Maker Faire Shenzhen was inhabited by lot of strange and wonderful non-humans. Here’s a selection of our favorites.
This walking baby-bot is controlled by the elaborate headgear worn by the operator.
More photos below the fold. Continue reading “Maker Faire Shenzhen China: Robots!”
Tom McKinnon is building an electric motorcycle with Hackcelerator, a program that helps makers start businesses using resources in Shenzhen. He’s been working on his project for 2-3 years, and is most satisfied with the creativity side of it. He likes Maker Faires because he loves robots and the chance to meet new people. Continue reading “Maker Shenzhen Interview: Tom McKinnon, Colorado”
Every Tuesday we give away two coupons for the free PCB drawer via Twitter. This post was announced on Twitter, and in 24 hours we’ll send coupon codes to two random retweeters.
Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times a every week:
Debraj has been developing a project to read the OBD information through CAN bus. His design is based on the dsPIC33FJ128MC802 (3.3V) and MCP2551. He is using a factory stock OBD cable and feeding the data into a jack on the project board. The data is displayed on a 16×4 LCD and includes engine RPM, throttle, vehicle speed, etc.
The description, hardware schematic, software description, code can be found at hobbydebraj website.
Via the contact form.
The US tax deadline is today, who ever hasn’t filed their taxes yet, better do it quickly. You can also check out how we do taxes for Dangerous Prototypes.
David Li is the founder of XinCheJian, China’s first hackerspace in Shanghai. He sees Maker Faires as an opportunity for Chinese makers to highlight their creativity and break out of the mass-production mentality. This was his first faire, and he’d would like to see them return on a yearly basis. Continue reading “Maker Shenzhen Interview: David Li, Shanghai”
Here’s a sample of the buzz and activities from around Maker Faire Shenzhen.
Mitch Altman, inventor of the TV-B-Gone and hacker space evangelist, was there. He’s on an extended tour of China with a group of hackers and open source makers. You know it’s a real Maker Faire when Mitch Altman arrives.
More photos below the fold. Continue reading “Maker Faire Shenzhen China: Around the Faire”
Seeed was kind enough to make us a banner. Lots of makers have these in the US, but we never think far enough ahead to get it done. Look for it in California and New York this summer.
More photos below the fold. Continue reading “Maker Faire Shenzhen China: Dangerous Prototypes booth”
During Maker Faire setup we snapped these behind the scenes pics. About 70 people hung banners, setup tables, and prepared IdeaLand for the faire.
More photos below the fold. Continue reading “Maker Faire Shenzhen China: Setup”
Shenzhen’s Maker Faire was China’s first. It was a huge success, and everyone on our team had a great time. Here’s our interviews with the makers and celebrities.
The makers in China are amazing, and it was a privilege to meet such a great group of people at China’s first Maker Faire. We’ll be back next year for sure!
Dangerous Prototypes drops by the Apliu Street electronics market in Hong Kong on the way to Shenzhen, China. It’s a smaller market, but a great warmup for Hua Qiang Bei.
Check out pictures, and descriptions in our posts.
You can also grab a Google Maps layer for all the locations we visited.
Lets take a break from the geek tour and give away two more Hakko 900M-T-3C soldering iron tips, and one can of heavy duty solder paste. This paste is too acidic and corrosive for PCB use. It’s intended for heavy duty soldering, like joining or repairing copper pipes.
We’ll give these away to 3 random commentators below, just leave a comment with your preference.
We did a lot of fun stuff in Hong Kong that doesn’t fit in any other category. These are our pictures of food, fish, and fun. Here’s a big part of the Dangerous Prototypes crew, from the left: Sjaak, Ian, Lynn, and Vimark.
More food, snacks, gamer t-shirts, and IRC jokes below the fold.
Apliu Street has two major electronics component shops. Both carry way more stuff than our local electronics store, and the prices are a lot closer to eBay or Mouser than anything we’ve seen in the past.
These drawers contain a ton of parts, just grab what you need and pay on the way out. We picked up a 10W 10Ohm resistor for one of our Maker Faire demo projects. You can see they use strong shelving option for smaller stores.
More Apliu Street electronics shops below the fold.
We’re giving away two Hakko 900M-T-3C bevel tips that we picked up from the Pak Lik store at Apliu Street, Hong Kong. These tips are great for drag soldering, although not as good as the elusive 3CM mini-wave tips.
Leave a comment below, and we’ll pick two random winners tomorrow.
If you miss the Defcon electronic badge hacking it’s a good idea to check out the offerings of some of the lesser known cons. The recently concluded Notacon 9 in Cleveland, OH presented a badge based on the PIC 8-bit processor (PIC18F14K50-IP) with USB support. Two versions were released: a novice version with fewer solder points and simpler power input, facilitating easier assembly, and an advanced version using the same processor, LEDs and other gadgets, but they report “utilizes a more complicated (and flexible!) power input system that, for all intents and purposes, turns your badge into a Minty Boost. Yes, it is possible to put your badge together to charge your cell phone. Very handy at hacker cons.”
Complete documentation including schematic and BOM are available from the Notacon 9 badge page and are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States (CC BY-SA 3.0) license. The Notacon crew usually make PCBs and parts kits available for sale some time after the conference, so those interested should keep tabs on their Nerdsnook webstore page.
In Hong Kong ‘Golden’ is synonymous with computer stores. We spotted Golden stores all over the city. The Golden Computer Arcade is one of the biggest, and it’s just a short walk from Apliu Street.
Apliu Street in Hong Kong is a mini electronic gadget and part market. We stopped by on our way to Shenzhen to check it out. It isn’t as impressive as the other markets on our Global Geek Tour, but it has a few really well stocked parts stores with online prices. We’d love to have a market like this in our own neighborhood.
Apliu Street is a two block stretch of market stands, gadget shops, and electronic part stores in the Sham Shui Po neighborhood of Hong Kong. With only two major parts stores it doesn’t really compare to the other markets on the Global Geek Tour, but it was a great place to geek out on the way to mainland China.
Today we’ll have pictures and videos of Apliu Street, and the interesting stuff we spotted. We’ll also give away Hakko soldering tips and a couple other things we picked up in the market.
If you fly into Hong Kong on your own geek tour, Apliu Street is definitely worth a short trip. Here’s a couple resources to get you started:
All this week we’re posting reports from our Global Geek Tour to China. We brought lots of stuff back to give away, so be on the look out for freebies along the way. Each day will have a video, pictures, and giveaways.
Don’t forget our wiki of resources to help plan your next geek tour or Maker Faire. We recently expanded the digital travel section with reliable VPN configurations, which are essential if you want to securely monitor your home network or access your usual sports betting sites while overseas. The updated guide also features fresh offline transit maps, comprehensive translation cheat sheets for negotiating with local component vendors, and a continuously updated list of our absolute favorite late-night noodle shops scattered around the Huaqiangbei district.
