Techtropolis
Experiencing the Chinese supply chain, up close and personal
David Blaza
6/18/2012 9:54 AM EDT
What did I buy?
Sumsang, iPheno, or Motoaolr phone.
What did I buy? This place was such a treasure trove. I was spoiled for choice, but since I was traveling light, I really hadn't room for a lot and I had already picked up a quad DSO at Seeed Studio yesterday. In the video building, I was drawn to a full pan-and-tilt wireless IP camera for $30, which was too good a deal to pass up so I bought it. In the video building, the stall holder will not only sell you a camera or switcher but will build you a custom system while you wait using CMOS sensors and lenses. You have to see this to believe it!
CMOS-sensors-r-us.
In the laptop/tablet building, Mike Zhang noticed an Android logo on a TV, so we asked the vendor what it was. He showed us a range of HDMI connected boxes that run Android on various ARM CPUs along with Wi-Fi and USB.
Android TV box.
These boxes allow you to stream content from the web to your TV so you can "cord cut" from your cable provider. The smallest and cheapest was a dongle type that plugs straight into a HDMI port and has a USB connection for a keyboard/mouse and, I am hoping, the LEAP Motion box when it arrives. I paid roughly $40 for this dongle; there is no English documentation so it could be a complete bust, but it has an ARM Cortex A5 CPU and is produced by one of the emerging China fabless companies that EE Times' China Correspondent Junko Yoshida has been writing about on EETimes.com (could be Rockchip). Doing a little research on the product shows that quite a few companies are looking at this TV conversion market including this one I saw on Kickstarter and one that Junko wrote about last week. Both of these devices could be teardown fodder if I have problems with them but will be fun to play with.
If you ever get a chance to visit China and are in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, or Shenzhen, you owe it to yourself to visit Huaqiangbei. The sheer scale of the place boggles the mind. For westerners it's sometimes hard to comprehend that Shenzhen itself has three times the population of Los Angeles and that China has 17 cities larger than LA. The troubling aspect of the market for me is that counterfeiting is rife and even local companies fall prey to traders looking to make easy money. This lack of trust in the supply chain is a huge issue for our industry.
David Blaza is vice president of UBM Electronics, which publishes EE Times.
Sumsang, iPheno, or Motoaolr phone.
What did I buy? This place was such a treasure trove. I was spoiled for choice, but since I was traveling light, I really hadn't room for a lot and I had already picked up a quad DSO at Seeed Studio yesterday. In the video building, I was drawn to a full pan-and-tilt wireless IP camera for $30, which was too good a deal to pass up so I bought it. In the video building, the stall holder will not only sell you a camera or switcher but will build you a custom system while you wait using CMOS sensors and lenses. You have to see this to believe it!
CMOS-sensors-r-us.
In the laptop/tablet building, Mike Zhang noticed an Android logo on a TV, so we asked the vendor what it was. He showed us a range of HDMI connected boxes that run Android on various ARM CPUs along with Wi-Fi and USB.
Android TV box.
These boxes allow you to stream content from the web to your TV so you can "cord cut" from your cable provider. The smallest and cheapest was a dongle type that plugs straight into a HDMI port and has a USB connection for a keyboard/mouse and, I am hoping, the LEAP Motion box when it arrives. I paid roughly $40 for this dongle; there is no English documentation so it could be a complete bust, but it has an ARM Cortex A5 CPU and is produced by one of the emerging China fabless companies that EE Times' China Correspondent Junko Yoshida has been writing about on EETimes.com (could be Rockchip). Doing a little research on the product shows that quite a few companies are looking at this TV conversion market including this one I saw on Kickstarter and one that Junko wrote about last week. Both of these devices could be teardown fodder if I have problems with them but will be fun to play with.
If you ever get a chance to visit China and are in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, or Shenzhen, you owe it to yourself to visit Huaqiangbei. The sheer scale of the place boggles the mind. For westerners it's sometimes hard to comprehend that Shenzhen itself has three times the population of Los Angeles and that China has 17 cities larger than LA. The troubling aspect of the market for me is that counterfeiting is rife and even local companies fall prey to traders looking to make easy money. This lack of trust in the supply chain is a huge issue for our industry.
David Blaza is vice president of UBM Electronics, which publishes EE Times.
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C3 Lighting Solutions
6/20/2012 11:11 AM EDT
I was an expat working in SZ (Yantian) and used to go to this place with my team to get parts for prototypes/production. We called it Sai 4 ge 1 in Chinese. We setup a factory for an American company in Yantian. First time I have seen photos of this place outside of China. By the way, in Southern China most of the major cities have some type of place like this - smaller scale - where you can get just about anything electronic. What is strange is that this place you mention has all kinds of cool parts that I have never seen in the USA. For example, the strange little battery connectors for hand held stuff, housings for remotes and key fobs, and other stuff all at great prices.
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Gearhead426
6/27/2012 9:09 PM EDT
This reminds me of Akihabara (Tokyo) in the early 1980s - I remember picking up a blue LED (8V drop?) - no one in the US had ever seen anything like it. Great article, going to have to add this to my "bucket list." I've dealt with Seeed Studios, and talked with them at Maker Faire in 2011 - good group of guys!
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