on March 6, The International Innovation Policy and Practice Conference was held in Shenzhen, China. Aiming to promote the establishment of the World Innovative Cities Cooperation Organization (WICCO) and build a platform for exchange, cooperation and resource-sharing among the world's leading innovative cities, this meeting brought together in Shenzhen mayors of some of the world's innovative cities, heads of famous technology enterprises, research institutes and venture capital institutions, and representatives of international organizations in China to discuss innovation, seek cooperation, and build an international innovation ecosystem.

Takasu Masakazu, a world-renowned maker, visiting lecturer of Waseda University, and partner of Switch Science Inc., elaborated on the development history and advantages of Shenzhen's hardware supply chain industry and introduced the characteristics of Shenzhen as the world's "Silicon Valley of Hardware". Notably, in his speech, Masakazu Takasu devoted nearly a quarter of his speech to introducing a Shenzhen-based open-source hardware company, M5Stack, to the audience.

What's so special about M5Stack, a company with such a strange-sounding name at first glance?  And why is it being showcased to represent Shenzhen-based open-source hardware companies?

Founded in 2015, M5Stack is a famous Shenzhen-based startup. In Japan, M5Stack is a popular presence among makers. There are 44 operation guide book books about M5Stack on the Japanese Amazon website, and many Japanese companies, universities and colleges use M5Stack for prototyping, validation, teaching and working.

Additionally, many makers all over the world have come to love M5Stack because of its plug-and-play, modular, adaptable, and stacking capabilities. M5Stack also partners with major companies in the industry like Microsoft, Sony, Ericsson, Amazon Web Services, Foxconn, and Siemens.

Link the World by Open Source - the Story of M5Stack

01 The idea

The story of M5Stack began with an idea from the founder Jimmy Lai. He was leaving Southern Grid and found a pile of discarded development boards in a drawer in his studio, which had become useless after having proven the product's functionality. In Jimmy’s opinion, these traditional development boards, with their exposed circuit boards and wires, were not only "crude" in appearance, but also complicated to operate and not conducive to further expansion.

And for individual developers, it can be costly in terms of time, effort and money to turn a rudimentary prototype based on a development board into a product that can be used in everyday scenarios.

"How about developing a modular development kit that could assist developers in swiftly developing and validating their concepts and working directly from idea to product," Jimmy Lai founded his company based on this notion.

02 Open source product system 

The "Stack" product, which has a modular design and a standard size of 5 cm by 5 cm, is plug-and-play, stackable, and extendable. Users can stack the modules with various functionalities to speed up product verification and development, and as a result, "M5Stack" was created. Today, M5Stack has 300+ SKUs, covering the full range of products from embedded controllers and communication modules to sensors, with high performance, reliability, scalability, and quick access to cloud platforms like Azure, and AWS.

03 A convenient graphical platform-UIFlow

Hardware development can be simplified by modular design, but software programming is still a challenge for most individuals. UIFLOW, a low-code graphical programming IDE, was introduced by M5Stack with this problem in mind to offer the greatest experience for prototyping IoT applications from entry-level hobbyists to experienced developers. With UIFLOW, a user can construct a solution out of a single block or use many blocks to achieve more complex scenarios. 

04 Community operations and rapid development

On social media platforms and communities, M5Stack always shares new ideas and real-time product development processes with the fans and makes quick adjustments based on the inspiration and feedback from the users. As a result, it has promoted a positive community culture, with many users regularly offering their thoughts, open-source projects, and practical advice. This has helped to shape what M5Stack is today.

IoT has reshaped our world in recent years as a technological revolution. With the development of IoT, M5Stack has gone through six years. The year 2022 is eventful. Here, we look back at the most important events of this year and express our sincere gratitude to our customers and friends.

01 Collaboration with Sony：Release of Atom Mate for toio™ in Japan

* toio™ is a registered trademark or trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc

Atom Mate for toio™ is the first project M5Stack and Sony have worked on together and immediately became a hit when released in Japan.  

* toio™ development using UIFloweloper of toio™

* Tanaka, the developer of toio™, is a big fan of M5

02 Collaboration with AWS：Launch of AWS IoT Edukit SimpleIOT Starter Bundle V1.0

Simple IoT, AWS's IoT workshop, provides free IoT programming knowledge and up-to-date code. Simple IoT (https://simpleiot.net/) is 100% open source, users can view and modify all data, code and services in their AWS account, and build their IoT projects with M5Stack's SimpleIOT Starter Bundle, an all-in-one package that allows people to start experimenting with a fully built and connected device in less than 5 minutes.

03 Collaboration with Microsoft: Launch of PnPFlow for Azure IoT Central Based on UIFlow

Project PnPFlow is the latest collaboration between M5STACK and the Azure IoT team. It provides a better collaborative experience for developers to build IoT plug-and-play devices without having to know the complexities of plug-and-play protocols and DTDL models. All they need to do is drag and drop blocks to build a business-centric application in UIFLOW. It is automatically provisioned on Azure IoT Central and works seamlessly with IoT Central's template-based web UI.

* PnPFlow demo 

04 M5Stack's Core2, Basic Core and COM.LTE Module have Been Added to Ericsson's Partner Marketplace Offering Catalogue

05 Listed in Digi-Key's Guide to Boards 2022

M5Stack's Stamp C3U, Stamp Pico and StickC plus are listed in this guide, plus Stamp C3U was ranked New&Notable.

