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The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware
For over a decade, Andrew "bunnie" Huang, one of the world's most esteemed hackers, has shaped the fields of hacking and hardware, from his cult-classic book Hacking the Xbox to the open-source laptop Novena and his mentorship of various hardware startups and developers. In The Hardware Hacker , Huang shares his experiences in manufacturing and open hardware, creating an illuminating and compelling career retrospective.
Huang’s journey starts with his first visit to the staggering electronics markets in Shenzhen, with booths overflowing with capacitors, memory chips, voltmeters, and possibility. He shares how he navigated the overwhelming world of Chinese factories to bring chumby, Novena, and Chibitronics to life, covering everything from creating a Bill of Materials to choosing the factory to best fit his needs.
Through this collection of personal essays and interviews on topics ranging from the legality of reverse engineering to a comparison of intellectual property practices between China and the United States, bunnie weaves engineering, law, and society into the tapestry of open hardware.
With highly detailed passages on the ins and outs of manufacturing and a comprehensive take on the issues associated with open source hardware, The Hardware Hacker is an invaluable resource for aspiring hackers and makers.
Huang’s journey starts with his first visit to the staggering electronics markets in Shenzhen, with booths overflowing with capacitors, memory chips, voltmeters, and possibility. He shares how he navigated the overwhelming world of Chinese factories to bring chumby, Novena, and Chibitronics to life, covering everything from creating a Bill of Materials to choosing the factory to best fit his needs.
Through this collection of personal essays and interviews on topics ranging from the legality of reverse engineering to a comparison of intellectual property practices between China and the United States, bunnie weaves engineering, law, and society into the tapestry of open hardware.
With highly detailed passages on the ins and outs of manufacturing and a comprehensive take on the issues associated with open source hardware, The Hardware Hacker is an invaluable resource for aspiring hackers and makers.
396 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017
140 people are currently reading
1394 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
December 14, 2019
Wow! This guy's incredible with what he does.
It's breathtaking how he shares his love for all the gizmos that make the hardware we all love to use.
Q:
I saw chips that I could never buy in the United States, reels of rare ceramic capacitors that I could only dream about at night. My senses tingled; my head spun. I couldn’t suppress a smile of anticipation as I walked around the next corner to see shops stacked floor to ceiling with probably 100 million resistors and capacitors. (c)
Q:
After Chumby, I decided to remain unemployed, partly to give myself time for discovery. For example, every January, instead of going to the frenzied Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, I rented a cheap apartment in Shenzhen and engaged in the “monastic study of manufacturing”; for the price of one night in Las Vegas, I lived in Shenzhen for a month. I deliberately picked neighborhoods with no English speakers and forced myself to learn the language and customs to survive. (Although I’m ethnically Chinese, my parents prioritized accent-free fluency in English over learning Chinese.) I wandered the streets at night and observed the back alleys, trying to make sense of all the strange and wonderful things I saw going on during the daytime. ...
At night, I could make out lone agents acting out their interests and intentions. (c)
Q:
Trade shows always feel like a bit of a strip tease, with your breath making ghostly rings on the glass as you hover over the unobtainable wares underneath. (c)
Q:
My guess is that robots are expensive to build and maintain; people are self-replicating and largely self-maintaining. Remember that third input to the factory—rice? Any robot’s spare parts have to be cheaper than rice for the robot to earn a place on this factory’s floor. (c)
Q:
In reality, however, it’s too much effort to explain this concept to end customers; in fact, quite the
opposite happens in the market. Putting the smooth zippers together involves extra labor, so the zippers cost more; therefore, they tend to end up in high-end products. This further enforces the notion that really smooth zippers with no tiny tab on them must be the result of quality control and attention to detail.
My world is full of small frustrations like this. For example, most customers perceive plastics with a mirror finish to be of a higher quality than those with a satin finish. (c)
Q:
Increasingly, our technology infrastructure is becoming a monoculture managed by a cartel of technology providers. Everyone carries identical phones running operating systems based on the same libraries and uses one or two cloud services to store their data. But history has proven that a monoculture with no immunity is a recipe for disaster. One virus can wipe out a whole population. Universal access to technology may allow the occasional bad actor to develop a harmful exploit, but this bitter pill ultimately inoculates our technological immune system, forcing us to grow stronger and more resilient. Wherever that threat comes from, a robust and vibrant culture of free-thinking technologists will be our ultimate defense against any attack. (с)
It's breathtaking how he shares his love for all the gizmos that make the hardware we all love to use.
Q:
I saw chips that I could never buy in the United States, reels of rare ceramic capacitors that I could only dream about at night. My senses tingled; my head spun. I couldn’t suppress a smile of anticipation as I walked around the next corner to see shops stacked floor to ceiling with probably 100 million resistors and capacitors. (c)
Q:
After Chumby, I decided to remain unemployed, partly to give myself time for discovery. For example, every January, instead of going to the frenzied Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, I rented a cheap apartment in Shenzhen and engaged in the “monastic study of manufacturing”; for the price of one night in Las Vegas, I lived in Shenzhen for a month. I deliberately picked neighborhoods with no English speakers and forced myself to learn the language and customs to survive. (Although I’m ethnically Chinese, my parents prioritized accent-free fluency in English over learning Chinese.) I wandered the streets at night and observed the back alleys, trying to make sense of all the strange and wonderful things I saw going on during the daytime. ...
