Pocket Science Lab
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Behling, Mario
The goal of Pocket Science Lab is to miniaturize laboratories with FOSS and Open Hardware. We have released the first commercial FOSS version. The talk covers our journey from developing FOSS Hardware and to scaling up to large scale production. The goal of Pocket Science Lab is to miniaturize laboratories. We have released the first commercial FOSS version. The talk covers our journey from developing FOSS Hardware and to scaling up to large scale production. PSLab is a tiny pocket science lab that provides an array of test and measurement instruments for doing science and engineering experiments. It can function like an oscilloscope, waveform generator, frequency counter, programmable voltage and current source and also as a data logger. An Android app is developed and available on app stores. A desktop version is available in Python. In the session we will also explain how the software applications with their unique functionalities help to grow the PSLab and Open Science community.
 Okay, so I'm really excited that so many people came to this talk. Thank you very much for joining. And I would like to present here the open hardware project that we are doing, PSLAB, Pocket Science Lab. I will give it a round at the moment as well. And yeah, I would like to share a bit of what we did, what's our background, and how we went to production. And I hope I get some questions from you guys. So we are really eager to help others also produce open hardware. So I can just hand this round here for the pros right away. And yeah, I will just go through a few slides first. So the background of Pocket Science Lab is that we developed this together with the First Asia community. I've lived for many years in Vietnam and Singapore and China. So I have a lot of relationships and we started First Asia 2009 as an event inspired by Foster. Because we thought like not so much is going on around us. So why not just make an event? And as it happens, people have ideas during events. So we started an organization on GitHub and we started to make like software projects, for example, for events that we could use ourselves so we can run an event more freely. So here are a few projects. A lot of things that we do. We're also in Google some of code and all kinds of programs. Please check it out. And recently in the last few years, we've become more interested in hardware. So this is a friend of ours, it's Praveen Kumar from India. And he joined the annual First Asia Summit 2014. And he brought us a lot of small hardware gadgets that, yeah, we thought this is really cool. He's a physics teacher in India. He also runs Science Hack Day in India. And he proposed to us why not develop something for physics students. And he had a hardware at that time. But the hardware wasn't open source. It was a C-Lablet hardware. And he showed to us how he uses it with his physics student. And we said, OK, cool. Let's further develop and like create new software that can be used with this hardware. But in order to get us really excited about this, if we could have open hardware, that would be so cool. And so the conversation started with the developer of C-Lablet. And yeah, we got an agreement after like a year because like open hardware, people like asked all these kind of questions that they used to ask for free and open source before. Oh, how can I make money? And I paid for this and I spent my time in this. So we found ways to convince them. And based on this first hardware, we developed the first version of the Arduino Uno form factor PS-Lab. So it's not an Arduino Uno. Many people ask that. But we think like it's always good if you have, for example, a casing or something like that. And it's the same form factor. You can just use it with this device as well. OK, so that was the first version. And then we went to many events. Like we always come to FOSTA and we also go to the Chaos Communication Congress. And you see it's very dark there. FOSTA is a very bright event for hackers and many developers. But I don't know if some of you can identify here. Some people, for example, this is Bunny Huang. This is Ming Ting Wei from the Debian community. And they had a lot of feedback on our hardware because I said, OK, it's all good. It's all working. And if you want to produce it, it's going to be super expensive. Because for example, the first versions that we made, they had components on both sides. And this is just one step more in production. It's very simple. But after we changed it, we could reduce the cost already by 25%. So that's pretty huge if you go to large scale production. So the next form factor that we then had was following again. Why not follow the Arduino so people can use the case? And this one also supported now an ESP8266. So we have Wi-Fi now. But we don't ship with Wi-Fi. You can solder it on the device. So when it goes around, you can see it. Reason here, for example, is in some countries it's more difficult to sell if you have wireless components like, let's say, in Japan, you need certification and so on. And we just leave the slot and people can solder it. And for now, it's good for us. And yeah, and many small enhancements plus four more digital pins that we added so you can actually plug in sensors into the device. So here's the roadmap. We started with C-Lablet. We made the first PSLab hardware. We developed a PSLab desktop app also. So we have an app for Android as