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Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

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Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#21

Post by candiodari »

the-dude wrote: post #20
candiodari wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that a government that gets accused on a regular basis of things from religious discrimination to organ trading, on occasion even by credible sources, is unlikely to be better than the US government. Most Chinese people I work with would agree with that too. They left China, they know why, and they're mostly not looking to get back.

The only differing aspect I see is this: the Chinese primarily mistreat their own citizens. The US primarily mistreat whoever opposes their interests. The latter actually affects me, being a non-US citizen.

Have you looked at China's trade balance ? China is the cause of the worldwide austerity measures (not 100%, but 90%). So I guarantee you it is affecting you personally, even in San Francisco.

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#22

Post by Nokinside »

ThomPete wrote: post #16

Great documentary. One of the most interesting types of innovation which has come out of Shenzen is within production. Some of these companies literally started creating cheap knockoffs smartphone batteries and is now delivering superior batteries for ex large car manufactorers in ways European companies simply can't compete with.

It's easy to look down copying and forget that copying someone who is ahead is usually the fastest way to learn.

Japanese started the same way. They started with cheap sup-par copies and trinkets. Gradually their quality improved.

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#23

Post by ThomPete »

Nokinside wrote: post #22
ThomPete wrote: post #16

Great documentary. One of the most interesting types of innovation which has come out of Shenzen is within production. Some of these companies literally started creating cheap knockoffs smartphone batteries and is now delivering superior batteries for ex large car manufactorers in ways European companies simply can't compete with.

It's easy to look down copying and forget that copying someone who is ahead is usually the fastest way to learn. Japanese started the same way. They started with cheap sup-par copies and trinkets. Gradually their quality improved.

Agree thats actually how most people become great musicians, by learning what others do and build on that. In fact i cant think of an single area which isn't only getting better by copying other stuff and then moving past that.

One could say the evolutionary process is based on this principle.

Copy. Paste. Improve. Repeat.

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#24

Post by rubber_duck »

I don't know much about HW development but recently I wanted to play around with making a smart quadcopter to play with ML - so I'm looking in to what would be required on the hardware side.

Devboards I see online with a high powered ARM board are in 150-200$ range for the devboard without camera/sensors and with stuff I don't need (network ports, display ports, etc).

Then I look at my 150$ Chinese smartphone (Xaomi RedMi Note 3 Pro) - it has Snapdragon 652 - Quad Core 64 bit CPU, OpenCL 2 capable GPU, 3GB ram, 16 GB storage, 13MP and 5MP cameras attached, gyro on board and 4G/WiFi/GPS, 4kMAh battery. The specs alone are better then the best devboard I found.

So I'm thinking if I can get it to boot without screen I could throw away the case and the screen, hook up GPIO trough USB for 10$ and get a better dev board than I would for 200$ with all the sensors and IO and a battery on top ?

I wonder how much it would cost me if I could just buy the parts on these markets and not have to disassemble a complete phone.

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#25

Post by shakna »

rubber_duck wrote: post #24

I don't know much about HW development but recently I wanted to play around with making a smart quadcopter to play with ML - so I'm looking in to what would be required on the hardware side. Devboards I see online with a high powered ARM board are in 150-200$ range for the devboard without camera/sensors and with stuff I don't need (network ports, display ports, etc). Then I look at my 150$ Chinese smartphone (Xaomi…

The DragonBoard 410c might suit you.

I see it for $75 at one of my usual suppliers.

It has a snapdragon 410 - 1.2Ghz, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.

However, both of these are probably huge overkill for a quadcopter.

The problem you face is twofold:

* The quadcopter needs to react in real time, so you need a real time OS.

* Machine learning can use a huge amount of memory.

The usual way to solve this, is a simplified onboard system. Crash prevention and the like. Probably an Arduino or ESP8266.

Then, that communicates with a ML system on a laptop or the like, which does the hard work.

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#26

Post by the-dude »

candiodari wrote: post #21
the-dude wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only differing aspect I see is this: the Chinese primarily mistreat their own citizens. The US primarily mistreat whoever opposes their interests. The latter actually affects me, being a non-US citizen.

Have you looked at China's trade balance ? China is the cause of the worldwide austerity measures (not 100%, but 90%). So I guarantee you it is affecting you personally, even in San Francisco.

Are you comparing killing people and economic policies? And do they not have the right to establish their own policies?

Do you have sources for this claim? All I can remember is some financial crisis around 2009 which lead to economic downturn and austerity. I seem to remember this crisis originated in ... the US? You disagree?