At night, I could make out lone agents acting out their interests and intentions. (c)
Q:
Trade shows always feel like a bit of a strip tease, with your breath making ghostly rings on the glass as you hover over the unobtainable wares underneath. (c)
Q:
My guess is that robots are expensive to build and maintain; people are self-replicating and largely self-maintaining. Remember that third input to the factory—rice? Any robot’s spare parts have to be cheaper than rice for the robot to earn a place on this factory’s floor. (c)
Q:
In reality, however, it’s too much effort to explain this concept to end customers; in fact, quite the
opposite happens in the market. Putting the smooth zippers together involves extra labor, so the zippers cost more; therefore, they tend to end up in high-end products. This further enforces the notion that really smooth zippers with no tiny tab on them must be the result of quality control and attention to detail.
My world is full of small frustrations like this. For example, most customers perceive plastics with a mirror finish to be of a higher quality than those with a satin finish. (c)
Q:
Increasingly, our technology infrastructure is becoming a monoculture managed by a cartel of technology providers. Everyone carries identical phones running operating systems based on the same libraries and uses one or two cloud services to store their data. But history has proven that a monoculture with no immunity is a recipe for disaster. One virus can wipe out a whole population. Universal access to technology may allow the occasional bad actor to develop a harmful exploit, but this bitter pill ultimately inoculates our technological immune system, forcing us to grow stronger and more resilient. Wherever that threat comes from, a robust and vibrant culture of free-thinking technologists will be our ultimate defense against any attack. (с)
May 23, 2020
"The Hardware Hacker" provides the insightful perspective of an experienced hardware engineer on the state of modern micro-electronics-- A deep-dive into the mind of someone who lives and breaths Hardware. Covering a wide variety of topics including but not limited to: reverse engineering MicroSD cards, the building an "open hardware" laptop for hackers, the "gonkai" culture in Shenzen, common hardware packaging and supply chain considerations, manufacturing pipelines in China, and the trials and tribulations of building a hardware product from the ground up, "Bunnie" Huang provides a unique and candid look into the intricacies and nuances of the world of modern Computer Hardware.
Admittedly, I repeatedly got lost in a sea of acronyms and unfamiliar names (which, for the most part, Huang provides definitions and context)-- Alas, such is the case when one ventures into an unfamiliar knowledge domain. Furthermore, I don't think that I was able to put together many pieces of the puzzle meant to be clearly defined by the included hardware diagrams, schematics, component specification comparison tables, and explanations of the individual components because I simply lack the relevant real-world context. I think that this book could be more thoroughly enjoyed by someone who possesses a greater familiarity with modern electronics design and implementation, though I still feel like I got a lot out of reading it if only for the exposure to the jargon and common ways of thinking about micro-electronics. Huang has definitely inspired me to get more intimate with the hardware that I do own, and I'm desperately trying to think of how I can carve out a few hours of each week into hacking on micro-electronics to further my understanding of such micro-electronic devices that are ubiquitous in almost every aspect of modern society.
Overall, I think I'd rate this book a 3.5/5 if i could, because although it is quite insightful, the ideas are presented in a somewhat disorganized fashion, and it was difficult for me to mentally construct a coherent, overarching narrative or to connect the different ideas presented to one another. From describing the authors passion for the "Open Hardware" movement, to discussing how interpreting DNA is like reverse engineering electronics, this book kind of goes all over the place. However, I did enjoy spending my mornings reading it, especially as I've been takin my first steps towards understanding digital design and computer architecture in parallel. This book surveyed many practical aspects of hardware design, manufacturing, and debugging, and I think it provided me valuable insight into what it takes to realize a "real-world" hardware product that I would probably have remained ignorant of for far too long otherwise.
Admittedly, I repeatedly got lost in a sea of acronyms and unfamiliar names (which, for the most part, Huang provides definitions and context)-- Alas, such is the case when one ventures into an unfamiliar knowledge domain. Furthermore, I don't think that I was able to put together many pieces of the puzzle meant to be clearly defined by the included hardware diagrams, schematics, component specification comparison tables, and explanations of the individual components because I simply lack the relevant real-world context. I think that this book could be more thoroughly enjoyed by someone who possesses a greater familiarity with modern electronics design and implementation, though I still feel like I got a lot out of reading it if only for the exposure to the jargon and common ways of thinking about micro-electronics. Huang has definitely inspired me to get more intimate with the hardware that I do own, and I'm desperately trying to think of how I can carve out a few hours of each week into hacking on micro-electronics to further my understanding of such micro-electronic devices that are ubiquitous in almost every aspect of modern society.