well. So desktop app is a Python application. And the PSLab Android app is in Java and Kotlin. And the future we want a web app as well. So this is how it looks like from the top. And yeah, so what's the goal? Usually the question comes, what is the difference to Arduino? What's the difference to Raspberry? So Raspberry, I would say it's a computer, like they try to make it very cheap. They try to make it as open as possible, accessible for everyone. Arduino, I would say it's, yeah, you can build your own electronics with Arduino very easily. You can make your own firmware, make prototypes and so on. Our goal is science. So we want to enable students but also professionals to conduct scientific experiments. So it's not so much the goal that they add different components and upload a new firmware. The device already comes with a firmware. Of course, it's free and open, so you can change it. You can upload your own firmware. You can upload your changes. But maybe some people don't know how to do that. We want them to start right away. So what you do is you plug in different cables here into these small pins. There are many different pins and the device goes around. You can see on the backside there's a description. And then you can use it, for example, as an oscilloscope or multimeter. I will show you some screenshots in a moment as well. So there's an array of useful controls and measurement tools. The integrated components can be used by pins and functionalities can be accessed through the apps. And of course, you can make your own app. The communication is following the UART standard. So if you maybe have an app, it might be working already. And so this is how you connect it. Here you see an earlier version of PSLabs. So it's connected through the USB then directly to the phone. And this means we can power the PocketSignSlab directly through the phone via USB. And we can also get the data at the same time. On the left-hand side, you see a screenshot from the app. So we have many different tiles on the app. And behind each tile, there is an instrument. This is how they look like, for example. So on the left-hand side, you see an oscilloscope. So again, you connect the two wires, and then you can do your measurements and then get the output here in the oscilloscope. Here we have a power source, which is another instrument. We have a multimeter, a wave generator. There's a logic analyzer. So all kinds of tools. Also each tool has a guide. You can just scroll up like this. And then there will be a guide with some information. It looks like this, so to get newbies started. Then the desktop app. So during the last year, we focused on the Android app. Because the reason is, people have an Android phone. Many people have it. They can just install it from the Play Store, from Android, and can get started quickly and try it out. Whereas installing it on a desktop, yeah, it's more difficult. You need to set up a server. You need to set up Python, all these things. So we want to make it easy as well. It's our goal for this year. Have an X file, many universities and schools still use Windows, unfortunately. But make it easy, open it up more so people can use open source hardware. But there are already 50 different scientific instruments on the app, so it has some good start as well. In overview, what it can function as, this is already what we implemented. So we also implemented a Lux meter. It's cool because you can try out the app with a built-in Lux meter that the phones usually have here on top. And see how it works. Once you have the device, you connect the device that you can have, for example, a sensor connected to the device. So just to be clear, the device doesn't have all the sensors built in. It can measure electronics. But you can plug in any sensor, like that is the I squared C standard that Arduino also uses. So that can be plugged in and it should be working. Software stack, here's an overview. So for Python, we use the Python QT. And Android is pretty standard. Move to Kotlin mainly, still a few Java components in there as well. And the PS lab firmware is also available. OK, so hardware specs. I put this on here. It's a lot of text, always discouraged to use a lot of text in presentations. But people like it, right? I mean, like people in the hardware community like it. Because they can see what's on there and it gives them an idea what is the range and so on. Recently, for example, we had some discussions on the microcontroller forum. And I saw a lot of people coming over to the website and then checking it out. And then some people microcontroller said, oh, yeah, here I have this device for 300 euros. It's much better. Yeah? So yes, of course, we won't increase the range. We won't like to expand and see what other cool things we do. But right now, we actually started to sell for 55 euros. And that already includes the tax in Europe. So right? So when you compare, compare like the same kind of level. So four channel oscilloscope, many have only two channels. And yeah, we're supporting I squared C, SPI, UART. I already mentioned that. And yeah, more hardware specs here, two mega samples per seconds. So I think I just leave this for now. You can check this out in detail also on our website, PSLab I.O. OK. So because we wanted actually to talk more about production here in this session. So production, yeah, it's not easy. How many here in this room have experience with production? Yeah? Wait a minute. OK. The question is