And I hated SF, very happy in Groningen for some time now.

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#27

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

rubber_duck wrote: post #24

I don't know much about HW development but recently I wanted to play around with making a smart quadcopter to play with ML - so I'm looking in to what would be required on the hardware side. Devboards I see online with a high powered ARM board are in 150-200$ range for the devboard without camera/sensors and with stuff I don't need (network ports, display ports, etc). Then I look at my 150$ Chinese smartphone (Xaomi…

150-200$ sounds like an official manufacturer's devboard, but for the maker market you shouldn't have to shell out more than 30$. What are these boards you've been looking at?

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#28

Post by yore129 »

Nokinside wrote: post #17
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

I find this fascinating and troubling. From a hacker perspective it is incredible. On the other hand, this is all driven by a profoundly illiberal government that has no goals other than its own survival and that's supported by a lot of human misery, some might say slavery. I love using Apple products but it's hard to forget the conditions at places like Foxconn. Both sides think they are outflanking the other - the…

>profoundly illiberal government that has no goals other than its own survival and that's supported by a lot of human misery, This is common misconception. China is authoritarian country but it's not a totalitarian dictatorship. Chinese government actually has problems of controlling it's population and people are not afraid to show their displeasure with protest and riots when things are wrong. Politically modern Ch…

> They are not forced to work in Foxconn, they choose to work in Foxconn in exchange of enough nutrition.

That's totally untrue. People who come from the country side can't change jobs like that, they need some kind of permit to change jobs and sometimes they are actually forced to work somewhere. The job market in China is clearly biased against the worker, there is no real freedom of work for a large amount of people in China. And you're not even talking about all the corruption going that make sure these people keep getting exploited and forced to work in these places.

> China is authoritarian country but it's not a totalitarian dictatorship

By all standards it is a dictatorship, with re-education camps, no freedom of speech, a secret police and summary executions. Just because they are capitalists doesn't change that. The fact is, in the west we don't care, provided we have our slaves that build cheap stuffs. We basically outsourced slavery and accepted it thanks to an effective PR and the corruption of our own governments. Things were different 10/15 years ago, back then, China had a different reputation.

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#29

Post by rubber_duck »

shakna wrote: post #25
rubber_duck wrote: post #24

I don't know much about HW development but recently I wanted to play around with making a smart quadcopter to play with ML - so I'm looking in to what would be required on the hardware side. Devboards I see online with a high powered ARM board are in 150-200$ range for the devboard without camera/sensors and with stuff I don't need (network ports, display ports, etc). Then I look at my 150$ Chinese smartphone (Xaomi…

The DragonBoard 410c might suit you. I see it for $75 at one of my usual suppliers. It has a snapdragon 410 - 1.2Ghz, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc. However, both of these are probably huge overkill for a quadcopter. The problem you face is twofold: * The quadcopter needs to react in real time, so you need a real time OS. * Machine learning can use a huge amount of memory. The usual way to solve this, is a simplified…

>The usual way to solve this, is a simplified onboard system. Crash prevention and the like. Probably an Arduino or ESP8266.

My idea was have something like that hooked in to the bigger board via USB - the Android is creating flight plans and the micro controller is just managing the motors and following the plans it receives.

snapdragon 410 seems like it doesn't have OpenCL 2 (shared memory access ?)

Re: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware [video] (2016)

#30

Post by shakna »

rubber_duck wrote: post #29
shakna wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DragonBoard 410c might suit you. I see it for $75 at one of my usual suppliers. It has a snapdragon 410 - 1.2Ghz, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc. However, both of these are probably huge overkill for a quadcopter. The problem you face is twofold: * The quadcopter needs to react in real time, so you need a real time OS. * Machine learning can use a huge amount of memory. The usual way to solve this, is a simplified…

>The usual way to solve this, is a simplified onboard system. Crash prevention and the like. Probably an Arduino or ESP8266. My idea was have something like that hooked in to the bigger board via USB - the Android is creating flight plans and the micro controller is just managing the motors and following the plans it receives. snapdragon 410 seems like it doesn't have OpenCL 2 (shared memory access ?)

The microcontroller may need more than naively doing as told, to reduce crash & burn.

For the other board, I probably wouldn't use USB, but a serial or pin connection could be faster.

Broadcom recently released the spec sheet for the Raspberry Pi's GPU, and people have been doing good work with that.

Edit: Snapdragon 410 has official support only for OpenCL 1.1

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