Overall, I think I'd rate this book a 3.5/5 if i could, because although it is quite insightful, the ideas are presented in a somewhat disorganized fashion, and it was difficult for me to mentally construct a coherent, overarching narrative or to connect the different ideas presented to one another. From describing the authors passion for the "Open Hardware" movement, to discussing how interpreting DNA is like reverse engineering electronics, this book kind of goes all over the place. However, I did enjoy spending my mornings reading it, especially as I've been takin my first steps towards understanding digital design and computer architecture in parallel. This book surveyed many practical aspects of hardware design, manufacturing, and debugging, and I think it provided me valuable insight into what it takes to realize a "real-world" hardware product that I would probably have remained ignorant of for far too long otherwise.
March 20, 2017
As a trove of interesting things, this book is fantastic. Huang has accomplished much and done many very interesting things with electronics, manufacturing, and exploring the practical and legal boundaries of reverse engineering.
I was energized by Huang's enthusiasm for discovery and fearless adventuring. I learned a lot of interesting things (such as: SD cards include powerful systems-on-chip that manage all reads and writes to and from the card's flash memory - every SD card is a computer in its own right). I also gained an entirely new perspective on China's technical culture.
As a book, it's a mess. It is essentially an edited series of blog posts, and it shows. If I were this book's editor, I would attempt to rearrange it into more of a story: start the first chapter with an intrigue (perhaps the Kingston SD cards with the mysterious markings) and then developed the rest of the book in more-or-less a chronological order. I believe it would work very well - Andrew Huang's complete arc from childhood - staring in wonder at an Apple II schematic, to early commercial success (Chumby), to adventures in Chinese manufacturing, to the Novena laptop and life as a free-agent of sorts.
If you suspect you might enjoy this book, you will. Huang's writing is very accessible, even when the material turns very specific.
I cannot recommend it to general audiences as a "popular science" title for hardware engineering - it just isn't that well put together.
Edit two weeks later:
There is another topic Huang brought up in Hardware Hacker which I've thought about quite a bit since I finished the book: Moore's law is failing - has been failing for a while. Chips are no longer doubling transistor density every year. We no longer have to upgrade a PC every two years to stay current. Huang talks about the idea of an "heirloom laptop" - a computer you could pass down to your children. That sounds oxymoronic, but only because we're so used to the relentless upgrade cycle.
If hardware stops moving at such a breakneck speed, that gives the hobbyist a chance to tinker and perfect. It gives us reason to write more efficient software and to take quality more seriously. I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I've decided I like this idea a lot. I like to tinker and customize. I like the idea of old, cheap hardware being useful (this is starting to become true - $50 on Ebay can net you a very useful computer, especially if you're okay with running a lightweight Linux distribution). I think a hardware plateau may bring us a new golden age of hobby computing for both hardware and software.
I was energized by Huang's enthusiasm for discovery and fearless adventuring. I learned a lot of interesting things (such as: SD cards include powerful systems-on-chip that manage all reads and writes to and from the card's flash memory - every SD card is a computer in its own right). I also gained an entirely new perspective on China's technical culture.
As a book, it's a mess. It is essentially an edited series of blog posts, and it shows. If I were this book's editor, I would attempt to rearrange it into more of a story: start the first chapter with an intrigue (perhaps the Kingston SD cards with the mysterious markings) and then developed the rest of the book in more-or-less a chronological order. I believe it would work very well - Andrew Huang's complete arc from childhood - staring in wonder at an Apple II schematic, to early commercial success (Chumby), to adventures in Chinese manufacturing, to the Novena laptop and life as a free-agent of sorts.
If you suspect you might enjoy this book, you will. Huang's writing is very accessible, even when the material turns very specific.
I cannot recommend it to general audiences as a "popular science" title for hardware engineering - it just isn't that well put together.
Edit two weeks later:
There is another topic Huang brought up in Hardware Hacker which I've thought about quite a bit since I finished the book: Moore's law is failing - has been failing for a while. Chips are no longer doubling transistor density every year. We no longer have to upgrade a PC every two years to stay current. Huang talks about the idea of an "heirloom laptop" - a computer you could pass down to your children. That sounds oxymoronic, but only because we're so used to the relentless upgrade cycle.
If hardware stops moving at such a breakneck speed, that gives the hobbyist a chance to tinker and perfect. It gives us reason to write more efficient software and to take quality more seriously. I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I've decided I like this idea a lot. I like to tinker and customize. I like the idea of old, cheap hardware being useful (this is starting to become true - $50 on Ebay can net you a very useful computer, especially if you're okay with running a lightweight Linux distribution). I think a hardware plateau may bring us a new golden age of hobby computing for both hardware and software.