what kind of production? How many people have experience with production, like let's say batches larger than 1,000? OK, cool. So yeah, that would be good to get your feedback as well and to get to learn what you are doing. So a few people here in the room already. So it was our first time that we, with Pocket Science Lab, that we produced hardware in the larger scale. And so the project was already ongoing for nearly four years. And we got a lot of feedback. So that was our advantage. Here, for example, from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, they told us that, yeah, to make some changes, for example, to make the components a little bit further into the board, like not so much on the edge. And yeah, to use different soldering ways. So that helped a lot, really, with the details. And then we had one big advantage, because we are based in Asia. We actually have people who speak Chinese. So here is Weetat. And yeah, our main event and the main operations are in Singapore. And in Singapore, you have Indians, you have Malays, you have Chinese origins. And Weetat is a Singaporean who speaks Chinese. And at the beginning, he communicated, or helped us to communicate also in English. Because for them, it doesn't matter. Chinese, English, all good. And yeah, it was really interesting. And I'm always like, why do they answer this? And I don't understand. It doesn't make sense. So we went back and forth a few times. And then he also sometimes asked in Chinese. And then we realized that actually the answer in English was completely different to the answer in Chinese, really, in detail. So yeah, I mean, if you want to make large scale production, it's pretty good if you have somebody who can speak Chinese. And well, I'm always a fan of languages. Yeah, maybe you could, like, for example, talk to somebody in a university. It's always a good place. I don't know if there are many Chinese students here in the university in Belgium. But in Germany, we have many Chinese students. So why not go there and ask them if they want to do an internship for you, maybe, like, if you do hardware production, it could potentially save you a lot of money to help you with this and explain to you. And then here are some lessons learned. So and I thought it's unrealistic what the other team members thought. So they thought we just sent the bomb. We sent the details. We figured it all out, which components we want. We sent it over. Two months later, we get the components. Well, it's not like that, right? So creating a bomb and coordinating with producers is a full-time job. It really can keep you busy. And then there are parts and reels and tubes and prices are different. So I don't know, reels, yeah? Round and then tubes, you can put in. And also it depends. Like, they have different machines. So some machines can use sometimes just the reels or so. So when we actually checked out the prices, for example, for the chip, the difference can be $1. And that means $1,000 when you produce a batch of 1,000 devices. So this was something that we learned. And then expect components to become unavailable. So we might use old components that are not available anymore in China, but maybe they are many in the US or so. But when you produce in China, usually it doesn't make sense to re-import from the US. Would be very difficult. And actually the Chinese always charge for imports again. So even if you export, they charge for imports. So anything that you import into China, you have to pay for it, even though you take it out later again. It's very difficult for them to do this. So then understand when they offer re-manufactured. Who has heard this term re-manufactured? So I didn't understand. So you have such a small component. It could be resist a really small sense. And they say re-manufactured. How can you re-manufacture it? So what they do is actually sometimes during production, things can drop on the floor, or they could just be lying around. And then they have a reel. And they really have somebody who, for example, puts it back into a reel manually. Even the component is just a few cents, very cheap. But what happens then is that they could be broken. Maybe some broken components could go in. And that means maybe the whole device doesn't work, and you wasted all the money. Then we had a problem with the micro USB headers. So here we have the micro USB. And when you plug it in, there are different tolerances. And if they use a different tolerance than what you have in your Gerber file, that's pretty problematic. Because with the prototypes, we never had this problem. But we suddenly had this problem in production. We didn't know where it comes from. So we really got all the details from the different producers. And we saw that we have very tiny difference. And so what we had to do here was we actually had to get somebody manually to push it and solder it again. Otherwise it would go off with the micro USB. So check these kind of things with a producer. Then the female pin headers, they went straight. So here, for example, I have one that is not straight. I don't know. Maybe the front row can see that. So it's not like fit in straight these headers. And so what we did the first ones, there was somebody who then made them straight manually. But then we just built a component on top so they could be straight. So these are things like we don't know. We just think we sent our files there. We don't know. And some PSLabs didn't work due to refreshing problems. So