For the Maker Faire Shenzhen 2025, I was invited to join as an Innovation Ambassador, as the bonus award from the Meshtastic Challenge. The topic for this year was “AI and More Things“. Behind the scenes, the Maker Faire Shenzhen was organized by Chaihuo Makerspace (or their website in Chinese) which is a subsidiary of Seeed Studio.
To be well prepared, I did download all potential useful apps (WeChat, Baidu Maps, Alipay, DiDi) and completed the setup for payments, as cash doesn’t work anymore in Shenzhen. Also because of the Great Chinese Firewall, I did install an eSIM with plenty of GB’s to be used. Tickets booked, I was ready to go to Shenzhen!
On Wednesday evening, my journey started. Flying via Dubai to Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport. With only 2 hours of sleep, during a trip of about 19 hours, crossing multiple time zones. Thursday evening, I did finally set foot on the ground in Shenzhen. Fingerprints registered, passport stamped, my bag rolled of the band, time to get into the city!
Using DiDi I did order a taxi and within a few minutes, the electric car rolled in front of me. Non-electric cars seemed to be rare here. Small thing that I noticed, was that he could see the traffic light times (so many seconds red/green), real time in the app. Never seen that in The Netherlands, but it may be used in other countries. After about a 30 minutes ride, I was dropped off in front of the Vanke Boyu Apartment building. My card with PIN for the door lock was waiting for me. Up to the 36th floor!
Friday morning, started the day with breakfast; noodles with beef. Staff doesn’t speak English, but you order and pay via mini-apps in WeChat. On my Android phone I could use an AI layer as on-screen translation software. Without knowing any Chinese character, I could make my order. Around the Vanke area, there were many streets with small restaurants. Although there were people outside, it didn’t feel too busy.
Before there was time for coffee, Zero from Seeed Studio asked if we wanted to explore Huaqiangbei. As I do order a lot of electronics components from AliExpress online, this was the perfect opportunity to see the market in real life. With a group of 10, we did take taxis to the market. This part of the city was buzzing, lots of people, electric scooters everywhere. We did explore several buildings and floors of HQB. Ranging from cables, drones, computer parts, SMD components, to the smallest pretty smartphone I’ve seen so far. There now is a Zippo sized i-Phone, running Android 13, with a picture of us on it 😉
Next stop is the Seeed Studio office, I subscribed to a workshop “How to Add AI to Almost Anything?“. Not realizing yet, but this would become key to my insights of Maker Faire Shenzhen. The workshop guided us on how to train a Seeed XIAO ESP32S3 Sense, with the help of SenseCraft AI, to recognize objects and to trigger actions. It seems so simple now!
Right after the workshop, the first party started. On the terrace of the Seeed Studio office, there was music, BBQ, drinks and laughter. All Innovation Ambassadors were invited; it was packed!
Saturday morning comes around, time for the real Maker Faire Shenzhen! Walking onto the Design Commune – Vanke Cloud City, there was a big welcome sign awaiting you. It has a map, the schedule, and the pictures of the Innovation Ambassadors who are present (including me!).
All day long, I did walk around the Maker Faire, speaking with students about the amazing projects they have made. Yes; speaking! The students did speak perfectly English, they liked it very much to express themself and explain and show their work. While outside Maker Faire, it was hard to explain what I wanted to order or where I wanted to go, English seems to be an unknown language for the 30+ generation. But for these students, English was just normal for them.
In the “F area” there were projects from the relatively younger students, say about 12 year old. Lots of small robots, decorated with colored papercraft. Impressive how they already find their way in building all this!
From the many projects I’ve seen, these are two that jumped out because of enthusiasm and presentation:
Elderly people – wheelchair help recognition; The student showed me that his school worked on several projects. His work wasn’t there, he did step in for somebody else who was on a break, and could only give high level explanation about what was at the table. So, I did ask him what HE did make, if he could tell me, or show pictures. Seeing his smile, the fact that I was interested in HIS work! His phone was grabbed out of his pocket, quickly pulling out photos of his project. It was about recognizing if elderly people in a wheelchair need additional support. The device he made, did scan for movement and sound. If there was an anomaly, an alarm would sound. This will help with the growing elderly population, while there are less caregivers. Now they can help more people in need.
TimeChef – AI Kitchen Companion; a smart hourglass that you can use in your kitchen. It solves issues like forgetting the time, or not following instructions. Or setting multiple timers if you are cooking multiple pans. The TimeChef shows as an hourglass, but now tailored to exactly shown and warn for the time you need cook your perfect dish. Ticking time away, LED by LED.