06 Basic V2.6, Core2 and StickC Top Switch Science's TOP100 Best-selling Products

For the third year in a row, the M5 has taken the number one spot on the Switch Science TOP 100 list of best-selling products. And there are seven M5Stack products on this list: Basic V2.6 (#1), Core2 (#2), StickC Plus (#3), Core2 for AWS (#18), ATOM Lite (#21), Fire V2.6 (#23) and ATOM Matrix (#26).

According to Mr Yasui, Sales Director of Switch Science, M5Stack is good at collecting requirements at all levels to develop products, sharing development information with customers on social media platforms, actively adopting user opinions, and developing at a high speed, which is M5's strength that is difficult for other companies to catch up with.

07 Exhibited at the High-tech Fair - IOTE 2022, the 18th International IoT Exhibition, and Won the IOTE Gold Award for Innovative Products and the Excellent Product Award of the High-tech Fair

08 M5Stack Japan Creativity Contest 2022 Received 153 Outstanding Entries

09 Office Relocation

Moving to a new location, integrating resources and staff.

Looking back on 2022, there was both hardship and happiness. In 2022, M5 continued to release new products every Friday. 63 new products were released throughout the year, including embedded controllers, communication modules and a full range of sensors. Product applications also expanded into a wider range of areas, including blockchain, smart weather stations, smart storage and more.

M5Stack could not have come this far without the customers' and friends' support and help. We sincerely thank you and wish you a happy, safe and prosperous 2023.

Christmas is celebrated by countries around the world. Traditions to celebrate the festival of love include a feast; giving gifts or cards; and enjoying church or public festivities, like singing Christmas carols and songs.

To celebrate the festival, Makers always show off their skills. In the M5Stack Christmas Contest 2022, M5 loyalists make a good performance. We hereby express our thanks to everyone who participated and helped make this contest a success! Let's see which ones came out on top from the 28 entries.

Magic Christmas Tree@IkeuchiRyota

Star：星を降らせる魔法の杖
ピカピカ〜
磁石をつけるために LEGOパーツにネジをさす という荒業‥#M5ABC シリーズの"S"#M5StackXmas2022 pic.twitter.com/1Q90Thh9r8

— ikeuchi (@IkeuchiRyota) December 20, 2022

 With a flick of the star wand, the Christmas tree lights up smoothly. Isn’t it like magic? In fact, it's based on the power of technology. Magnets are set underneath the Lego block with wires, Hall effect Unit is mounted on the bottom of the StickC console, when the star wand with iron inside connects to the magnet on the console, the lights on the Christmas tree start flickering as set before.

Chebyshev Linkage Robots @KantenNamako

ゆく年来る年 / ☃️Happy Holidays!☃️ @M5Stack #M5StackXmas2022 pic.twitter.com/8AHZdRwWNL

— namako (@KantenNamako) December 22, 2022

 It’s a comedy-style work with a mix of Asian and Western styles. To celebrate Christmas and new year, using M5Stack as the controller, Keiichi Matsui made two Chebyshev linkage (a four-bar linkage that converts rotational motion to approximate linear motion created by Chebyshev)robots. These two robots are decorated cutely, having a funny moving pace, conveying a happy atmosphere.

ATOM Christmas Tree@aaa_tu

できたー！🎄@M5Stack #M5StackXmas2022 pic.twitter.com/ouow7KmL3s

— アツユキ (@aaa_tu) December 20, 2022

 This Christmas tree stands out from the rest of the entries with its sense of technology and Minimalism. Just using M5ATOM Matrix and MAX7219 LED Display Module, @aaa_tu made this perfect project. The tutorial is uploaded on his website athttps://www.creativity-ape.com/entry/2022/12/25/025029 

Other Great Projects

M5stack Snow Ball@LuisLlamas

🎄Merry Christmas Project finished!
🎉A snow ball made with a @M5Stack Core 2.
🧡150 particles with collisions between them (verlet integration) plus a background layer with 250 with no inner colliders, only bounding ball
🔥It also uses the acellerometer to get gravity direction! pic.twitter.com/hmvxAvXn83

— Luis Llamas (@LuisLlamas) December 26, 2022

LuisLlamas is good at software interaction with M5Stack, making interesting projects. This time, Luis made a snowball with M5Core2, when the device turns direction, the snowflakes whirled down to the gravity direction gotten by the accelerometer in Core2, cute and vivid.

Displaying Air Quality CO2 Over Snowflakes @zeromem0

#M5StackXmas2022 pic.twitter.com/eWas5zmbTh

— zeromem (@zeromem0) December 23, 2022

Zeromemo made a snowflake theme for Core2, a project that balances aesthetics and practicality. Hanged on a Christmas tree, this Core2 displays the time, temperature, CO2 concentration and ambient humidity information over snowflakes, presenting a festival atmosphere. Zeromemo uploaded the open-source code Github: https://github.com/zeromem0/snowingSCD41 

Shake with ATOM S3@its_hard_2_name

#ATOMS3 #HappyChristmas2022 pic.twitter.com/skfwu3uTSz

— IAMLIUBO (@its_hard_2_name) December 24, 2022