 Excellent. So thank you everyone for joining this session. This is now in the official start of the session how open ecosystem and powers developers to digitalize industry. And the speaker is no other than Eric Pan, founder and CEO of Seed Studio. Welcome Eric and thank you very much for joining us. Thank you Mario and hi everyone. It's been too long that we cannot meet each other. Thank you so many other friends in the attendees and I'm very looking forward to share today. So I would like to give a short introduction. Eric is a maker and biker and founder of Seed Studio and Chai Huo, X-Factory. He's a producer of Maker Faire Shenzhen and he's a believer in open source and crowd innovations. He endeavors to integrate the latest AI IoT technology and supply chain resources to create an open platform for global developers to turn ideas into prototypes and solutions. His major effort is creating Seed since 2008 as a technology service company to provide open hardware and agile manufacturing services. Seed works closely with technology providers to offer an open modular and structured solution for IoT and AI. It also integrates the supply chain resources based in Shenzhen to help scale prototypes up to mass production with all the works done to accelerate hardware. So there was a short issue here with my connection, but I think it was just very short time, right? Yeah, it's working now. Okay, excellent. It's working. So Eric, actually this mentioning of the biker that you are a biker, right? I think there's also a bigger story to this that like people in China and so on, they share that you worked in Silicon Valley, you worked in the US, you had different jobs and then you came back to China and you didn't know what would be the next steps in your life and you decided at one point to go around by bicycle in China and then you arrived in Shenzhen and you thought, okay, that's kind of the future. We can connect like all these open source communities and the ideas and passion for open source with the maker community and with the industry and all this hardware economy in Shenzhen. So I really like this story and I really like this connection with with with a bike. Is that somehow true? Like what I said, is that a bit of a story? Thank you and thank you for mentioning it. And yes, that's true, but it was basically in China and second round like the journey continues like as of seed we have been spent 13 years. It's like feels the same as biking into uncertainty. It's a journey that nobody has ever done before and it's remote, but you keep going and it's wonderful. Excellent. So thank you very much for joining us and I will hand over to you and give the time to you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mario. Hi, everyone. This is Eric and like I just said, I'm super excited to talk to you virtually and looking forward to meet you very soon after the COVID. Glad things are coming down. So we even it's like a little more silent during the COVID. We have a lot of experiments going on. We move a lot into industries. So I like to share today is how open ticket existence really help out industrious digitalize. So I showed introduction of seed. We started with something like the interactive modules, but now we are doing some it's going very complex that we are doing more industrial stuff on the hardware. And there are some sort of facts we have trying to summarize. We started by making open source hardware from 2008. And we have thousands of the skill. And last year we have shipped more than 2 million pieces of all kinds of hardware to global developers. And secondly, after we distributed this compulence, people come back to us asking for help from manufacturer because we are based in Shenzhen. We have access to all the supply chains and all the design space on open source hardware are much easier for us to manage because they have shared supply chains. So we have been keep providing manufacturing services we quit and job manufacturer, even from a small like 10 pieces to all the way to mass scale manufacturers. And as the journey moves on for the last like three, four to five years, we have been doing a lot about industriality, like making a little bit of module is not enough to really survive in real scenarios. So we explore the requirements of the real industry field needs. And also we have a lot of research projects going all the way into real products. So for the last 30 years, we have been working with a lot of customers all over the world. And also we partner with startups to big companies to bring the latest hardware technologies to people. So we have pretty much surrounded by open source and we are building to believer of open source in and I tried to summarize in a good way that how close source is becoming more disrupted by open source in the beginning. Before 1990s, everything is almost closed sourced from the infrastructure software to chipsets to all the hardware. But I think it's explosive after 2005. We have the first time we know we have all the maker movement, everybody's hugging it and it's immigrating from open source software to open source hardware. And we are very glad we are being part of it from 2008. We have shared the pain of positive workers because I make stuff myself and I cannot access to open source hardware. And whenever I made the product, I cannot bring all the way to commercialized or finished products easily. So I established seed in 2008 and keep providing all kinds of hardware modules and work with a lot of prominent partners. But as we look beyond from 2010 to as of today, there are more and more open source software is becoming dominant in cloud services. It has been dominant in a lot of edge computing as well. And a lot of more users like tens of millions of people know how to know