Bunnie Huang’s Shenzhen Guide Gets A New Edition – Written By Naomi Wu

December 11, 2023 by 23 Comments

If there’s one city which can truly claim to be the powerhouse of high-tech manufacturing here in the 21st century, it’s the Chinese city of Shenzhen. It’s likely that few people don’t own something made in that city or with parts that have passed through companies in the legendary electronic component markets of its Huaqiangbei district.

For years now the essential introduction to this world has come in the form of [Bunnie Huang]’s Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen, a publication that unlocks the Chinese-speaking maze of vendors. All paper publications eventually become dated though, and this guide is no exception, so we’re very pleased to see a new version is on its way. Better still, it comes courtesy of Shenzhen native and maker extraordinaire [Naomi Wu], whose video series on YouTube has opened up so many corners of her city for those of us thousands of miles away. We can’t wait to see what she puts in it.

It’s also very good indeed on another level to see [Naomi]’s involvement, as earlier in the year she had to curtail her social media output under pressure from the Chinese government. We miss her unique window into the wonders of her city, and aside from her online shop it’s been concerning to hear very little from her of late. You can hear her talking about the book in a promotional video below the break.

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DOOM Ported To Sega Naomi Arcade Hardware

June 17, 2022 by 8 Comments

Porting DOOM to new hardware and software platforms is a fun pastime for many in the hacker scene. [DragonMinded] noticed that nobody had ported the game to the Sega Naomi arcade hardware, and set about doing so herself.

The port builds on work by [Kristoffer Andersen] who built a framebuffer port of DOOM previously. It’s available pre-compiled, complete with the shareware WAD for those eager to load it up on their own Naomi arcade cabinets.

Unlike some limited ports that only give the appearance of a functional version of DOOM, this port is remarkably complete. Loading, saving, and options menus are all present and accounted for, as well as directional sound and even WAD auto-discovery. With that said, there’s only 32 KB of space for save games on the Naomi hardware, so keep that in mind if you find yourself playing regularly.

We love a good DOOM port, whether it’s on an arcade machine, an old forgotten Apple OS, or even a UFI module.

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Naomi Wu On The Sino:Bit, 3D Printers, And Open Source Hardware In China

December 1, 2018 by 8 Comments

Many readers will be familiar with [Naomi Wu], the prolific hardware hacker who has shown us so much of the epicentre of Chinese tech in her native Shenzhen through a lens that most outsiders would struggle to achieve. We’ve seen her touring factories and electronics marts, building a load of interesting projects, and achieving the first open source hardware certifications in China.

We’ve seen a lot of [Naomi] speaking to us in English as an audience outside her country, so it is extremely interesting to see her latest video posting in which she makes her case for open source hardware in Chinese to a Chinese audience (Chinese audio with English subtitles). She’s speaking at the recent China open source conference, and her description starts with “**THIS IS VERY BORING UNLESS YOU ARE INTO OPEN SOURCE**”, which we think is a little unfair as it should appeal to anyone with an interest in the Chinese tech business.

In the talk she takes us through the potential benefits of open source to Chinese business by using her projects as case studies. In particular she concentrates on how the arguments for open source in a commercial arena have to be made differently for a Chinese business to those used in the rest of the world. Using the analogy of a college dorm hotpot party, she outlines the importance of a community in open-source development, then we get a blow-by blow account of her work with Elecrow and Creality on the Sino:bit (a single-board computer targeting education in China) and the 3D printers.

The software support for the Sino:bit in particular demonstrates the added value of open source to a business, with significant tutorial and curriculum material coming from Adafruit Industries, Hindi language and character set support from developers in India, and a Chinese developer painstakingly transcribing all the Chinese character set for the device. That last step alone would have cost a non open-source developer a significant sum.

During her talk we are shown the commercial benefits to all three devices, for example one of the Creality 3D printers rapidly becoming Amazon’s top seller despite an array of knock-off machines appearing. We’ve embedded the video below the break, and we think it should be required viewing for anyone with an interest in open source or the Chinese tech industry.

Once you have seen the video you might find [Naomi’s] guide to buying on Taobao to be of interest, as well as her explanation of the Chinese cultural attitude to engineers while introducing us to the historical master craftsman, [Lu Ban].

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Q Has Nothing On Naomi Wu

March 12, 2017 by 185 Comments

We’re not so much fans of James Bond as we are of Q, the hacker who supplies him with such wonderful things. There is a challenger to Q’s crown, [Naomi Wu] — code name [SexyCyborg] — built an epic gadget called the Pi Palette which hides a Linux laptop inside of a cosmetics case.

You can see the covert mode of the Pi Palette below. It resembles a clamshell cosmetics case with the makeup and applicator in the base and a mirror on the underside of the flip-up lid. The mirror hides an LCD screen in the portrait orientation, as well as a Raspberry Pi 3 running Kali Linux.

The base of the case includes a portable battery beneath the wireless keyboard/touchpad — both of which are revealed when the cosmetics tray is removed. An inductive charger is connected to the battery and [Naomi] built a base station which the Pi Palette sits in for wireless charging.

