ShenzhenWare
“M5STACK is a modular development board kit that allows developers to create highly complete products directly using M5STACK.”
For M5STACK founder Lai Jingming, explaining his products to ordinary people outside the developer community is not an easy task. However, what he aims to do is to enable more “ordinary people” to easily develop hardware products through M5STACK.
When it comes to development boards (demoboards), they generally refer to circuit boards used for embedded system development, including a series of hardware components such as processors, memory, input/output devices, data pathways, and external interfaces. To engineers and makers, development boards may seem as ordinary as keyboards and mice, but to hardware enthusiasts with limited understanding of hardware development, they can appear as incomprehensible black boxes.
Directly Achieving “Product-Level”: Development Boards ≠ Basic Prototypes
Behind M5STACK, Lai Jingming emphasizes achieving “product-level” development boards. At maker fairs and similar events, one often sees hardware creations from makers that are impressive in functionality and inspiration, but the structure and appearance of the products are usually very basic. Exposed circuit boards and wires may seem cool and geeky to hardware enthusiasts, but to Lai Jingming, who often develops hardware himself, they are merely rough representations.
Using traditional development boards for smart control is complex and rough
“Products made with traditional development boards have a low level of completion; they are generally only suitable for validating functionality, with poor appearance and structure, and the difficulty of further expansion is high,” Lai Jingming said. To develop a basic prototype based on a development board into a more complete product that can truly be used in everyday scenarios requires considerable costs, exceeding the capabilities of most individual developers.
The general process from “inspiration” to “product”
M5STACK provides a shortcut from concept to final product. On one hand, M5STACK features a complete and elegant design, unlike traditional development boards that are merely exposed circuit boards; on the other hand, compared to traditional development boards that often require jumper connections, the modular design of M5STACK offers significant advantages in stability and reliability, meeting the requirements for long-term use.
After assembling the modules and programming the software, the M5STACK kit becomes a complete hardware product that can be directly used in specific scenarios.
Modular Hardware
To connect development boards with various actuators, makers often need to plan structures and solder circuits themselves, which not only requires high manual skills but also can directly affect the stability of the hardware if the structure is poorly planned or the soldering is not secure.
M5STACK’s historical products
To reduce the development difficulty in hardware, M5STACK adopts a 5*5 cm modular design, allowing different modules to be stacked and connected like LEGO bricks. The combined modules can form a complete and sturdy whole. The M5STACK module family includes computing modules such as MATRIX, CORE, and MAKER, as well as numerous sensors, actuators, communication, driving, and expansion modules that can significantly support developers in realizing their ideas.
Some modules from the M5STACK family
Graphical Programming
One of M5STACK’s goals is to lower the barriers to hardware development. Simply designing a beautiful and user-friendly development board is far from enough, as most people do not possess the ability to program hardware.
Lai Jingming’s solution is to visualize the programming process. User-friendly and easy-to-understand graphical programming has seen widespread attempts in children’s programming education, but it has been rarely applied in the “serious” hardware development field. M5STACK has designed graphical programming software called Moments, allowing users to complete programming in a very intuitive way. Moments is currently being continuously updated and improved, with increasingly complete functionalities.
Moments graphical programming interface
Of course, M5STACK also supports other programming languages, allowing it to be used like a typical development board.
Rapid Prototyping + Lowering Barriers: Where is M5STACK Used?
Compared to traditional development boards, M5STACK offers two obvious attractions: rapid prototyping and lowering development barriers. Regarding the latter, whether M5STACK can attract ordinary hardware enthusiasts to turn their ideas into reality remains to be seen, but its rapid prototyping feature can certainly find much imaginative space between maker projects and mass-produced products in the hardware field.
A typical example is in large-scale, low-frequency, and highly customized applications for building automation, where M5STACK can be effectively applied. Intermediaries no longer need to conduct complex development based on traditional development boards, nor do they need to connect wiring between various devices, and they no longer need to hide unsightly boards in a circuit box…
Although Lai Jingming often mentions the term “product-level,” the greatest significance of M5STACK may not lie in ultimately creating a highly complete “product” (though that is important), but in providing a simple, standardized, and reliable process from inspiration (or need) to development and application. Makers or developers can more conveniently use their skills to solve real problems, and the products they create can be directly applied long-term and at scale without being relegated to uselessness due to completion issues—M5STACK serves as both building blocks for creating hardware “works” and an efficient problem-solving tool.
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