those open source that use Raspberry Pi to create their own devices. We can, it's true, it's very confident fast. We see that open source is becoming more dominant and we are very happy to be part of it with you. So whenever the first Azure comes with the invitation, I think, okay, I got to talk with you guys, a lot of new findings and observations we can share. And the most important thing I feel is that the people having more accessible technology, they become the new tech smiths. It's like blank smiths or silver smiths. They are the two makers, they are the technology bringer of our generations. But with the support of more open source devices, they can bring more digital transformation to other industries. And we are, for the last of many years, we have been striving on this path. So first of all, let's look at the tech smiths, which probably means you and your friends around the community. We see a lot of device prototypes from the community. It's not only just, okay, I like that, I do know, it's people using the open tools really trying to make some solutions. It's not a full set of infrastructure, but it's like a functional, it's a device with vertical known edges with a specific know-how from the creator to users alike. And we see people using the open tools to make the, like water quality censoring, they use the voice interaction mirrors, then making their own DJ equipments, they use it to predict the maintenance of the machines. We see a lot of open source devices. And a lot of these experiments, they are beyond traditional researchers. Like one of our users Benjamin can be using multiple channel gas sensors to tell from different alcohol use machine learning microcontroller level computing. So whenever you make these technologies more accessible and people are finding new ways to resolve their solutions, which is amazing. And I think people, the community, the tech smiths will beyond the education, they are going all the way into machine learning through everyday practice through contests. It's happening everywhere. I think you all know well about that. But let's look at it in a bigger picture. I feel that digital transformation is very important because of its diversity of devices. If you look at the cloud infrastructure, it's basically multiplies. A few companies, a few gens provide the cloud service for the majority of the companies using them. And on the getaways with a few like big players, everybody is using them, it's like the nick. But when we go down to the things, you have too many diversity that you need to bring a new device into that. And it cannot be created by single companies. It cannot be created by Apple that satisfy all the hardware needs. It should be from everyone. So we see that's where the makers, the startups, the hardware developers should become the legs of tech smiths. And then we have created the maker space in Shenzhen called Chihou. And for the last like 80 years has becoming the base cap in Shenzhen. People come to Shenzhen looking for the hardware existence to create their product. And we provide the basic tools, work spaces and the network and supply chains. So I think Shenzhen is quite a unique place. The whole city is like a maker space or incubator. And Chihou is becoming a ground for a lot of people coming in. And they don't come here with like ordinary community needs. They come here with a purpose. They want to create something. They want to make a device. They want to make it for themselves, for their own industry, or they want to sell to the global needs. So we see a lot of people, they come here with more monetary purpose. They come here with a mission and they fit into our understanding of tech smiths. So for the last year we have much less visitors and we want to duplicate these dynamics. So we are making more training courses, teaching more people from a non-engineering background. How do they really use open source hardware to make their first prototype? How could they use IoT to resolve their own problems? How do they like bring steam education into their neighborhoods? So we want to, how to say, enable more people to not only just explorations, but go all the way into a professional role of this making. And also last year we worked with the government. We asked the government what kind of public needs do you have that you should be opening up, inviting more startup or individuals to help you to resolve. We talked a lot about the agricultural needs, about the like the sustainability inside the cities. The government opened the issue and we invited more people to create the solutions in today's workshop. And with the feedback back to the government, then they can really look at that and inspire. If possible they can talk to the team, then turn that into a physical project. So on the people side, I think we have done a lot of in the beginning to encourage the, to promote the maker movement all over Xinjiang and China. And I think it's time for us to go from the possibility to productivity. We want to bring more trainings and members and all ready to use solutions to people all around the country and all over the world. So we don't need to create the solutions like individually in our sectors, but we can share the common old house and the open tech can go from somewhere like the experts and people can save the energy to deploy that in the neighborhoods. And so this year, last week we suspended the maker fair because of the COVID, but this year as the situation is getting much better, let's put an optimistic case that is going to be free to travel in this fall. So we are pulling back the maker fair in 2021. It's going to happen in November in Xinjiang. So all of you will come. I will send out the invitation soon, but I hope that to meet you guys personally and to share