you flash the chip. And then it should work. And you would think it's a standard. Everyone follows the standard. And then it's all good. But actually it wasn't the case. Because we used one device to flash it. And they used another device to flash it. And then it didn't work. So expect this. Here is a screenshot. And you can see that is what remanufactured means. So in the middle here, there you see some parts that were broken. And we had actually two companies that we engaged. So whatever something went wrong, they wanted to try to put it on the other one. So that was good that they informed us about this. So don't always think about finding the cheapest price. Please check. If it's like 20 times cheaper that happens, then the other price, something can't be right. So non-crucial components like resistors and capacitors that are already very low in price. Just forget about the lowest price. If you think it's OK and if all the other parts are OK, just follow that one. And be ready to anticipate extra charges while in production. So to get the pin header straight, we actually had to pay for the component that they built in order to make it straight, for example. So something might come up and they will charge for it. And let them know how to test the finished product. I mean, we always test manually when we make prototypes. But how do you test large badges? So you should develop a test case. And the perfect way would be if you have actually like a male or female, whatever, for your device to actually test it. For them. Like, one person tests it and another one. And always know the public holidays. So yeah, they have public holidays a whole week in October. So that might mean production stops for two or three weeks. Now is Chinese New Year. Production stops for a month. So yeah, because they always need some time to get back into production. And they don't tell you that. Because in China, they often live in Chinese. Everything is in Chinese. They don't think about it. Everyone should know. It's just like in their world. I mean, we're not working with super high-end manufacturers that have offices all around the world. We're working with Chinese producers in order to get a price that's acceptable. So yeah. So this is a bit of the story. And I already received the notes that we don't have so much time left. But what we are doing now, actually, we're doing open hardware. I think, yeah, I don't have to talk so much about why we do it and what is our goal. We want all the layers to be free. There are many different ideas about it. Like, my idea would be so cool if we could just send schematics around the world and just how we do it with 3D printers today. In future, we can just produce boards somewhere. And we want to share our knowledge. We want to learn from others what they do. And if we do open hardware, all this will be possible. I mean, we don't have to. Save the environment. We can do many things. And with our device, you can do many experiments and so on. So now, after we have the board ready, we are selling the board already to the interested public. But the next step is to make tutorials. The next step is to see what else we can do with the device. We use a microchip here. People said they would be interested in making the next version with ARM. We also have more ideas to make, for example, an EEG gadget to collect brainwaves. OpenBCI is an existing open hardware project already. We have some people that have some other ideas to make it. So these are our next steps. And what we want from you is feedback. Help us to make, for example, the desktop app better. Anyone doing Python here? Python, yeah? Yeah, if you're interested, please check it out. We need to upgrade to Python 3.7. We're also participating in GSOC. And we have our own internship program. So if there are any students who would like to spend some time either online, but you can also come to our office in Vietnam, we actually started an open source hotel. That's a completely different talk. So if you would like to stay with us for some weeks or have any other ideas, you can come and talk with me. And yeah, do the usual stuff. Solve issues, make YouTube videos or whatever you like, or just become part of the community. You can buy it on Seed Studios. It's a pretty good sale at the moment because we were on Hackaday the day before yesterday. And we're our largest market at the moment is Switch Science, if you want to sell in Japan. I can help you here at the event there's Yutaka Niba. Are you here? No, no, I met him earlier today. He could also give you feedback, and we are selling in more and more places. The next possibility to meet up is at our annual First Asia Summit that happens always in the middle of March from 14 to 17 in Singapore. And please join us. If you want to know more about the device, come also to our booth here on the ground floor. And yeah, you can check out a few of the sensors and so on that we are thinking of making a complete box, still checking out what we put into the box exactly. Yes, that was my last slide, so thank you very much. One quick question. What did you use for schematic hunting and layout of the routing of these boxes? Yes, we use Keycat. And yeah, it's pretty cool. It's like developed. Some people are religious, like just the same with Vim and Emacs, so they say, oh no, use another solution, use this and that, but Keycat works well for us. And everything is on GitHub, by the way, so you can just check out First Asia and PSLab. Here's also the QR code. And yeah, it's good for us. I mean, we have a few other people they say they still use Eagle. It's free, but not open. For free, it's always in English, right? But you know what I mean. Yeah? OK. Thank you very much. Thank you.