May 23, 2022
Consistently engaging throughout. The chapters on manufacturing in China and Shenzhen hardware markets were especially fascinating (I'll never look at a zipper the same way). I never considered myself a hardware guy but bunnie's enthusiasm is contagious. Loved the bits on fake SD card analysis and the $10 phone teardown, and the stories of building chumby and the Novena were loaded with a lot of grounded, practical advice (on top of containing great examples of manufacturing techniques like injection molding).
Be advised there is only one chapter on actual hardware hacking in the entire book. Easily the most technical section, and I could follow only about half of it, but this gave me a real appreciation for how physical actual hardware hacking is (decapping epoxy, steady hands and tweezers, oscilloscopes, etc.). His description of how and why NeTV worked (a hack as a product), and how he used physics to manipulate a UV-erasable EPROM chip he was tearing down, made for mindblowing reading.
It bogged down a little in the final few chapters (bioinformatics/biohacking and some interview compilations), which felt like filler, but the rest was 10/10 "this is so interesting I'm going to read it out loud" material.
Be advised there is only one chapter on actual hardware hacking in the entire book. Easily the most technical section, and I could follow only about half of it, but this gave me a real appreciation for how physical actual hardware hacking is (decapping epoxy, steady hands and tweezers, oscilloscopes, etc.). His description of how and why NeTV worked (a hack as a product), and how he used physics to manipulate a UV-erasable EPROM chip he was tearing down, made for mindblowing reading.
It bogged down a little in the final few chapters (bioinformatics/biohacking and some interview compilations), which felt like filler, but the rest was 10/10 "this is so interesting I'm going to read it out loud" material.
November 8, 2018
This could be a few smaller books, covering a few different topics. It did drag a little in places but mostly it was just a fascinating look at how modern electronics manufacturing gets done, plus getting to see some clever hardware (and biological) hacking. Did you know that SD cards contain a microcontroller? These guys did, and then built a REPL to talk to it. Lots of other stuff like that. Really if this could be better organized it could be a perpetual series of books, or a video series, etc.. I'd be into that. In short, recommended if you're nerdy and especially have some electronics savvy. Might be less interesting for a non-technical reader.
October 16, 2018
Not exactly what I expected, though I'm not sure what that was. But absolutely interesting. Andrew (Bunnie) Huang takes you on a tour of how to design hardware for manufacture, how to work with OEMs in Shenzhen, how do reverse engineer systems, even a short walk thorough genetic engineering from the unique perspective of CRISPR as "awk for RNA."
December 23, 2017
Don't be fooled by the title, it will not teach you hacking/reverse engineering hardware;
But it doesn't mean it's a bad book; Bunnie is an accomplished writer/hacker/maker.
I really love his writing style. You can learn what it takes to create a complete hardware (from idea to design to finance to manufacturing and then releasing it)
It talks about things that I hadn't thought about before (like the mechanical processes i.e. injection molding)
Another aspect of the book that I liked, is taking the reader to the wonderful world of Chinese way of getting/buying/making electronics and how that's different from US's model.
In summary: a good book, recommended to anyone interested in making/breaking hardware, with one caveat: it's not a purely technical book.
But it doesn't mean it's a bad book; Bunnie is an accomplished writer/hacker/maker.
I really love his writing style. You can learn what it takes to create a complete hardware (from idea to design to finance to manufacturing and then releasing it)
It talks about things that I hadn't thought about before (like the mechanical processes i.e. injection molding)
Another aspect of the book that I liked, is taking the reader to the wonderful world of Chinese way of getting/buying/making electronics and how that's different from US's model.
In summary: a good book, recommended to anyone interested in making/breaking hardware, with one caveat: it's not a purely technical book.
September 24, 2017
Bunnie is an absolute genius at hardware and hacking, no doubt. Unfortunately the book wasn't much more than a compilation of various blog posts and other online material. Definitely interesting, but not much new here. Also, far too much breadth and not enough depth, but he is writing a book, not a textbook.
Biology section at the end kind of came out of nowhere and personally, I found it boring. I get that his interests have evolved, but the connection to the rest of the book just didn't seem to be there.
Biology section at the end kind of came out of nowhere and personally, I found it boring. I get that his interests have evolved, but the connection to the rest of the book just didn't seem to be there.
October 8, 2017
This was a phenomenal book for me as someone involved in building hardware related products at research and prototyping capacity in the past but having really no exposure to actually how it's built in the factories. The breadth of the material that 'bunnie' goes through in the book is quite impressive. They are somewhat disjointed and seem to have been pulled from his blog posts. But it brings the ideas together and reading this is worthwhile if nothing, to be more cognizant with how you make your manifests with a hardware manufacturer, and what to look out for.
I was expecting something more akin to more detailed description on how bunnie hacked Xbox and link that to his recent endeavors. However. he last two chapters in hardware hacking and bioinformatics are quite phenomenal as they point to some exciting future directions that bunnie is thinking about.
I was expecting something more akin to more detailed description on how bunnie hacked Xbox and link that to his recent endeavors. However. he last two chapters in hardware hacking and bioinformatics are quite phenomenal as they point to some exciting future directions that bunnie is thinking about.