more about our possibilities in the industrial solutions and the case is going. So secondly, it's about the devices. So we have been talking a lot about open source hardware from the day one of City Studio. But looking beyond, I feel that there's no more needs about open devices. It's not a single hardware. It's more a hybrid of software hardware and open knowledges. So if we look in the time channels, the open source hardware I oriented from open source software community, people create the first Arduino, they provide the first big board and move all the way into a big wave for open source hardware creations. In 2010, we have the first open hardware summit. And then the open source hardware goes into two directions as we can see. First, we have more open source chipsets that be more available to the public. You can create open source chipsets with RISC-5 instructions and make the chipsets easier than before. But that's not what we are going to talk about today. We are more interested in the open source devices because the software people who has been the system integrator for new technologies for decades, they are afraid of open source hardware itself. They are more like interesting or more compatible with open source software and devices. So we see by making more hardware into devices, we will open more doors to system integrators. They are sitting into the digital transformation wave and they can repurpose the device for their own usages. And it's not fresh new. We see this as happening for many years. So I think one remarkable one is the safe cost in 2011 when the Fukushima radiation break leakage. People want to tell if the radiation is accurately reported in my area, they set up the equipment and share the data. And following the similar light turns, we have smart citizens who are doing the environment sensing in a more citizen way. We just heard the precursor sharing from Bonnie Huang to make your own mobile phones and mobile devices. And we have been doing a lot of devices from RIS speaker, the open AI speaker and open reform RIS servers. We are trying to make more devices now taking more shape. But the most challenging thing we have been trying to do is about industrial IoT because phishing data was easier than before. You can have a very cheap and simple Wi-Fi module connected to Arduino and you can get a sensor data to your cloud services or to your app. But how do you get the real-time data in the field? Like outdoors in the farm fields or in some hashing rubberment in factories. So we spent quite about three years trying to wrestling with that. It's much more challenging. But we are very happy that we can get more real-time data from the extreme environment in real-time. But to survive in real things, to share with you that we are doing a lot of tasks beyond our previous back capability, like waterproof at the beginning. Then we need to worry about the UV radiations because it puts something under sunlight for years. You need to worry how the case is really holding off. And also need to worry about the consistencies because different devices, you not only only to calibrate them but you need to make sure they have the same results in different temperatures in different like wattages environments. And also because we are doing the environment sensing for wizard station, we need to do the wind speed calibrations in real wind tunnels up to 60 meters per second. And of course the different temperatures, amenities. And you need to test in different environments about the long-distance communication. This is just the beginning of a lot of stuff if we are really bringing the prototype into field but we see that happening. And this last year we have the open source material station which can tell you about where micro-vehicle data from your locations you can get the temperature, you can the licensing, wind speed, wind meters, et cetera. And it has been deployed surprisingly in a lot of smart city applications in China and we are deploying in the farms all over the world as well. But the hardware itself is not the device. It's just the beginning that you can get more data. But how do we go beyond to use that data with the from data you have the information you can really guide the activations to guide the operations. I think that's the key for the next stage. And we see a lot of people have shared purposes. We talked about smart system which is for the environment sensing. And we have helped the Microsoft research to bring the code jumper which is for visually-impaired kids they cannot see but they should own the rights to do the programming. And we have the tool for them to do that. American Printing House was the biggest printing service for blind people and they are now resending them. And we have been carrying AFT Explorer, it's from Spanish team from Ariel to make a cheap alternative for spectrum analyzers. And it's also open for customizations. People repurpose it for antennas, for different spectrums, for AV, audio, remote, like debugging, etc. And we have Chris Fly which was a job but you can really use it for some autonomous driving and a lot of practical research has been happening on that. And we just released with B2Doc which was like a miniature of Boston Dynamics can work on different domains. It's for education at the start but we see the possibility that more accessible Paramsize RoboDoc. And the Dismantle with oscilloscope is also from the community from small team in Guangzhou. Okay let's just make it oscilloscope but people can make their own firmware. And also Piper was like DIY laptop you can build from your Raspberry Pi and have all the courses to explore the physical computing. So we see from here that it's not only about a hardware it's about the device that could be a replacement of your existing