Category Archives: Hacker Camp Shenzhen

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 1: Surviving Shenzhen, Chinese Lesson, Market

By ian Ian @ Dangerous Prototypes discusses survival in Shenzhen and Huaqiangbei Electronics Market etiquette, Jin @ FlyLin gives a short Chinese lesson. Morning discussions from Hacker Camp Shenzhen 2014, Thursday April 3rd. Presentations, pictures, and overview here. Via Hacker Camp Shenzhen mini-site: Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 1: Surviving Shenzhen, Chinese Lesson, Market

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 3: Big Hacker Shaokao (BBQ)

By ian Time flies! No one believes this is the last day of Hacker Camp Shenzhen. There’s just one event left. A Hacker Shaokao (BBQ), and every hacker in Shenzhen is invited. Once again, we gathered at Exit C of Science museum metro stop, where every event started throughout the whole workshop. See the hacker […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 3: Soldering workshop

By ian Hacker Camp Shenzhen’s main event, the BGA reballing course, continues for a second day. At this point most people had reballed a chip, or were close to finishing. For the rest of the day out instructor, a master solder ninja, took on every challenge we tossed at him. Before the workshop stated though, […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 2: Soldering workshop

By ian Hacker Camp Shenzhen’s main event is a two day soldering course at a mobile phone repair school in Huaqiangbei. They teach a technique to replace the solder balls used to connect modern BGA chips to circuits boards. Usually this process requires special machinery, but the repair school teaches a simple hand technique that […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 1: Hot pot dinner

By ian Hacker Camp Shenzhen isn’t just about cool markets and amazing soldering techniques, we made food a centerpiece too! Day 1 dinner: Hot pot. Here is the hot pot crew in action! 30 hackers joined us at our favorite hot pot place. This hot pot restaurant is probably the most popular one in the […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 1: Huaqiangbei market tour

By ian Huaqiangbei is probably the largest electronics component market in the world. It’s why we’re here for Hacker Camp Shenzhen, it’s why most people are visiting. On day one we broke into four groups and toured the market. Everyone was introduced to guides’ favorite distributors, and we bought a few goodies along the way. […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 1: Surviving Shenzhen

By ian Each morning of Hacker Camp Shenzhen started with a 2 hour discussion of various Shenzhen and electronics stuff. The first day Ian @ Dangerous Prototypes gave an overview of Shenzhen, food options, and essential life skills for getting around. Jin @ FlyLin gave a crash course overview of Chinese that introduced basics like […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 0: Dongmen and Copy Mall Tour

By ian Before the workshop started we planned to take a few early arrivals to Dongmen and the Copy Mall. Instead, almost the entire group came. We hit Dongmen, China’s largest street market and the oldest market in Shenzhen (Laojie metro stop exit E). Highlights included the pirate software vendors, glasses world (eyeglass and contact […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day -1: Pre-game dinner at Japanese Secret Location

By ian Anyone arriving early was invited to “Japanese Secret Location” in Louhu, the oldest part of Shenzhen, for an all you can eat, all you can drink, Japanese dinner. This is one of our favorite dining spots and we wanted to share it with everyone.

Hacker Camp Shenzhen map and schedule arrives

By ian There’s a lot of Huaqiangbei maps out there (Seeed Studio, HAXLR8R, Oomlout), but we needed one specifically for Hacker Camp Shenzhen. This map has favorite component and tools buildings, some hidden and not normally visited. It also has ‘local’ places I’ve discovered during the last year living in the market area: cheap and […]

Hacker Camp Shenzhen patches

By ian It’s amazingly easy and cheap to get things made in China. To showcase that we’ve had hackerspace passport stamps, banners, and now patches made for the workshop. These patches, while not the best quality ever, were only 1RMB each ($0.16USD) for 50 pieces – delivered in 5 days. Everyone attending the workshop will […]

Meet the amazing China power outlet

By ian Traveling abroad you’ll likely encounter many different outlets. While most of our stuff uses an adapter that will take any local power supply from 100volts to 240volts, the plug shapes are still different. Usually you buy a way over-priced adapter for a specific region before heading out. Not in China! In Shenzhen most […]

Shenzhen workshop hackerspace passport stamps

By ian Everyone attending Hacker Camp Shenzhen will get a Chinese-style hackerspace passport made by Seeed Studio. We created two stamps for the camp. One is for the market tour, the other for the soldering workshop. Hold onto the passports, there will be many more opportunities to get stamps at the Shenzhen Maker Faire following […]

BGA chips: remove, reball, replace the easy way

By ian Today we previewed the Hacker Camp Shenzhen advanced soldering class to prepare translations and figure out how everything will work. Its way, way better than we had hoped. In three hours we learned how to remove, reball, and replace a BGA chip. A couple of us did two. No special BGA reballing tools […]

Last minute chance to join us at soldering school this week!

By ian If you didn’t get a ticket to Hacker Camp Shenzhen there’s still a chance to join us at the mobile phone repair school this week. A few people are going to check it out and prepare the translations. This will be the full week-long course, not the abbreviated 2 session version used during […]