 Okay, so I'm really excited that so many people came to this talk.  Thank you very much for joining.  And I would like to present here the open hardware project that we are doing, PSLAB,  Pocket Science Lab.  I will give it a round at the moment as well.  And yeah, I would like to share a bit of what we did, what's our background, and how we  went to production.  And I hope I get some questions from you guys.  So we are really eager to help others also produce open hardware.  So I can just hand this round here for the pros right away.  And yeah, I will just go through a few slides first.  So the background of Pocket Science Lab is that we developed this together with the First  Asia community.  I've lived for many years in Vietnam and Singapore and China.  So I have a lot of relationships and we started First Asia 2009 as an event inspired by Foster.  Because we thought like not so much is going on around us.  So why not just make an event?  And as it happens, people have ideas during events.  So we started an organization on GitHub and we started to make like software projects,  for example, for events that we could use ourselves so we can run an event more freely.  So here are a few projects.  A lot of things that we do.  We're also in Google some of code and all kinds of programs.  Please check it out.  And recently in the last few years, we've become more interested in hardware.  So this is a friend of ours, it's Praveen Kumar from India.  And he joined the annual First Asia Summit 2014.  And he brought us a lot of small hardware gadgets that, yeah, we thought this is really  cool.  He's a physics teacher in India.  He also runs Science Hack Day in India.  And he proposed to us why not develop something for physics students.  And he had a hardware at that time.  But the hardware wasn't open source.  It was a C-Lablet hardware.  And he showed to us how he uses it with his physics student.  And we said, OK, cool.  Let's further develop and like create new software that can be used with this hardware.  But in order to get us really excited about this, if we could have open hardware, that  would be so cool.  And so the conversation started with the developer of C-Lablet.  And yeah, we got an agreement after like a year because like open hardware, people like  asked all these kind of questions that they used to ask for free and open source before.  Oh, how can I make money?  And I paid for this and I spent my time in this.  So we found ways to convince them.  And based on this first hardware, we developed the first version of the Arduino Uno form  factor PS-Lab.  So it's not an Arduino Uno.  Many people ask that.  But we think like it's always good if you have, for example, a casing or something like that.  And it's the same form factor.  You can just use it with this device as well.  OK, so that was the first version.  And then we went to many events.  Like we always come to FOSTA and we also go to the Chaos Communication Congress.  And you see it's very dark there.  FOSTA is a very bright event for hackers and many developers.  But I don't know if some of you can identify here.  Some people, for example, this is Bunny Huang.  This is Ming Ting Wei from the Debian community.  And they had a lot of feedback on our hardware because I said, OK, it's all good.  It's all working.  And if you want to produce it, it's going to be super expensive.  Because for example, the first versions that we made, they had components on both sides.  And this is just one step more in production.  It's very simple.  But after we changed it, we could reduce the cost already by 25%.  So that's pretty huge if you go to large scale production.  So the next form factor that we then had was following again.  Why not follow the Arduino so people can use the case?  And this one also supported now an ESP8266.  So we have Wi-Fi now.  But we don't ship with Wi-Fi.  You can solder it on the device.  So when it goes around, you can see it.  Reason here, for example, is in some countries it's more difficult to sell if you have wireless  components like, let's say, in Japan, you need certification and so on.  And we just leave the slot and people can solder it.  And for now, it's good for us.  And yeah, and many small enhancements plus four more digital pins that we added so you  can actually plug in sensors into the device.  So here's the roadmap.  We started with C-Lablet.  We made the first PSLab hardware.  We developed a PSLab desktop app also.  So we have an app for Android as well.  So desktop app is a Python application.  And the PSLab Android app is in Java and Kotlin.  And the future we want a web app as well.  So this is how it looks like from the top.  And yeah, so what's the goal?  Usually the question comes, what is the difference to Arduino?  What's the difference to Raspberry?  So Raspberry, I would say it's a computer, like they try to make it very cheap.  They try to make it as open as possible, accessible for everyone.  Arduino, I would say it's, yeah, you can build your own electronics with Arduino very  easily.  You can make your own firmware, make prototypes and so on.  Our goal is science.  So we want to enable students but also professionals to conduct scientific experiments.  