This really worries me as an American. We're losing the entire culture of hands on production. Fry's and Maker Faire is great, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to this sort of thriving community.<p>I think the US needs its own Free Trade Zone. Let's put it on the US / Mexico border, allow anyone to take up work there. Promise 0% taxes for a decade and put up no trade barriers at all. Maybe that would bring some of this production back home.
I just returned from China on the weekend. I spent a week in Hua Qiang Bei and toured two factories. I was blown away by the availability of seemingly everything. The article does not exaggerate the sheer number of components available for every possible use it seemed like. One section of a huge multi story mall was only security cameras, the next section was only home audio equipment, the next had a all the parts to make LED lights for architectural applications, then another had a desktop SMT machine for sale ($3800, 12 reels). It went on for several blocks of giant electronics shopping malls.<p>Language is definitely a barrier, and the sheer choice could be overwhelming. When you have 10 LEDs to choose from at Radio Shack you can make a choice easier than when you have ten floors of stalls that all sell LEDs. I got lost on several occasions wandering around these huge stores of parts. It was awesome.<p>I wish there was some comparable place in the US, but I have never heard of it.
There is a lot of this in Silicon Valley. Competition isn't as fierce, and a lot more respect for IP laws, so it isn't quite the wild west but you can walk into Avnet's warehouse and get pretty much any part you need. The biggest issue was Fry's getting into the component business, putting the small guys out of business, and then getting out of it. Still recovering from that but you can see it in places like JameCo getting much better.<p>As Trevor complained we don't have a lot of small hand factories, which is a bit surprising. Partly its the cost of space, partly its the regulation environment. So if you need a custom fastener you can get it made but if you then want 10,000 you need to switch to someone else and that takes time.<p>That said, the culture and features grow in environments where a lot of hardware design and implementation is being done. Much of the money in the valley is in software (its slowly shifting back) and so much of these places died off, but you can still find it if you look for it.
In addition to what's the article tells, you can get in china components you just can't get in the u.s.<p>For example , the mt6250 which is 260mhz arm7 microprocessor, with 8MByte ram , with dsp, with cellular modem, with bluetooth and with all kins of IO.it can run a feature phone with touchscreen and run games. Or be a cool internet of things micro controller. Or.<p>How much does it cost ? $2 in volume , in low volume you can maybe get it in $3 in china. But no way to get it in the u.s. .<p>And i bet there are plenty of other gems available.
I find urban China absolutely fascinating, a feeling of relentless unbounded growth and development like London in the mid 1800s or New York in the 19?0s. To think how quickly these mega cities pop up out of nothing.. I have a feeling we will see nothing again quite like it.<p>On a similar vein to the OP, this is a video of a walkabout through the SED electronics market in Shenzhen - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0Qaxzp2nQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0Qaxzp2nQ</a><p>Be forewarned, it's just the guy looking at tablets and asking prices of everything, but a skip through really gives you an impression of the place and the diversity of manufacturers (skin deep, at least).
Who is the typical customer at this shop? Is it purchasing agents from volume manufacturers, or engineers building prototypes? I'd guess it is the former, and the people building prototypes are lucky, in that they can piggyback off this ecosystem, and the sellers are happy to deal with small quantities.<p>Perhaps this type of shop has disappeared from places like the US because the volume manufacturers now do their purchasing via more efficient B2B Internet transactions, and the prototyping community in any one location on earth is too small to make this sort of shop profitable? From a prototyping point of view, the anomaly is the presence of this shop, not its absence.<p>A solution might be to recreate the "techshop" experience on the Internet, in a way that gathers the "long tail" of prototypers from around the world into a number that justifies a significant investment. A virtual techshop?<p>Every component would have a complete mechanical/electrical simulation model available. Want to see what a component looks like? Pull up a dimensionally accurate 3D model. The model can be rendered to get a visual picture, or pulled into any CAD package to check fit or do a dynamics simulation. Electrical components should be able to fit into a circuit simulation.<p>It should be possible to search/browse components, including a parametric search. Since we've got 3D models, it should be possible to render a display case where you can pick up and inspect each component.<p>Once a design is complete, it should be possible for the system to generate a set of purchase orders, and mechanical drawings for custom parts, directly from the design data. (This is what CAD/EDA software already tries to do, but typically stops at the BOM stage rather than progressing to a purchase order.)<p>A dream, but dreaming doesn't hurt.