July 29, 2017
Great book. Provides a lot of insight to anyone working in R&D. Some points go rather deep into the details and require hardware and software knowledge to get most out of it. Still, I dare to recommend the book also to non-technical people which can skip the details and still enjoy the Huang's experiences through fluent storytelling.
November 12, 2018
Inspiring book. Offers very intriguing look into whole manufacture process of consumer electronics. All from the point of view of a hacker - which Bunny actually is!
You also get lots of neat China-related anecdotes and cultural infos - like Shenzai and the whole chineses "open source" culture.
Plus all the bits about hacking sd cards, spotting fake components, etc.
Splendid read!
You also get lots of neat China-related anecdotes and cultural infos - like Shenzai and the whole chineses "open source" culture.
Plus all the bits about hacking sd cards, spotting fake components, etc.
Splendid read!
August 12, 2018
Trying to place ‘The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware’ into a specific category is a challenge. This superb book covers a multitude of topics, from hardware engineering, software design, Chinese manufacturing, to hardware hacking, product development, intellectual property law and more.
In the book, author Andrew 'bunnie' Huang details his escapades and exploits in getting his electronics product from design to market. For readers of Huang’s blog, there will be some repetition here.
For anyone looking to use Chinese manufacturing, Huang writes of his successes and failures, and informs the reader of how to avoid the many potential snags that come with the turf. He details the myriad nuances that can make the difference between shipping a product on-time, and those that cause costly delays. Manufacturing in China requires its own book, but here he provides the reader with an introduction of how to deal with the many things that can derail a project. Huang moved to China to be close to the makers of the Chumby device, for which he was lead engineer.
Perhaps the most interesting section is where Huang details the Chinese approach to intellectual property. To an American patent lawyer, China is the devil incarnate. To the Chinese, American patent lawyers do nothing but stifle innovation and increase costs.
Huang details the Chinese concepts of shanzhai and gongkai. Shanzhai refers to those who make fake products that look just like the original. Sometimes they are exact replicas, but often are very low-quality. Gongkai is the Chinese approach to open source and licensing, which takes on a very different meaning in China. The two approaches are at loggerheads to how things work in the United States and never the twain shall meet. But Huang does a fantastic job of explaining how these concepts work. While his explanations certainly won’t placate an IP lawyer in the states; it does provide excellent context to the Chinese mindset for the rest of the world.
Huang is quite forthright and details the many mistakes he made along the way. But he also writes of the hard work involved he did in getting things produced in China. Much of the book is the lessons he learned along the way. This is an invaluable guide for anyone who plans to produce things in China.
The book lives up to its title in part 4 where Huang details his escapades in hacking SD cards and other hardware. From a security perspective, his research into how memory cards work shows they run code that if modified, could perform a man in the middle attack that would be quite hard to detect. An important point he makes is that if you are using SD cards in a high-risk, hi-sensitivity situation, don’t assume that running a secure erase command will guarantee the complete erasure of sensitive data. He suggests for those that truly need to be certain their data is gone, to use a physical destruction method.
Huang has a PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That plus his real-world business and manufacturing expertise, make this a rare book that has so much good advice from so many different angles.
For those looking to understand how to design and manufacture in China, The Hardware Hacker provides insights that could make the difference between success and failure. Taking Huang’s advice to heart can mean the difference between a manufacturing misadventure and adventure.
In the book, author Andrew 'bunnie' Huang details his escapades and exploits in getting his electronics product from design to market. For readers of Huang’s blog, there will be some repetition here.
For anyone looking to use Chinese manufacturing, Huang writes of his successes and failures, and informs the reader of how to avoid the many potential snags that come with the turf. He details the myriad nuances that can make the difference between shipping a product on-time, and those that cause costly delays. Manufacturing in China requires its own book, but here he provides the reader with an introduction of how to deal with the many things that can derail a project. Huang moved to China to be close to the makers of the Chumby device, for which he was lead engineer.
Perhaps the most interesting section is where Huang details the Chinese approach to intellectual property. To an American patent lawyer, China is the devil incarnate. To the Chinese, American patent lawyers do nothing but stifle innovation and increase costs.
Huang details the Chinese concepts of shanzhai and gongkai. Shanzhai refers to those who make fake products that look just like the original. Sometimes they are exact replicas, but often are very low-quality. Gongkai is the Chinese approach to open source and licensing, which takes on a very different meaning in China. The two approaches are at loggerheads to how things work in the United States and never the twain shall meet. But Huang does a fantastic job of explaining how these concepts work. While his explanations certainly won’t placate an IP lawyer in the states; it does provide excellent context to the Chinese mindset for the rest of the world.
Huang is quite forthright and details the many mistakes he made along the way. But he also writes of the hard work involved he did in getting things produced in China. Much of the book is the lessons he learned along the way. This is an invaluable guide for anyone who plans to produce things in China.