tools but they can also create more new possibilities for the next step. So we are doing a lot of these years to help people to wrap up because you designed from open source it's much easier to wrap up from the small batch and we work with local supply chains to really deliver the production great stuff. And let's talk about old industries we were kind of too innovative for city-study we're always looking for new digital things that can really be revolutionized but after many years we realized that there is no new problems all the challenges they are from the old problems all the industries they are basically existed for hundreds or thousands of years I think the key is how can we work with them to bring new solutions to the existing offerings so cloud and age from the IT industry they are really creating the frontier they want to digitalize agriculture they want to digitalize cities they want to make everything smart and we are very glad they are in the between in the beginning we take washing machine for example the washing machine was traditional but people keep adding new stuff into it first they have interstitutes then people want to automations to save more time they want to tend to different like textiles so they have more intelligence inside now people feel that we need to connect with retail we connected to more smart homes so it's becoming more autonomous but if we as a technical bank when we look inside there's nothing big changing it's about the connectivity it's about the AI, it's about the computing that has been changing the little chip that it had inside the device so if we keep the routes going we can see a lot of projects usually taking shape like we work with these real estate companies a lot trying to digitalize their communities for example you can see the wizard forecast from the TV station but now you can have micro TV micro climate forecast from your app but because you live here you can hear more about your micro climates also the warehouse is having more real-time data about their temperature maintenance about their energy efficiencies so they are having the issues for many years now through the open technology their product managers, their project managers see like they can talk to with the open tech ecosystem and ask for the help and also to like leave out the contracts we have been talking with big companies from Snyder, Univer, Vancouver for these past few years and I'm very convinced that this could create a lot of opportunities for us and for you to really bring the possibilities into productivity this list goes on like people need a new gateway for their solar energy systems they want more computing on the premise they want more easier to manage the code chain logistics on the move but also to have the full data chain even equipped with blockchains and also to remind of human beings like why they are driving to make them sleepy stages more alerted and also this moving into education which we work with so different like education bureaus to bring the latest technology offerings it's not just a philosophy or concepts it's a real gear that we used in the production environment we teach people how to use them how to understand the possibility and get prepared so time is short back into Nashart what the city has been trying to do for the last many years is our mission is to bring make the technology open for everyone we want to become the hardware platform that enable more digital transformation we work with tech providers to integrate their new tech into open source module we work with the supply chain in China and globally to provide end job manufacturing services and now we are making more configurable solutions more open devices to help the community to bring their latest solutions to their industries so we are looking for more to work with you guys to create more solutions and also to deploy the latest devices into your neighborhood, into your vertical needs so I think we don't have much time for real time questions but I'm happy to answer them later in the offline in the online notes and feel free to write me an email if you have more questions or any help needed and also we are opening for hiring in terms of no matter which country you are we can work remotely together so thank you so much for your time and looking forward to initiate the conversations and bring more open tech to the ecosystem thank you thank you very much a lot of people are actually already tweeting about your session here and announcing that Make Affair is in November in Shenzhen again so thank you very much for sharing these and all these interesting facts there's a question from Harish and I think like for one question we have time so Harish would you like to ask your question? Hi Eric Hi Eric, thanks for the talk I'm just curious about the I think you just saw the answer to that risk 5 CPUs for any of the seed environment that you're sending up do you have any risk 5 CPUs solutions? Yeah, we have providing that with bigger board, it's got bigger 5 we announced it in January and it's going to be shipping in a few months very soon and we'll keep having more open CPU along the way Great, thank you Yeah, glad you like it Okay Eric, it's been a pleasure to have you here at the event and I can't wait to get back to your makerspace which like we always like we had some meetups there with your support last time so thank you very much for that and keep in touch I think you shared the information and we can reach you everywhere and I hope we can see more projects and corporations with Seed Studio has been a big supporter of open hardware for many years So thumbs up, yes Harish is showing that Thank you very much Eric for this talk, have a nice day and see you soon, bye bye Thank you, have a good day everyone Bye bye, stay safe