First we started a Chinese company, then we got a bank account and import export permit. The last major thing is a work permit and residency visa. Americans, Canadians, and soon Australians, all get an automatic 10 year multiple entry visas for China. It’s quite common for foreigners to post up in China for years […]
Category Archives: #liveupdates
HOW TO: China import/export permit and company bank
Last week we described the painful process of opening a Chinese company. That was actually the fast and easy part. There’s still a pile of paperwork and months of waiting ahead. This week we look at the proper, and improper, ways to export from China. A Chinese import export permit is permission to exchange foreign […]
HOW TO: Start a Chinese Company
While Shenzhen is becoming “Hollywood for Makers”, and not always in a good way, there don’t seem to be a lot of foreign open hardware/maker/start-up/accelerated/innovated/incubated people starting Chinese companies. As far as we know, we are the first foreign owned open hardware centric Chinese company in Shenzhen. With everything going on here, we definitely wont […]
DP 2016: Live from China!
Today Dangerous Prototypes is a legal Chinese company! 100% legit with import/export license, work permits, visas, and an office in Huaqiangbei (the world’s largest electronics market). It is likely the only Open Hardware centric WFOE (Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise) in Shenzhen, and perhaps China. It took over a year to complete the process, and we […]
Screw it, lets go live! Dev site launch
Dirt cheap SLA 3d prints, custom color PCBs, and not-ripping-you-off pogo test pins are now available at dev.dangerousprototypes.com! We built a bunch of new, no nonsense, instant pricing services modeled after the simplicity of DirtyPCBs.com, please help us test them! Dirty SLA 3D prints – $0.95 per gram for beautiful white SLA 3D prints. Upload […]
Help with Xvfb, Eagle, and permissions on Ubuntu?
Trying to get Eagle working on a headless Ubuntu box using X virtual frame buffer. It sometimes kind of works, and there’s a general feeling that permissions are involved. xvfb-run -a /opt/eagle-7.3.0/bin/eagle -C’EXPORT IMAGE schematic.png 600; QUIT’ /var/www/dangercore/temp_upload/bp.sch xvfb-run -a /opt/eagle-7.3.0/bin/eagle -C’RUN /var/www/dangercore/eagle/ulp/bom.ulp; QUIT;’ /var/www/dangercore/temp_upload/bp.sch Two commands need to be run. The first is a […]
Bay Area Maker Faire 2015
Please have a free Sierra Nevada for us at Friday night’s Maker party, we’re skipping this one. Too much going on here in Mom’s basement to venture out into the sunlight. If you’re at the faire early you can still check Noisebridge hacker space and recreate the Mission District Taco Crawl.
3D model .STL to .PNG preview
Bing search sucks. Tried a bunch of ways to get image previews from 3d model .STL files. OpenSCAD does a decent and fast preview, but you gotta figure out where to put the camera for a good scene. The Linux repositories with OpenSCAD are outdated so you have to compile from source. Fire it up […]
CNC3020 assembled in 30 minutes
Got it bolted together in less than an hour. Works. Except the safety stop that is, it does not work at all. Next the software.
CNC3020 milling machine arrives
Hacker Camp Shenzhen volume 4 was a huge success! It seemed like half the hackers were playing with CNC mills of some sort. On the second day of camp I spent an awesome afternoon brainstorming CNC PCB making with Drew and hunting Depu market for copper clad, rivets and other parts. We also had the […]
On the second day of Taobaomas
It is 8:30pm in China. Time to review today’s Taobaomas haul. Taobao recently started taking foreign debit and credit cards, so for the first time I feel fully Taobao-enabled. Today we have another load of food imports. Hope thus isn’t annoying you too much, I just want to show the variety, price, and speed that […]
On the first day of Taobao Christmas
Taobao, the Chinese shopping site that combines eBay, Amazon, and Alibaba, recently got a lot easier for foreigners to use. As Sjaak documented in his Taobao buying adventures a few years ago, most foreigners use an agency that takes payment via Paypal, purchases your babies, and forwards them to you via DHL or airmail. Even […]
PCB Christmas Tree Ornaments
Our office Christmas Tree is decorated with PCBs this year. Bitmap images of classic Christmas iconography were imported into Eagle for the board outlines. Decoration was supposed to be exposed silver areas but something went wrong. Instead, we just traced over the masked copper with markers. Should you like your own next year these will […]
Maker Villa Penang workshop
Maker Villa Penang started out with a breakfast of local street food at the historic Ren I Tang hotel, we grabbed a bag of Indian pastries and curry dips on the corner and met the group. Hackers with style. Maker Villa Penang rented this entire building in a UNESCO world heritage site for our accomidations. […]
Maker Villa Penang introduction
William @ SGmakers threw a Hacker Villa in Penang Malaysia after attending (and sponsoring) Hacker Camp Shenzhen. We got to attend the first two days full of hacks, food, and making new friends. Penang is an island, and UNESCO world heritage site, just off the coast of Malaysia. Its renound for street food, a mix […]
Cheap laser cutter arrives pretty busted up
Like many others we have succumbed to the urge for a cheap laser cutter. What started as a $200 purchase quickly doubled, but that’s still a fraction of the cost of an expensive one. Why do we what it? That’s a not very well hit secret. The ubiquitous blue Chinese freight truck drops the crate […]
Yihua and Depu electronics market visit
Today we piled into a taxi with visiting hackers to check out two electronics markets. Both are about an hour north of Shenzhen in Shajin, a very industrial area. We have high hopes of finding more equipment and tools than are available in huaqiangbei. Top on our list was a USB controlled wire cutter Zach […]
Tripping to Shajin equipment market
Cruising through Bao’on on way to Shajin tools and equipment market. I’ve never been to this one, but Oomlout and Zach Hoeken both says there’s tons of great stuff. We are looking for a wire cutter and stripped machine, as well as a small laser cutter for blasting polyimide. You can probably guess what the […]
Random Saturday electronics blog
Replacing a NIC with something hopefully high quality from Intel. Noticed that Intel uses a healthy mix of 0402, 0603, and 0805 components. Especially capacitors. Not sure if this is due to cost vs capacity, or if smaller, harder to place components are used sparingly as needed. From experience typical caps get cheaper as they […]
SmartMatrix Shield Pro
EmbeddedCreations writes: I’ve been working on a new version of the SmartMatrix Shield, not meant to replace it, but to be an option for those that want to maximize the capabilities of the Teensy, while connecting to a matrix display. Let’s call it the SmartMatrix Shield Pro. This board will have the advantage of pinout/functionality, […]