The book lives up to its title in part 4 where Huang details his escapades in hacking SD cards and other hardware. From a security perspective, his research into how memory cards work shows they run code that if modified, could perform a man in the middle attack that would be quite hard to detect. An important point he makes is that if you are using SD cards in a high-risk, hi-sensitivity situation, don’t assume that running a secure erase command will guarantee the complete erasure of sensitive data. He suggests for those that truly need to be certain their data is gone, to use a physical destruction method.
Huang has a PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That plus his real-world business and manufacturing expertise, make this a rare book that has so much good advice from so many different angles.
For those looking to understand how to design and manufacture in China, The Hardware Hacker provides insights that could make the difference between success and failure. Taking Huang’s advice to heart can mean the difference between a manufacturing misadventure and adventure.
April 29, 2019
I was deliberating whether to give this book a rating of 4 or 5 until I read the chapter on the comparison between biological systems and computers. I like how the author draws a parallel between these 2 topics. Surprisingly the author is very well-equipped with knowledge on DNA sequencing and CRISPR etc. Always handy to have a bioinformatics girlfriend when you are writing a book. :)
Jokes aside, I think the author did a very good job recounting his experiences as a hardware hacker. In the era where most people dive into creating software startups for its scalability and profitability, it is enlightening to see how the hardware startups fare in comparison. Andrew is obviously very knowledgeable in the hardware domain having graduated from MIT. Many people have electronics that are made in China. This piqued the interests of many people; what is the Chinese's trade secret? How are they doing so well in mass producing consumer electronics and shipping them all over the world? The author wrote his experiences having his open source hardware startup building a product from a Chinese factory. He had to monitor the production progress on site as well as from Singapore where he was based at. I would say it's fun reading them.
The other reason why I liked this book is also because it is zero-nonsense. It doesn't fluff you with motivational quotes like those you see in self-improvement books. He put in many lines of ARM code in several chapters of the book. He really documented his train of thought at each phase of his hardware development. This is a technical literature. There is Linux code, ARM code and some hexadecimal code for you to enjoy. Do not expect to cruise through this book without any technical knowledge. If you understand what does NOP instruction does then you probably have some entry knowledge to appreciate this book.
I also liked the fact that the author also tossed in some of his wisdom in the business aspect. As he worked in a startup and created his own Kickstarter campaign, it is natural to understand that he can teach you one or two thing about generating demand for the product you created. I found these advice helpful.
I recommend all with engineering background to read this book! I learnt a lot from this book and I think you would too! :)
Jokes aside, I think the author did a very good job recounting his experiences as a hardware hacker. In the era where most people dive into creating software startups for its scalability and profitability, it is enlightening to see how the hardware startups fare in comparison. Andrew is obviously very knowledgeable in the hardware domain having graduated from MIT. Many people have electronics that are made in China. This piqued the interests of many people; what is the Chinese's trade secret? How are they doing so well in mass producing consumer electronics and shipping them all over the world? The author wrote his experiences having his open source hardware startup building a product from a Chinese factory. He had to monitor the production progress on site as well as from Singapore where he was based at. I would say it's fun reading them.
The other reason why I liked this book is also because it is zero-nonsense. It doesn't fluff you with motivational quotes like those you see in self-improvement books. He put in many lines of ARM code in several chapters of the book. He really documented his train of thought at each phase of his hardware development. This is a technical literature. There is Linux code, ARM code and some hexadecimal code for you to enjoy. Do not expect to cruise through this book without any technical knowledge. If you understand what does NOP instruction does then you probably have some entry knowledge to appreciate this book.
I also liked the fact that the author also tossed in some of his wisdom in the business aspect. As he worked in a startup and created his own Kickstarter campaign, it is natural to understand that he can teach you one or two thing about generating demand for the product you created. I found these advice helpful.
I recommend all with engineering background to read this book! I learnt a lot from this book and I think you would too! :)
October 13, 2019
Bunnie Huang shares an insightful look into the Shenzhen electronics manufacturing industry and his journey in hacking circuit boards. He showed that Moore's law initially made hardware go obsolete very fast and that affected manufacturing to rush to ship for monetization, but as Moore's law slow down and chips sizes and clockspeed start to stabilize at ~3nm process and <10 GHz (i believe), hardware starts becoming more stable. This creates opportunities to improve hardware and paying a premium for better manufacturing processes which was initially introduces a lot of cheating and poor quality because of the aggressive need to reduce cost.
He also shared two interesting hacks:
(1) Hacking a PIC that deactivates memory protection by shining UV light at an angle to get around the shield protecting UV-ePROM. De-capping was necessary too.
(2) arbitrary code execution in flash memory controllers and use it as a MiTM as most SD cards come with a mem controller that manages the flash banks.
In the last chapter, he draws parallels to bio-informatics and introduced UniProt, and BLASTX.
He also shared two interesting hacks:
(1) Hacking a PIC that deactivates memory protection by shining UV light at an angle to get around the shield protecting UV-ePROM. De-capping was necessary too.
