Made with China – The Professionalization of Make

About the Author: Silvia Lindtner is post-doctoral Fellow at ISTC and Fudan University. She researches and writes about DIY Maker culture in China. She is currently based in Shenzhen exploring how Chinese manufacturing comes together with IoT start-up culture.

Since January 2013,…

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iTunes for 3D Printing

While people are paying a lot of attention to the idea of 3D printed fire arms, they are missing what will undoubtedly have a larger impact as 3D printing takes off: intellectual property rights.

But startups are emerging to address this issue.…

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Meet Clyde: A Hackable Lamp Designed at HAXLR8R

UPDATE: Photos of Clyde added below!

Clyde is an Adruino-compatible, expressive lamp that looks like a fun way to experiment and get creative with hacking your physical environment. Pop an XBee shield in so you can talk to Clyde remotely and have…

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Chinese Cigarettes are Beautiful

Okay, this post may be just a tad off-topic but since we talked about smoking in China in yesterday’s post, $10,000 Android Phones, Smoke and Gourmet Espresso, I thought I’d share these photos I took today in a shop in the Shenzhen…

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I Needed Some RFID Tags So I Went to the Factory

At a Hack Things meetup a couple of months ago, Niall Smart presented his “Tactile Music Player,” a device that uses an RFID reader and a Raspberry Pi to play music by simply placing physical album covers on a stand, which are…

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$10,000 Android Phones, Smoke and Gourmet Espresso: My Impressions of Shenzhen

By now, Ethan is now back in the states and I’m treating myself to another helping of Shenzhen in order to catch up with Romotive, to visit a security marketplace and to stop by an RFID factory to buy some supplies (blog…

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DIY Maker Story: Travis Felman of Molecule Synth

We visited Travis Felman at HAXLR8R in Shenzhen last week. In a lot of ways, Travis is the prototypical example of the DIY / hacker / maker phenomenon. A PhD in English Literature who spent time as a professor at Lewis and…

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Arduino-Compatible, Wi-Fi Board from HAXLR8R Company, Spark Core

We were too busy travelling to New York and China to notice the launch of Spark Core, probably one of the most interesting prototyping boards to be released…yet. It’s pretty simple: a prototyping board with Wi-Fi on the front and Arduino on…

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Explore a security marketplace in Huaqiangbei

Last week we wrote about our visit to the Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen with program director of HAXLR8R and former co-founder of Makerbot, Zach Hoeken Smith. On that trip Zach mentioned that there was an entire building dedicated to security products.…

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How Romotive Went from Prototype to Polished Product

This morning I met up in Shenzhen with Peter Seid, one of the cofounders of Romotive. I first met Peter and his co-founder Phu in Seattle at a TechStars mentor-startup mixer just days after they were accepted into the program. Back then,…

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