She envisions this as a covert penetration testing. For that, the Pi Palette needs the ability to put the WiFi dongle into promiscuous mode. She wired in a dual dip-switch package and really went the extra mile to design it into the case. The fit and finish of that switch is just one tiny detail the illustrates the care taken with the entire project. With such a beautiful final project it’s no wonder she took to the streets to show it off. Check that out, as well as the build process, in the video after the break.

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Review: The New Essential Guide To Electronics In Shenzhen

March 13, 2024 by 15 Comments

The city of Shenzhen in China holds a special fascination for the electronic hardware community, as the city and special economic zone established by the Chinese government at the start of the 1980s it has become probably one of the most important in the world for electronic manufacturing. If you’re in the business of producing electronic hardware you probably want to do that business there, and if you aren’t, you will certainly own things whose parts were made there. From the lowly hobbyist who buys a kit of parts on AliExpress through the project featured on Hackaday with a Shenzhen-made PCB, to the engineer bringing an electronic product to market, it’s a place which has whether we know it or not become part of our lives.

First, A Bit Of History

A picture of booths in a Shenzhen market
These are the markets we have been looking for. Credit: Naomi Wu.

At a superficial level it’s very easy to do business there, as a quick trawl through our favourite Chinese online retailers will show. But when you’ve graduated from buying stuff online and need to get down to the brass tacks of sourcing parts and arranging manufacture, it becomes impossible to do so without  being on the ground. At which point for an American or European without a word of Chinese even sourcing a resistor becomes an impossibly daunting task. To tackle this, back in 2016 the Chinese-American hardware hacker and author Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang produced a slim wire-bound volume, The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen. This book contained both a guide to the city’s legendary Huaquanbei electronics marts and a large section of point-to-translate guides for parts, values, and all the other Chinese phrases which a non-Chinese-speaker might need to get their work done in the city. It quickly became an essential tool for sourcing in Shenzhen, and more than one reader no doubt has a well-thumbed copy on their shelves.

There are places in the world where time appears to move very slowly, but this Chinese city is not one of them. A book on Shenzhen written in 2016 is now significantly out of date, and to keep pace with its parts that have since chanced beyond recognition, an update has become necessary. In this endeavour the mantle has passed to the hardware hacker and Shenzhen native Naomi Wu, someone with many years experience in introducing the people, culture, and industries of her city to the world. Her updated volume, The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen has been the subject of a recent crowdfunding effort, and I was lucky enough to snag one. It’s a smart hardcover spiral-bound book with a red and gold cover, and it’s time to open it up and take a look. Continue reading “Review: The New Essential Guide To Electronics In Shenzhen” →

DOOM Runs On Husqvarna’s Robot Lawnmower

March 1, 2024 by 26 Comments

DOOM has been ported to a lot of platforms — to the point where the joke is kind of getting old now. Evidence of that is available in the fact that brands are now getting in on the action. Yes, as reported by The Register, you can now officially play DOOM on your Husqvarna’s Automower.

Nice, right? Speedrun it on this interface.

We had to check if this was some kind of joke; indeed, the April release date had us looking at the calendar. However, it seems to be legit. You’ll be able to download a version of DOOM via the Husqvarna Automower Connect App, and play it on the tiny screen of your robot lawnmower. Hilariously, due to the size of the game, Husqvarna notes it “may take up to a week before the game is playable” due to the time it takes the mower to download it, along with a necessary software update.

Controls are simple. The knob on the robot is used for turning left and right, while pressing start lets you run forward. Firing weapons is done by pressing the control knob.

We’ve seen some quality ports before, including an arcade port that was particularly cool. Really, though, at this stage, you have to work harder to impress. Show us DOOM running on a Minuteman launch console or something. Continue reading “DOOM Runs On Husqvarna’s Robot Lawnmower” →

A Practical Open Source Air Purifier

January 16, 2024 by 44 Comments

In the years since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s fair to say we’ve all become a lot more aware of the air quality surrounding us. Many of us have added a CO2 monitor to our collection of tools, and quite a few will have an air filtration system too. There are plenty of devices on the market that fulfill this niche at varying qualities and prices, but shouldn’t a decent filter be something to make for yourself? [Naomi Wu] thinks so, and she’s put up the design for her Nukit open air purifier online under the GPLv3.

The principle of the unit is simple enough: it’s a box with an HVAC filter on the front and a set of computer fans on its side to draw air through. But it’s more than just a box, as there are three separate versions for wall-mount, hanging mount or a freestanding tower, and each one comes as a DXF file with all parts ready for laser cutting. It’s about as straightforward a way to get your hands on a well-designed and high quality air purifier as could be imagined.

[Naomi] has been quiet for a while in her familiar role as YouTube maker and guide to the nooks and crannies of her native Shenzhen, so it’s very positive to see her still active and producing projects after being warned off social media by the authorities. If you’d like to see another recent project of hers, look no further than her update to [Bunnie Huang]’s Shenzhen guide.