(2) arbitrary code execution in flash memory controllers and use it as a MiTM as most SD cards come with a mem controller that manages the flash banks.
In the last chapter, he draws parallels to bio-informatics and introduced UniProt, and BLASTX.
September 29, 2023
Super informative about hardware manufacturing in china in the the mid 2000s. Idk why I need to have this information but now I do. Also author goes on several chapter rant about fake hardware. Kinda interesting but he gets pretty obsessed and in the weeds. Now he's leading an open sourcing movement which I can get behind.
Fun fact take aways from book:
some Gongkai hardware movements in Shenzhen have been able to set a $12 msrp on highly functional smartphones... estimated that production cost is about 8 bucks.
US Defense is having huge problems maintaining computers of old naval and aviation equipment that china factories pretty much don't make any more. It's a national emergency.
US used to ship e waste overseas but factories would sort waste and just rebrand the chips as new ones and re sell us the same stuff until we declared counterfeit chips a national emergency and now chip trafficking is considered a bigger crime than cocaine trafficking
The Foxconn factory (apple's factory outside of Shenzhen) has over 150,000 full time live in workers at it and each day the factory gets shipped in over 3,000 pigs to feed the workers.
Fun fact take aways from book:
some Gongkai hardware movements in Shenzhen have been able to set a $12 msrp on highly functional smartphones... estimated that production cost is about 8 bucks.
US Defense is having huge problems maintaining computers of old naval and aviation equipment that china factories pretty much don't make any more. It's a national emergency.
US used to ship e waste overseas but factories would sort waste and just rebrand the chips as new ones and re sell us the same stuff until we declared counterfeit chips a national emergency and now chip trafficking is considered a bigger crime than cocaine trafficking
The Foxconn factory (apple's factory outside of Shenzhen) has over 150,000 full time live in workers at it and each day the factory gets shipped in over 3,000 pigs to feed the workers.
December 3, 2022
This book takes you on a journey of building up a supply chain and manufacturing capability from the ground up, with a number of anectdotes revealing hard-learned lessons.
bunnie's framing of the emerging hardware zeitgeist as a consequence of the extinction of Moore's Law was eye opening. No longer are we holding our breath for the next hardware iteration in a year or two—four year old hardware runs the latest software just fine. This slow down in the pace of hardware iteration opens the door for smaller upstarts to produce viable products with long useful lives.
The glimpse into the Shenzhen ecosystem was equally revealing. The software revolution we have seen with open source has a match in hardware, with people mixing and remixing designs, integrating ideas and components from each other and producing open hardware that others can iterate on—it feels so electric, like the air is full of possibility. This book left my mind racing with ideas, and hungry to get my hands dirty in hardware. I will definitely be revisiting some abandondef projects thanks to this book.
bunnie's framing of the emerging hardware zeitgeist as a consequence of the extinction of Moore's Law was eye opening. No longer are we holding our breath for the next hardware iteration in a year or two—four year old hardware runs the latest software just fine. This slow down in the pace of hardware iteration opens the door for smaller upstarts to produce viable products with long useful lives.
The glimpse into the Shenzhen ecosystem was equally revealing. The software revolution we have seen with open source has a match in hardware, with people mixing and remixing designs, integrating ideas and components from each other and producing open hardware that others can iterate on—it feels so electric, like the air is full of possibility. This book left my mind racing with ideas, and hungry to get my hands dirty in hardware. I will definitely be revisiting some abandondef projects thanks to this book.
November 17, 2017
This is an excellent book, but it has a catch-22 involved. Either you haven't heard about 'bunnie' Huang, meaning you have no clue about the awesomeness he's involved in and you'd probably won't be tempted to read his book, or already heard about him. Meaning you visited his website, read his blogposts, saw the Wired documentaries which will give you a large motivation to read his book. But in the latter case you could be a bit disappointed since a lot of the material already comes from online source.
So personally I enjoyed reading the book, and it helped me understanding the way our Chinese subcontractors/suppliers work and think a bit better, only the last chapter (which deals with genetics) was a bit of a stretch.
So personally I enjoyed reading the book, and it helped me understanding the way our Chinese subcontractors/suppliers work and think a bit better, only the last chapter (which deals with genetics) was a bit of a stretch.
November 23, 2018
This book ended up being a bit too technical for me.
I did enjoy the non-technical parts of it but I ended up skipping probably 30% of the book due to the indepthness of parts I didn't really care too much about.
It was definitely interesting to see his experiences in dealing with chinese factories and the good/bad things that can be accomplished there.
I think the part about hacking humans was interesting but perhaps would've been better as a separate book.
Overall, I would recommend it for people with a more technical background.
I did enjoy the non-technical parts of it but I ended up skipping probably 30% of the book due to the indepthness of parts I didn't really care too much about.
It was definitely interesting to see his experiences in dealing with chinese factories and the good/bad things that can be accomplished there.
I think the part about hacking humans was interesting but perhaps would've been better as a separate book.