So it's not so much the goal that they add different components and upload a new firmware.  The device already comes with a firmware.  Of course, it's free and open, so you can change it.  You can upload your own firmware.  You can upload your changes.  But maybe some people don't know how to do that.  We want them to start right away.  So what you do is you plug in different cables here into these small pins.  There are many different pins and the device goes around.  You can see on the backside there's a description.  And then you can use it, for example, as an oscilloscope or multimeter.  I will show you some screenshots in a moment as well.  So there's an array of useful controls and measurement tools.  The integrated components can be used by pins and functionalities can be accessed through  the apps.  And of course, you can make your own app.  The communication is following the UART standard.  So if you maybe have an app, it might be working already.  And so this is how you connect it.  Here you see an earlier version of PSLabs.  So it's connected through the USB then directly to the phone.  And this means we can power the PocketSignSlab directly through the phone via USB.  And we can also get the data at the same time.  On the left-hand side, you see a screenshot from the app.  So we have many different tiles on the app.  And behind each tile, there is an instrument.  This is how they look like, for example.  So on the left-hand side, you see an oscilloscope.  So again, you connect the two wires, and then you can do your measurements and then get  the output here in the oscilloscope.  Here we have a power source, which is another instrument.  We have a multimeter, a wave generator.  There's a logic analyzer.  So all kinds of tools.  Also each tool has a guide.  You can just scroll up like this.  And then there will be a guide with some information.  It looks like this, so to get newbies started.  Then the desktop app.  So during the last year, we focused on the Android app.  Because the reason is, people have an Android phone.  Many people have it.  They can just install it from the Play Store, from Android, and can get started quickly and  try it out.  Whereas installing it on a desktop, yeah, it's more difficult.  You need to set up a server.  You need to set up Python, all these things.  So we want to make it easy as well.  It's our goal for this year.  Have an X file, many universities and schools still use Windows, unfortunately.  But make it easy, open it up more so people can use open source hardware.  But there are already 50 different scientific instruments on the app, so it has some good  start as well.  In overview, what it can function as, this is already what we implemented.  So we also implemented a Lux meter.  It's cool because you can try out the app with a built-in Lux meter that the phones  usually have here on top.  And see how it works.  Once you have the device, you connect the device that you can have, for example, a sensor  connected to the device.  So just to be clear, the device doesn't have all the sensors built in.  It can measure electronics.  But you can plug in any sensor, like that is the I squared C standard that Arduino also  uses.  So that can be plugged in and it should be working.  Software stack, here's an overview.  So for Python, we use the Python QT.  And Android is pretty standard.  Move to Kotlin mainly, still a few Java components in there as well.  And the PS lab firmware is also available.  OK, so hardware specs.  I put this on here.  It's a lot of text, always discouraged to use a lot of text in presentations.  But people like it, right?  I mean, like people in the hardware community like it.  Because they can see what's on there and it gives them an idea what is the range and so  on.  Recently, for example, we had some discussions on the microcontroller forum.  And I saw a lot of people coming over to the website and then checking it out.  And then some people microcontroller said, oh, yeah, here I have this device for 300  euros.  It's much better.  Yeah?  So yes, of course, we won't increase the range.  We won't like to expand and see what other cool things we do.  But right now, we actually started to sell for 55 euros.  And that already includes the tax in Europe.  So right?  So when you compare, compare like the same kind of level.  So four channel oscilloscope, many have only two channels.  And yeah, we're supporting I squared C, SPI, UART.  I already mentioned that.  And yeah, more hardware specs here, two mega samples per seconds.  So I think I just leave this for now.  You can check this out in detail also on our website, PSLab I.O.  OK.  So because we wanted actually to talk more about production here in this session.  So production, yeah, it's not easy.  How many here in this room have experience with production?  Yeah?  Wait a minute.  OK.  The question is what kind of production?  How many people have experience with production,  like let's say batches larger than 1,000?  OK, cool.  So yeah, that would be good to get your feedback as well  and to get to learn what you are doing.  So a few people here in the room already.  So it was our first time that we, with Pocket Science Lab,  that we produced hardware in the larger scale.  And so the project was already ongoing for nearly four years.  And we got a lot of feedback.  So that was our advantage.  Here, for example, from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany,  they told us that, yeah, to make some changes, for example,  to make the components a little bit further into the board,  like not so much on the edge.  