Fake chip from China

Recently, I designed a display panel system board. I used a common IC device on it. Unfortunately, the device was sold out in Japan and the western world. I found that the device is openly sold in China over the internet. I phoned a company in Hong Kong to place my order. Their price was extremely low, as much as one tenth the Japanese price. I doubted it a little, so I ordered the same part from three different companies.
Each of them arrived by air express within two weeks. They all looked brand new to me, because the printing and metal foot was very clean, or maybe too clean. Then, they were mounted on the board and I tested them. They worked right at the first first time, and the Chinese devices also worked as well. I felt a little guilty for doubting Chinese businesses.
Later, we tested each item on the board and realized that something is little strange with the Chinese device. The trouble was minor, but the damage to the board's function was very serious. We had to scrutinize the Chinese device.
It was astonishing that the device was totally fake, the printing was correct, and the voltage direction was correct, but its electrical characteristic were totally wrong !!! I tested the three company's devices. All of them are fake! The fake chip was made to pass the first test and then malfunction on the actual use in equipment. What a clever fraud.
I learned a lot from the accident. I will never buy Chinese components for business ever again.
I heard a horrible report that the U.S. military suffered the same trick in their weapon's electrical equipment recently.
Private: Fire!!
.... Silene ...
Private: ?! W.T.F. ?!
It's no joke.

See you at the ET2009

On Coming November from the 18th to 20th, a large exhibition for embedded technology, ET2009, will be held at the Pacifico Yokohama.

http://www.jasa.or.jp/et/english/index.html

This event will be the largest in Asia area in 2009. It will feature micro-computing technologies including mobile systems.

Our Metier company will attend as one of Niigata prefecture’s venture electrical design companies.

Our main exhibits will be the “PenguinOne FPGA board”, the “Verilog-HDL image processing IP cores” and the “Eye mouse”.

http://www.metier-dc.co.jp

http://www.metier-dc.co.jp/ip_eng.html

Many foreign people will be welcome because we can speak English well enough to explain our products.

Niigata prefecture is a land of rice and sake, so those who visit our corner will get a pack of rice as a souvenir.

On the evening of November 19^th, we will serve sake as well. Our Metier company will prepare three bottles of “Koshitantei”, most vintage Nagaoka’s sake and “persimmon seeds” for nibbles.

We are eager to find foreign partner to use our products outside Japan, So we will expect many people to come and get to know each other at ET2009.

We will be in "C-13"

See you soon!

IP cores

Check it out!
This is Metier's new product "Verilog-HDL image processing IP cores".

http://www.metier-dc.co.jp/ip_eng.html

Penguins everywhere

The coming March 15 will be a long awaited date. The JR (Japan Railway) card SUICA will be available here at this rural Nagaoka station.
I have long waited for this date. I have owned a SUICA card since long ago, because I often go Tokyo area for business. I feel it is inconvenient that the card is only available in urban areas. I wanted to charge up my SUICA points, but I always lose out on points while in my home town.
From now on, I will be able to charge SUICA points every day, and I will get many cute penguin goods.
I, Penguin President, love the SUICA penguin, not the SUICA card.
I feel like the SUICA penguin is saying "Thank you" to me when I buy something with the SUICA card. And I always buy additional, needless juice or magazines at KIOSK stands.
The JR company sometimes holds sales campaigns titled "You can get XX for a SUICA charge of XX points". When I find such campaigns, I always go KIOSK-hopping to add SUICA points up to the point goal; buy one juice in a KIOSK, and buy another one at other KIOSK.
I think I am completely manipulated by JR advertisements.
Now, a large sales campaign is going on at Nagaoka station, and many cute SUICA penguins are visible everywhere in the station building.
Of course, I, Penguin President, amd very happy to see that.
I hope the SUICA card and the penguin will prevail all throughout Nagaoka city and the outskirts.

Thank you for coming

Thank you very much to all of you who came to our comapy's exhibition at Vanture Fair 2008. Sometimes we were too busy to attend to all of our guests. Some of you might not have gotten enough information from us. We are very sorry about that; Please feel free to contact us anytime from our web site http://www.soutokukan.co.jp/yedc .
Thanks to the exhibition, we were able to meet representatives from many companies. Some of you wil actually do business with us.


By the way,
"What's this?" and "What's this for?"
These two questions were frequently asked by many people at the exhibition. To be honest, we had not prepared for these basic question at first.
Our product, PenguinOne, is a highly specialised electoric device for Liquid Crystal Displays. Those who are accustomed to graphic devices may find our product useful, but most of you visited our booth are working for many kinds of technical fields, medicine, civil and mechanical engineering, and so forth. It is hard for us to explain our products to those of you from such varied fields.
I was kind of tired of answering such basic questions, and I stopped responding seriously to some of them. But, I changed my mind later. Everyone was coming to the show in order to search for a wide variety of new technologies, and we all attend in order to exhibit our product and to find new applications for them. I quickly made an answer list to respond to basic questions. For example,
"What is this ?" -> A graphic board for LCDs;
"What id this for ?" -> Mobile phones, portable displays, or YOUR own devices;
Some of you may have left our booth still unsatisfied with our product information, but we hope it will eventually become clear.

Our booth neighbored a voice analysis company's booth. The company has a special technology for human voice recognition. I had a chance to try it on my break time. When i spoke the word "They" in a microphone, the computer diagnosed my pronounciation and respond "Please hold your tongue back more". that is a great new device for English lessons! Our neighbor was always crowded with many visitors, news reporters, and TV crews. Some TV crews were from overseas. In contrast, our booth was far from crowded. I will have to prepare more next time....

Venture Fair 2008 in Tokyo

Our Penguin company will attend Vanture fair 2008 that will be held from Feb. 5 to 7 in Yurakucho Tokyo.
Venture Fair 2008 in Tokyo
Our products

The exhibition is an annual event for newly established venture companies in Japan. many young companies will gather together to show their products. We will show our Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) system "PenguinOne" there also. PenguinOne is the all-in-one graphic development system with QVGA(320x400) LCD display. QVGA LCD displays are widely used in mobile phones now, but many of you may find it difficult to use them for your own products. We can provide you with a set of hardware and software to use them for your products. So, you can use PenguinOne system instantly to adopt QVGA LCD panels to YOUR system in a short period of time. Those of you who want to use small size color LCD displays in your system, please come to the show and talk with us.
We are a young company established on Feb. 19 2007.
It is our first time to release our own product to the public.
We have been working with major Japanese electoronics manufactureres since our establishment. We have produced a lot of highly specialized electronic devices, but we have never been able to offer them to public, because of secret protection contracts. It has been a little painful to us that our products have never been opened to public although a lot of efforts are poured into producing them. Only our customers could know our skills.
But this time, we can show our products openly and widely. PenguinOne is our own product.
I hope Vanture Fair 2008 is a good chance for you to get to know our company and our technology. All of you engineers visiting Japan are also welcome to the show. We can speak English well enough.
See you at the Venture Fair 2008 in Tokyo!

Penguin Device Corp.

Hello, Everyone!

We are preparing for Penguin device Corp. English web site.
We are special skilled electorical design team and software developpers.
Now, we are working for major Japanese makers. This time, we are expecting to work with you world people.
Please visit our web site. ( Sorry, Japanese only now )
http://www.soutokukan.co.jp/yedc
Penguin Device Corp.
( formally called by the name Yamakatsu Electric Device Corp.)