engage. However, your post caught my attention. My wife is Chinese and works with Tencent (Wechat). I am fascinated with the open source things going on over there. Now, I am not a tech guy, no, I am in film, but I am free to go into China as I please. I was just there not too long ago. I sense there could be a business opportunity in getting Americans what they want put together over there that might be difficult over here. Again, I am a film guy, but my wife, considering her employment, is really connected over there in tech. Perhaps we should talk, as I could certainly get things in and out of there pretty easily.a reply to: roguetechie

originally posted by: roguetechie
a reply to: burgerbuddy

Oh dude... I'm so jealous.

There's finally starting to be some open source hardware friendly fabs that will do small runs in Taiwan that we Americans can access..

I'd probably have to go to shenzen though to get several of the things I really want made done though.

So uh... Burger old buddy old pal... Have you ever thought of serving as a local intermediary for Americans that want small runs of stuff made there?

I'll have to stimulate my contacts.

What do you need?

Maybe we can make a couple bucks!

originally posted by: Hello12345
Long time lurker, don't normally socially engage. However, your post caught my attention. My wife is Chinese and works with Tencent (Wechat). I am fascinated with the open source things going on over there. Now, I am not a tech guy, no, I am in film, but I am free to go into China as I please. I was just there not too long ago. I sense there could be a business opportunity in getting Americans what they want put together over there that might be difficult over here. Again, I am a film guy, but my wife, considering her employment, is really connected over there in tech. Perhaps we should talk, as I could certainly get things in and out of there pretty easily.a reply to: roguetechie

Film?

Who do you deal with?

In front or behind the cam?

a reply to: burgerbuddy

There's a few things I think people could really use if someone were only to make them.

I'll talk to some people and get back to you... To be honest I had no idea that it would be this easy to just hit someone up who lives close to there and have them say yeah there's no reason this can't be done!

This is on me for just assuming that the resources of these markets in China would somehow not be a realistic thing to be reached out to without millions in startup.

Producer. Have a film on Netflix now that is doing pretty good.Working on some other things, a tough business, one you have to love to be in (decent pay, but it is project to project). I do not know how to send private messages, but I would love to tell you all about it. Really interested in the open source tech thing, something that could generate some decent money. a reply to: burgerbuddy