And yeah, to use different soldering ways.  So that helped a lot, really, with the details.  And then we had one big advantage,  because we are based in Asia.  We actually have people who speak Chinese.  So here is Weetat.  And yeah, our main event and the main operations  are in Singapore.  And in Singapore, you have Indians, you have Malays,  you have Chinese origins.  And Weetat is a Singaporean who speaks Chinese.  And at the beginning, he communicated,  or helped us to communicate also in English.  Because for them, it doesn't matter.  Chinese, English, all good.  And yeah, it was really interesting.  And I'm always like, why do they answer this?  And I don't understand.  It doesn't make sense.  So we went back and forth a few times.  And then he also sometimes asked in Chinese.  And then we realized that actually the answer in English  was completely different to the answer in Chinese, really,  in detail.  So yeah, I mean, if you want to make large scale production,  it's pretty good if you have somebody who can speak Chinese.  And well, I'm always a fan of languages.  Yeah, maybe you could, like, for example, talk to somebody  in a university.  It's always a good place.  I don't know if there are many Chinese students here  in the university in Belgium.  But in Germany, we have many Chinese students.  So why not go there and ask them if they  want to do an internship for you, maybe,  like, if you do hardware production,  it could potentially save you a lot of money  to help you with this and explain to you.  And then here are some lessons learned.  So and I thought it's unrealistic what  the other team members thought.  So they thought we just sent the bomb.  We sent the details.  We figured it all out, which components we want.  We sent it over.  Two months later, we get the components.  Well, it's not like that, right?  So creating a bomb and coordinating with producers  is a full-time job.  It really can keep you busy.  And then there are parts and reels and tubes  and prices are different.  So I don't know, reels, yeah?  Round and then tubes, you can put in.  And also it depends.  Like, they have different machines.  So some machines can use sometimes just the reels or so.  So when we actually checked out the prices,  for example, for the chip, the difference  can be $1.  And that means $1,000 when you produce a batch of 1,000 devices.  So this was something that we learned.  And then expect components to become unavailable.  So we might use old components that  are not available anymore in China,  but maybe they are many in the US or so.  But when you produce in China, usually it  doesn't make sense to re-import from the US.  Would be very difficult.  And actually the Chinese always charge for imports again.  So even if you export, they charge for imports.  So anything that you import into China,  you have to pay for it, even though you take it out later  again.  It's very difficult for them to do this.  So then understand when they offer re-manufactured.  Who has heard this term re-manufactured?  So I didn't understand.  So you have such a small component.  It could be resist a really small sense.  And they say re-manufactured.  How can you re-manufacture it?  So what they do is actually sometimes during production,  things can drop on the floor, or they could just  be lying around.  And then they have a reel.  And they really have somebody who, for example, puts it back  into a reel manually.  Even the component is just a few cents, very cheap.  But what happens then is that they could be broken.  Maybe some broken components could go in.  And that means maybe the whole device doesn't work,  and you wasted all the money.  Then we had a problem with the micro USB headers.  So here we have the micro USB.  And when you plug it in, there are different tolerances.  And if they use a different tolerance than what you have  in your Gerber file, that's pretty problematic.  Because with the prototypes, we never had this problem.  But we suddenly had this problem in production.  We didn't know where it comes from.  So we really got all the details from the different  producers.  And we saw that we have very tiny difference.  And so what we had to do here was we actually had to get  somebody manually to push it and solder it again.  Otherwise it would go off with the micro USB.  So check these kind of things with a producer.  Then the female pin headers, they went straight.  So here, for example, I have one that is not straight.  I don't know.  Maybe the front row can see that.  So it's not like fit in straight these headers.  And so what we did the first ones, there was somebody who  then made them straight manually.  But then we just built a component on top so they could  be straight.  So these are things like we don't know.  We just think we sent our files there.  We don't know.  And some PSLabs didn't work due to  refreshing problems.  So you flash the chip.  And then it should work.  And you would think it's a standard.  Everyone follows the standard.  And then it's all good.  But actually it wasn't the case.  Because we used one device to flash it.  And they used another device to flash it.  And then it didn't work.  So expect this.  Here is a screenshot.  And you can see that is what remanufactured means.  So in the middle here, there you see some parts that were  broken.  And we had actually two companies that we engaged.  