And these two projects from Makerizon / Maker Studio students have a very good use-case, not just fun, but solving real problems:
BioSnap – Intelligent Automated Microbial Detection
System; usually a petri-dish with a bacteria colony would be examined and counted once an hour, which would take about 5 minutes to do so, per dish. This student, did make an AI based counter. Multiple dishes with bacteria colonies could be fed through this, to do the count in just 5 seconds each. Meaning you can keep testing and counting, with more data-points than before.
Milk SafeGo – A Rapid Dairy Testing System Based on Microfluidic Chips; Testing milk samples currently requires a relatively large amount of milk and testing fluids. You have to carefully measure each component, mix it and then examine the color reaction. The Milk SafeGo pumps a very small amount of milk and fluid into a mixing chamber, and then measures the RGB color values. This way a very detailed analysis of the milk (melamine and antibiotics values) can be registered.
This is where a realization comes to mind; these students build everything around AI. While if I look at my own projects, these are not about AI at all, not even close. And yes, it makes sense that everything at Maker Faire Shenzhen is about AI, as it is the topic of this weekend. But it feels that China is much more ahead in this terrain. Mainly because students are made familiar with useful usage of AI models already.
While walking around, see what I found!
Translation: Integrating the past with the future; who wouldn’t want an AI-driven [retro product]?
Bastiaan is a maker active on Hackster.io, focusing on transforming old technologies: turning slide projectors into giant wall-mounted game consoles, enabling portable CRT TVs to scan wireless devices, and giving new life to early IoT devices through AI. His projects demonstrate that old technologies can be given new value through creative transformation.
Time flies, I’ve seen all exhibitor booths, and wanted to speak to many more creative people. But the music was already turned on, booths closed, time for a Maker Party!
The band was playing and singing already. A mix of English and Chinese pop-songs. And we were treated to an AI generated song, performed by Seeed Studio CEO Eric Pan himself. Followed by a demo-scene performance and maker-karaoke.
In maker style, we got a badge with NFC at the entrance, if you tapped the badge of somebody else with your phone, you were connected on the network map. This was a good way to get a conversation started with other makers. On a big screen you could see all created connections real-time.
Sunday morning, day two of the Maker Faire started. This day I’ve followed presentations from fellow Innovation Ambassadors.
This is where the second realization came to mind; it is not only me, also projects and creations from many of the other ambassadors, these are not around AI. We all make things, we all work on projects we enjoy, we learn and grow. But in China the students work on the future, by learning to apply AI to everything.
After lunch time, there was a Meshtastic radio-game organized. As the Meshtastic 20.25 did bring me to the Maker Faire Shenzhen, I offered to help out with running the game. First there was a presentation about Meshtastic in general, how it works, and what kind of devices (like mine with full keyboard) do exist. We did hand-out Meshtastic devices (Seeed Studio SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E) and helped the participants to get them linked to their phones via Bluetooth. Time to start a hunt crisscross through the Maker Faire. They got their challenges via a Meshtastic text-message, to find some booth, somebody with a robot, or to solve a puzzle. The solution had to responded back via a text-message or emoticon over Meshtastic. Team 2 was wild; they completed their challenges super-fast! A clear winner of the game 🙂
Sunday end of day comes around already and it was time for a closing picture with all Exhibitors, Innovation Ambassadors, and everybody who helped making the Maker Faire Shenzhen possible. These two days were well organized, bringing an enormous group of people together. Makers, Students, Companies, all in the space of AI. And who wasn’t a maker in this field yet, will for sure become one now!
Monday morning, I did another visit to the Seeed Studio headquarters; Zero showed me around their office. And we had a very open chat about products they now provide in the LoRaWAN product line, but also what would be the kind of products they should work on for the future.
Monday afternoon, I was invited to come to the M5Stack office for their Open Day. There were many familiar faces of people I’ve met during the Maker Faire. We got a MFSZ Limited Edition Morse Matrix. I’ll dive into it later to see what I can do to program this badge, maybe hook it to an API?
The interesting thing about M5Stack; in what from the outside just looked like an office building, is where they do everything; product design, prototyping, testing, production, sales, shipment. The goal to introduce at least one product every week, is accomplished for several years already. Each of these products is documented and still supported.
Late in the evening of Monday, it was time to fly back. Another 19 hours of travel, with almost no sleep. But that doesn’t matter.
What counts, is all the impressions of the past days. My bag is filled with gifts and goodies, my head is filled with new ideas, and my heart is filled with new friendships!
Shenzhen, I hope to see you again next year 🙂
