A walk through JLCPCB’s Shenzhen event — from ESP32 boards and AI robots to mechanical reducers and open-source ICsI recently visited JLCPCB’s Open Source Hardware Spark Conference in Shenzhen and recorded a 23-minute walkthrough before the venue officially opened.
▶ Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/awAj-__1U2M
For many developers outside China, JLCPCB is still mainly known as a place to order inexpensive PCBs. But walking through this event shows how much broader the surrounding hardware ecosystem has become.
At 00:38, the JLC area already includes much more than PCB fabrication and PCBA. CNC machining, aluminum enclosures, 3D printing, and industrial automation components are part of the same environment.
That matters because a PCB alone is not a product. A developer also needs components, assembly, an enclosure, and often mechanical parts. More of that process can now be ordered online in small quantities.The hardware companies developers actually useThe first half of the hall was filled with semiconductor vendors, embedded software platforms, measurement equipment, and development tools.
At 00:57, Renesas was demonstrating image recognition on development boards.
At 01:12, PowerWriter was showing MCU programming and debugging tools, including offline and production programming.
At 03:40, RT-Thread had a large collection of supported development boards. The Chinese open-source RTOS has grown into a much wider development ecosystem, including tools, packages, and support for many MCU platforms.
Then came companies familiar to anyone working with electronics in China:
Geehy at 05:16, with motor-control MCUs and application-specific chips.
EDATEC at 05:51, showing Raspberry Pi-based products.
Allwinner at 08:07, with Linux boards and consumer-device SoCs.
Espressif at 08:51, with its own ESP32 development boards.
Canaan at 09:54, with AI SoCs and development hardware.
RIGOL at 10:30, with oscilloscopes.
WCH at 11:22, where a long queue had already formed for development boards.
What stood out was how directly these companies now address developers. Chips are shown together with evaluation boards, SDKs, sample code, and development environments. An engineer can get a board, try it immediately, and only later decide whether the chip belongs in a product.
Espressif has used this approach successfully for years with ESP32, but it is now common across much of the Chinese semiconductor industry.AI and robotics are becoming DIY platforms tooAt 11:45, D-Robotics was showing its AI computing platforms for robotics.
At 12:13, YOLO was running on an RDK S100 and detecting people well outside the immediate booth area.
The important point is that the exhibit was not simply “an AI chip.” It was a development platform intended to be connected to cameras, software, sensors, and robots.
At 12:50, openvela showed another layer of the ecosystem. The open-source AIoT operating system initiated by Xiaomi was running across several types of hardware.
At 13:09, it was running on M5Stack Cardputer and ESP32-S3. At 13:19, it was running on a small KittenBot robot.
The first half of the event already contained most of the building blocks needed for modern hardware development: MCUs, operating systems, AI boards, measurement tools, power electronics,