So whatever something went wrong, they wanted to try to  put it on the other one.  So that was good that they informed us about this.  So don't always think about finding the  cheapest price.  Please check.  If it's like 20 times cheaper that happens, then the other  price, something can't be right.  So non-crucial components like resistors and capacitors that  are already very low in price.  Just forget about the lowest price.  If you think it's OK and if all the other parts are OK, just  follow that one.  And be ready to anticipate extra charges while in  production.  So to get the pin header straight, we actually had to  pay for the component that they built in order to make it  straight, for example.  So something might come up and they will charge for it.  And let them know how to test the finished product.  I mean, we always test manually when we make prototypes.  But how do you test large badges?  So you should develop a test case.  And the perfect way would be if you have actually like a male  or female, whatever, for your device to actually test it.  For them.  Like, one person tests it and another one.  And always know the public holidays.  So yeah, they have public holidays a whole week in  October.  So that might mean production stops for two or three weeks.  Now is Chinese New Year.  Production stops for a month.  So yeah, because they always need some time to get back  into production.  And they don't tell you that.  Because in China, they often live in Chinese.  Everything is in Chinese.  They don't think about it.  Everyone should know.  It's just like in their world.  I mean, we're not working with super high-end  manufacturers that have offices all around the world.  We're working with Chinese producers in order to get a  price that's acceptable.  So yeah.  So this is a bit of the story.  And I already received the notes that we don't have so  much time left.  But what we are doing now, actually, we're doing open  hardware.  I think, yeah, I don't have to talk so much about why we do  it and what is our goal.  We want all the layers to be free.  There are many different ideas about it.  Like, my idea would be so cool if we could just send  schematics around the world and just how we do it with 3D  printers today.  In future, we can just produce boards somewhere.  And we want to share our knowledge.  We want to learn from others what they do.  And if we do open hardware, all this will be possible.  I mean, we don't have to.  Save the environment.  We can do many things.  And with our device, you can do many experiments and so on.  So now, after we have the board ready, we are selling the  board already to the interested public.  But the next step is to make tutorials.  The next step is to see what else we can do with the device.  We use a microchip here.  People said they would be interested in making the next  version with ARM.  We also have more ideas to make, for example, an EEG  gadget to collect brainwaves.  OpenBCI is an existing open hardware project already.  We have some people that have some other ideas to make it.  So these are our next steps.  And what we want from you is feedback.  Help us to make, for example, the desktop app better.  Anyone doing Python here?  Python, yeah?  Yeah, if you're interested, please check it out.  We need to upgrade to Python 3.7.  We're also participating in GSOC.  And we have our own internship program.  So if there are any students who would like to spend some  time either online, but you can also come to our office in  Vietnam, we actually started an open source hotel.  That's a completely different talk.  So if you would like to stay with us for some weeks or have  any other ideas, you can come and talk with me.  And yeah, do the usual stuff.  Solve issues, make YouTube videos or whatever you like,  or just become part of the community.  You can buy it on Seed Studios.  It's a pretty good sale at the moment because we were on  Hackaday the day before yesterday.  And we're our largest market at the moment is Switch Science,  if you want to sell in Japan.  I can help you here at the event there's Yutaka Niba.  Are you here?  No, no, I met him earlier today.  He could also give you feedback, and we are selling in  more and more places.  The next possibility to meet up is at our annual First Asia  Summit that happens always in the middle of March from 14  to 17 in Singapore.  And please join us.  If you want to know more about the device, come also to our  booth here on the ground floor.  And yeah, you can check out a few of the sensors and so on  that we are thinking of making a complete box, still  checking out what we put into the box exactly.  Yes, that was my last slide, so thank you very much.  One quick question.  What did you use for schematic hunting and layout  of the routing of these boxes?  Yes, we use Keycat.  And yeah, it's pretty cool.  It's like developed.  Some people are religious, like just the same with Vim and  Emacs, so they say, oh no, use another solution, use this  and that, but Keycat works well for us.  And everything is on GitHub, by the way, so you can just  check out First Asia and PSLab.  Here's also the QR code.  And yeah, it's good for us.  I mean, we have a few other people they say they still use  Eagle.  It's free, but not open.  For free, it's always in English, right?  But you know what I mean.  Yeah?  OK.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.
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