I wonder if there would be a way to have the Shenzhen/Hong Kong tech ecosystem while also having acceptable air quality. Hong Kong is probably my favorite city in the world, but the air is really bad (not quite as bad as Beijing or old Mexico City, but bad). I assume a lot of the pollution is due to less value-added industries and primary electrical power generation (using coal), which aren't really essential to a tech area -- you could run HVDC to send power from far away, or go nuclear. EV vs. ICE would move a lot of the transportation pollution away, and domestic needs could be more electrified (I think rural China still uses a lot of wood/coal burning domestically, which is bad for both indoor air quality and, in aggregate, pollution.)
Very cool! Sadly, in the US at least, I venture to guess that each generation (~5 years) of 'hackers' arrives less mentally connected to circuits and more connected to graphic design.<p>It wasn't -that- long ago you could buy a solderless breadboard-equipped ISA or PCI card and easily cobble together your own custom PC hardware project. Countless hours of analog fun too!
The prevalent attitude here is worrying.<p>As a non-american, I think diversifying and spreading the production (and knowhow) of technology is a good thing, in pretty much the same way not having only one browser/os vendor is a good thing. It's even better when it's spread geographically, and across different cultures.<p>I understand the reasoning of wanting to keep every thing local, but, and please pardon my frankness, it seems selfish .
I guess that's another drawback to zoning laws in the US. Density makes a lot of creative things possible in cities that are harder to do in the burbs. Of course, the upside is possible negatives aren't all concentrated together either.
search electronic parts @ <a href="http://search.taobao.com" rel="nofollow">http://search.taobao.com</a>, you'll be surprised. keyword: 電阻 (capacitor)，電位器旋鈕（knob），貼片機 （SMT machine）. You can also check individuas store like this one [1], price is in RMB.<p>[1] <a href="http://shop33817767.taobao.com/" rel="nofollow">http://shop33817767.taobao.com/</a>
I can't imagine being able to walk up to the engineer who built the part and being able to ask them questions directly. No 4 day waiting period between ordering parts. Great piece guys!
Having been to similar buildings/stores (though not quite the size of the Shenzhen ones) in Shanghai, it's very easy to spend hours upon hours browsing the crowded aisles. That's definitely one of the primary things I missed moving back to the states. Well, that and real Chinese food.
Shenzhen is the headquarter to:
Huawei
ZTE
Tencent software (largest software house, QQ rules in China)
etc.
It's also the center of GPS/Tablet/Surveillance...you name it.
It's not just Shenzen. Many large Chinese cities seem to have an area composed of these kind of electronics malls. In Beijing it's located in Zhongguancun, for instance.
I've heard this about the apparel manufacturing market as well. Parts for sewing machines, complex machinery, etc. etc. are all right there in town. It just doesn't exist in the US. They don't produce in China because it's cheaper, they produce there because it's the only place you can.
The visual is quite cool, but the piece itself is a pretty typical "white guy walks into east coast Chinese city and is blown away by THE FUTURE" piece of insight-free China-commentary.
This is hardly news at all. It seems a China-tech article pops up every few months talking about relatively the same thing, awe, amazement, efficiency, whatever it may be.<p>Its not just Shenzhen though. You will find comparable shopping mall esque ones in other large cities. Parts of Yiwu and other cities in the south also have tons of electronic components. However, like many already stated, language is definitely a barrier for those that don't speak Mandarin.<p>...if anyone's looking for an agent. let me know ;)
While working as an Engineer for over 2 years within walking distance to Huaqiangbei, I discovered there's a dark side to the SEG market that a tour guide is not going to point out. This is also where much of the grey market and fake ICs end up.<p>Our company wasted weeks and thousands of dollars trying to save time by using some SEG parts to speed up the production of an EVT board last year.<p>SEG also caters heavily to the shanzhai phone manufactures.
I started thinking of Blade Runner Los Angeles after reading the first couple paragraphs.....Hannibal Chew sitting in one of those stalls saying, "I just do eyes".
Why we don't have these things in the EU? Because guy who would build them would be penalized 75% on income in France. Socialism is like a cancer - bad cells in the body feeding on the good ones. Making Chinese competitive factor this much stronger.<p>EDIT: Making instead of Make