Overall, I would recommend it for people with a more technical background.
February 10, 2019
A series of Internet articles repurposed as a book. I'm all for open hardware: however I can't get behind the author's ok Ness with IP stealing. I've had chip designs stolen and then fake chips with the same tech appear on the market 6 months later. It almost feels like the author hasn't experienced true r&d.
I really did appreciate his discussion on reverse engineering ( which I'm 100% ok with). I'm also in complete agreement that 20 years on patents is just too long.
The bio section at the end was ... Just not needed.
I really did appreciate his discussion on reverse engineering ( which I'm 100% ok with). I'm also in complete agreement that 20 years on patents is just too long.
The bio section at the end was ... Just not needed.
June 12, 2019
“In the beginning, all hardware was open.”
Even though a lot of technical details went flying over my head, I enjoyed the book. It's a page-turner with juicy (and reflected upon) experiences in a wide range of topics united by a clear idea. Beautiful.
To give a few examples: in this book, there's a custom-made laptop, arbitrary code execution on the microcontroller of a memory card, and delving into DNA with some `grep` and `awk`.
And there are big parts especially useful to a reader who's considering to manufacture hardware in China.
Even though a lot of technical details went flying over my head, I enjoyed the book. It's a page-turner with juicy (and reflected upon) experiences in a wide range of topics united by a clear idea. Beautiful.
To give a few examples: in this book, there's a custom-made laptop, arbitrary code execution on the microcontroller of a memory card, and delving into DNA with some `grep` and `awk`.
And there are big parts especially useful to a reader who's considering to manufacture hardware in China.
February 26, 2018
A good book about hardware, electronics, details/secrets of producing your own devices in China, Open Hardware and even biohardware (genes). I like that author's recent projects, explained in the book, are all open source and open hardware, he also describes interesting reverse engineering projects. I completely agree that you should be able to do whatever you want with the devices you own and no one can restrict those rights (as opposed to some weird laws in some countries).
September 13, 2024
I don't think there's book on the market like this one.
Everyone that is interested in electronics and the maker movement, should read this to boost their confidence in building electronic consumer products. "bunnie" Huang goes into China and shows the inside operations of the hardware factories. There's a lot that you can learn from "bunnie" in this book if you wish to take your skills to the point of knowing the electronics consumer products business.
Everyone that is interested in electronics and the maker movement, should read this to boost their confidence in building electronic consumer products. "bunnie" Huang goes into China and shows the inside operations of the hardware factories. There's a lot that you can learn from "bunnie" in this book if you wish to take your skills to the point of knowing the electronics consumer products business.
June 24, 2017
Really enjoyed this. Might deduct half a star because sometimes it did wander, in and amongst various details - but who's to say what's of interest to which reader?
The earlier chapters on chinese factories was particularly interesting and highly readable.
Bunnie covers a lot of areas in this book, from dealing with factories, to being a startup, to biological hacking.
The earlier chapters on chinese factories was particularly interesting and highly readable.
Bunnie covers a lot of areas in this book, from dealing with factories, to being a startup, to biological hacking.
August 15, 2017
While the first part of the book is actually great, the second one contains some author's thoughts on DNA and old interviews that cover the very same topics already mentioned in the book.
Anyways - 5* for first part. 4* overall - very good read. Must read for anyone who wants to start medium/large scale production in China - many pitfalls described in details.
Anyways - 5* for first part. 4* overall - very good read. Must read for anyone who wants to start medium/large scale production in China - many pitfalls described in details.
May 6, 2018
A more accurate subtitle could have earned this book a fifth star. The overwhelming majority of the book centered around the process of starting a hardware startup and getting your product manufactured in China. Interesting, but not exactly what I think of "Making and Breaking Hardware." Still very worth reading, just know what you're getting into.
January 12, 2019
It is a really fascinating, although a little haphazard collection of experiences to which few of us know. While not many people will arise to the challenge of creating hardware on the scale that needs manufacturing, it is still enlightening to glimpse in the mysteries and rationale of that process.
December 20, 2024
This was a pretty fun read that takes you through the maker culture of Shenzhen and how it really differs from environments elsewhere like in the USA. It was more of a narrative than technical guide but there were tidbits of good advice in here regarding manufacturer relationships as we follow the author through his personal business venture.
January 5, 2025
This is a very unique book as it covers the lived experience of on the electronics communities most respected members. Chapters 3 and 8 are worth the entire read, the information covered on the manufacturing process and "the product behind the product" are invaluable and can only be discovered through experience (or here ofc)
June 7, 2017
This will probably end up on the Top 5 Best Books I Read in 2017. It took me a while to read it, because I'd read a chapter, and then go find other resources to read about the topic of the chapter, or talk with friends who have had similar experiences.
October 13, 2017
As a professional software person who is just barely starting to dabble in electronics for fun, I found this fascinating. It's a little uneven, but still very engaging. I am pretty skeptical of most blog content turned into books, but it worked well here.
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