Tindie in Shenzhen next month

#1

Next month, I’ll be spending a few weeks in Shenzhen talking to makers, factory owners, and learning all the lessons one learns on their first trip to China. I’m going to be blogging my adventures as I figure it all out.

Are there any questions you would like answered? Anything I should uncover, look for, try to find out for you?

It will definitely be a huge learning experience. As many can’t make the trip, I want to try to do as much as possible to help current Tindarians.

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#2

Hey Emile,

So cool that you’re doing this!

I’m curious to know how much customization is possible on MediaTek’s Nucleus OS?
We want to build a bare-bones feature phone using their platform but would like to customize with our UX and epaper display if possible.
Any examples of others that have done this or manufacturers that can help?

We’re talking to Seeed but just curious if there’s anything else out there.

Cheers,
Jorge

#3

Cool it’s on my list! I’m visiting Seeed & Haxlr8r too. One Tindie seller is currently going through Hax :slight_smile:

#4

Here are some random questions:

  • Why there are Chinese hardware modules almost half cheaper than the chip itself if we buy it in US/EU in official suppliers.
  • Why some original Chinese ICs/components/products manufactures put obstacles selling their products for US/EU but, you can get the same? products if you buy to other Chinese resellers.
  • Can you find a list of “trusted” component suppliers / reseller in Shenzhen ?
  • Why some web suppliers ship for free and other suppliers are not able to ship it cheaper? (I have examples where the shipping cost per piece will cost the same as the piece value … in quantities…)

Mario

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#5

I would like to know if there are any component suppliers with good English real-time inventory systems on the level of Digikey. I’m thinking of huge inventories with millions of items for sale; not the boutique who has a few hundred parts and unlikely to have a complete solution. I have found that I buy a lot of parts from Digikey just because they are easy to work with, but the prices are about double what I can buy those same parts for from some of my independent distributors in China who don’t have e-commerce websites. Of course, the trade-off would be the increased international shipping, but that usually can be off-set with savings on significantly sized orders.

-John

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#6

It’s cool.
I am sales manager of seeed, warmly welcome to visit our company.
Once you confirmed your schedual, please kindly let me know.
Thank you.

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#7

Yeah most people seem to use Taobao for this but you’re 100% right

#8

Just a heads up, I’ll be gone for the next 3 weeks. If I’m slow to reply, blame slow VPNs :slight_smile:

#9

Hi @emilepetrone,

This is Christina from Makeblock, we based in Shenzhen and we’d love to invite you visit Makeblock.
Makeblock is an open source robot construction platform, most of parts included are made of strong aluminum extrusions, customers can use it to build many kinds of really cool robots, such as wheeled or tracked vechiles, robot arms,camera sliders, music robot, XY ploter even a 3D printer. Makeblock controller in based on Arduino, and it’s compatiable with many kinds industry standard parts, also compatiable with Lego bricks.

My contact email: christina@makeblock.cc, looking forward your reply, thank you.

Best regards!

Christina from Makeblock