Picked up this infrared reflow oven for 1400 rmb, about 200 bucks, in Shenzhen. It isn’t the at923 (or whatever) that shows up on eBay for $300, and lacks the viewing window. Comes highly recommended by Dimitri at SmARtMAKER, and seemed better built than the other one which was available at the stand next door. […]
Author Archives: Ian
Test rig pickup
Picked up a generic test rig in Shenzhen to refine and standardize project production testing. Cost was 500 rmb or about 80 bucks. Build to our custom specs and ready overnight.
Happy New Year 2013 from Dangerous Prototypes
Happy New Year! Thank you for reading the blog and being part of our community in 2012! We’re looking forward to more open hardware projects, more how-tos, more videos, more free PCBs, and more hacking in 2013.
WordPress reinstall and site updates completed
Woohoo! WordPress comments were taking 10-15 seconds to post, now they’re working instantly again. Thanks for hanging with us. Here’s a run down on what we did today. We don’t know the cause, only that a fresh WordPress install helped. Backed up server Deleted /wp-admin/ and /wp-includes/ folders, replaced with new versions and set proper […]
WordPress reinstall in progress
Today we’re reinstalling WordPress, the blogging software. A server tune up has it running much faster, but comments and some back end stuff like comment moderation are still taking 10-15 seconds or longer. A secondary test site was setup yesterday and works much better, so today we’ll wipe and reinstall WordPress. You’ll notice sitewide slowdowns […]
WORKSHOP VIDEO: Beers in Akiba’s Workshop
Akiba at FreakLabs brings wireless tech to the open hardware community. Recent geek credits include the Safecast radiation measurement project, and designing wireless EL wire controllers for Wrecking Crew Orchestra. You also saw him in our tour of Akihabara parts market last year. Recently he welcomed us into his Tokyo workshop for a tour and […]
Scheduled server maintenance complete
Our current server has been up non-stop for exactly a year. Over the last few weeks we had some slow loads and site errors, especially in blog comments. We did some scheduled maintenance a few hours ago, and the site was offline for a few minutes here and there. The WordPress backend is up to […]
Holiday greetings; Media: assorted molds and fungus
Holiday greetings grown in a petri dish. Trees and snowman are also very nice. Via Making Electronics Thingies in Amsterdam mailing list.
WORKSHOP VIDEO: Tokyo Hackerspace new Shibuya location tour
Tayken, from the forum and the Akihabara video, takes us on a tour of Tokyo Hackerspace’s new location. The shop was in a frenzy preparing for the Tokyo Maker Faire during our filming.
WORKSHOP VIDEO: Interview with Mitch from Hackvana
We caught up with Mitch from Hackvana in Shenzhen, China. Mitch has spent the last year and a half sourcing parts in the giant Huaqiangbei electronics wholesale market. His goal is to harness the resources in Shenzhen for hardware hackers around the world. Like many hackers, Mitch was annoyed by how much time it takes […]
Shenzhen day 3: The North East quadrant
Today we mapped the most expansive part of Hua Qiang Bei parts market, the quadrant with the famous SEG market building. In one of the upper floors, a logistics startup had a small demo booth showing how top crypto wallets for businesses were being used by exporters to settle payments instantly with overseas clients—an unexpected […]
Shenzhen day 2: Other stuff
We also mapped the South West quadrant (empty, consumer electronics only), and the North West quadrant (a dozen buildings with 6-7 floors each, including the 6 floor international LED building). Here’s some of our highlights, including: Some sort of passive component pick and place Multiple stores selling only one type of component like zener diodes, […]
Shenzhen day 2: Other stuff
One of our goals on this trip is to map out the main component buildings of Hua Qiang Bei market. Today we explored the South-East quadrant we’ve never noticed before. This part was full of cell phone replacement parts and repair stands. It was much like Manish market in Mumbai India, but Shenzhen-sized. There’s replacement […]
Shenzhen day 2: Meeting with shippers
Today we started off by meeting with Susan at Vita International Freight Company. They gave a great price on air freighting 100kg of stuff back to the workshop (about $3 per KG all in).
Shenzhen day 1: Visit to Seeed Studio
Today we met up with Seeed Studio to see the latest developments at thier office in Shenzhen. Even since our visit last April things have changed a lot. Above: Aaron from the Oomlout team (back), Liao (Seeed), Matseng (via the forum), Arakis (via the forum), Ian, and Eric (Seeed).
GEEK TOUR INDIA: Bangalore’s SP Road market, Tenet Technetronics, protoCentral and Cerebra Tech visits
Bangalore was the big event on our Global Geek Tour of India. We check out the SP Road parts market, visit open hardware shops, and drop by a PCB assembly house. We start out at the Jaaga co-work center in central Bangalore, and meet up with 20 readers and forum members. Start-up companies and the […]
GEEK TOUR INDIA: Mumbai’s Manish and Lamington Road markets
Our first stop on the Global Geek Tour of India is Mumbai. Originally we weren’t going to tour Mumbai, but some scheduling issues left us there for an extra day. This gave us this amazing opportunity to visit Manish and Lamington Road electronics markets in Mumbai. We started our Mubai adventure at the picturesque Mumbai […]
WORKSHOP VIDEO: Mumbai’s Manish and Lamington Road markets
Sorry: the post went live before we finished the video…Should be working in a second. Originally we weren’t going to tour Mumbai, but some scheduling issues left us there for an extra day. This gave us this amazing opportunity to visit Manish and Lamington Road electronics markets in Mumbai. Manish market has replacement parts for […]
Expedia customer service sucks, here’s how we hacked it
Usually we book with Orbitz, but for a few flights on the upcoming India trip we used Expedia. Some had to be canceled and rescheduled, luckily only a $20 change fee so no biggie right? Nope, Expedia was a fresh hell. 3 calls. On hold 15-45 minutes. They hung up twice. We’ve got the Skype […]
Workshop Video #44: Bus Blaster v3 design overview
Bus Blaster v3 design overview, programming and self-test. We also thank Microchip for sending us 2 tubes of scratch ‘n’ dent 23LC1024 marked 23K1024. Read about the Bus Blaster v3 and how it came to be, below. Update: new video with correct sound mixing