<![CDATA[Made in Pakistan]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5de5!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fmadeinpakistan.substack.com%2Fimg%2Fsubstack.pngMade in Pakistanhttps://madeinpakistan.substack.comSubstackSat, 05 Sep 2026 06:35:52 GMT<![CDATA[Microduck: The $399 Open-Source Biped Robot That Learns to Walk Through Reinforcement Learning]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/microduck-the-399-open-source-bipedhttps://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/microduck-the-399-open-source-bipedSat, 29 Aug 2026 20:19:17 GMTView on shamylmansoor.com →

Pollen Robotics opened pre-orders for Microduck on August 27, 2026 — a 25 cm, 800-gram bipedal robot that walks, kicks, grabs objects, and even roller-skates using reinforcement learning policies trained in simulation. At $399 before taxes and shipping, it is one of the most affordable programmable robots with sim-to-real RL capabilities ever made available to the public. The entire software stack is open-source under the Apache-2.0 license, and the robot ships with seven pre-trained behaviors ready to use out of the box.

In Brief

  • Microduck is a 25 cm bipedal robot with 15 servo motors, a camera, LiDAR, and two IMUs, built by Pollen Robotics (now part of Hugging Face)

  • Pre-orders opened August 27, 2026 at $399; shipping is targeted before Christmas 2026

  • All robot software is Apache-2.0 licensed, with the RL training stack in a separate repository using MuJoCo and PPO

  • The robot ships with 7 pre-trained policies: walk, sit/stand, kick, grab, roller skate, get back up, and quack

  • Behaviors are trained in a physics simulator and deployed to the robot — users can retrain and share new policies through Hugging Face

What Is Microduck?

Microduck is the newest robot from Pollen Robotics, a French company now part of Hugging Face that previously built Reachy, a larger interactive robot used in research and education. Where Reachy was designed as a social robot for human-robot interaction studies, Microduck is explicitly built for locomotion and reinforcement learning.

The robot is small — about 25 centimeters tall and weighing roughly 800 grams. Its brain is a Rockchip RK3566 system-on-chip running a 50 Hz control loop that drives fifteen servos. The sensor stack includes a camera, a time-of-flight LiDAR sensor, and two inertial measurement units. It connects via USB-C for charging and Bluetooth for gamepad control.

According to the company, every Microduck ships with seven pre-trained policies that work immediately: a velocity-tracking walking gait, sitting and standing, kicking a ball, grabbing objects with its beak, roller skating (when skate attachments are equipped), self-recovery from a fallen position, and a quacking voice. Each behavior is a neural network policy that can be swapped, retrained, or replaced.

How the Reinforcement Learning Pipeline Works

The technical architecture is what sets Microduck apart from other affordable robots. The project is split across two GitHub repositories:

  • **[microduck](https://github.com/pollen-robotics/microduck)** — the robot's onboard software, written in Rust. It includes the control loop daemon (`robotd`), the update system (`updaterd`), Bluetooth daemon (`btd`), gamepad handler (`padd`), camera streaming via WebRTC (`mediad`), and the depth sensor service (`tofd`). All daemons communicate over JSON-RPC on Unix sockets.

  • **[microduck_rl](https://github.com/pollen-robotics/microduck_rl)** — the training stack, which uses MuJoCo for physics simulation and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) for policy learning. Trained policies are exported to ONNX format, which the robot loads and executes.

The sim-to-real workflow follows a well-established pattern in robotics research: train a policy in a physics simulator with domain randomization (varying friction, mass, motor dynamics, and other physical parameters to make the policy robust), then deploy the resulting neural network directly on the physical robot. Users can train new behaviors on their own machine or use Hugging Face Jobs for cloud training, then deploy to the robot in what the company describes as "one step from simulation to the real thing."

The robot also supports SSH access (ssh microduck) and provides command-line tools (robotctl) for configuration, monitoring, and updates. This makes it a genuine developer platform rather than a closed consumer toy.

Why This Matters for Education

For STEAM educators and educational robotics programs, Microduck represents a significant shift in what is accessible. Consider the typical educational robotics landscape: most affordable robots under $400 use either remote control with no autonomous behavior, or simple pre-programmed movements via block-based coding. Reinforcement learning — the same technique used to train humanoid robots like Boston Dynamics' Atlas and Tesla's Optimus — has been largely inaccessible at this price point.

The closest comparisons in the educational space are platforms like the NVIDIA Isaac GR00T reference humanoid, which targets university research labs at a significantly higher cost, or simulation-only environments where students train policies that never touch real hardware. Microduck bridges this gap by providing both the physical robot and the full training pipeline at a price that individual learners or small school programs could realistically afford.

From a curriculum perspective, the sim-to-real loop is one of the most important concepts in modern robotics. Students can see, in a concrete and hands-on way, how a policy trained in a simulated environment transfers (or fails to transfer) to physical hardware. This is not a theoretical exercise — it is the same workflow used by professional robotics engineers at companies like Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, and Unitree. The domain randomization challenges, the sim-to-real gap, and the iteration cycle of train-deploy-refine are all real engineering problems that Microduck makes tangible.

What This Means for Makers and Hardware Builders

The open-source hardware approach is notable. While the mechanical designs are not fully open-source in the traditional sense (the CAD files are not explicitly listed as open hardware), the software stack is permissively licensed under Apache-2.0, and the entire system architecture is documented in the repository's design docs. This includes the daemon architecture, the motor bus design, the update verification system, and the JSON-RPC communication protocol.

For hardware product builders, there are practical lessons in how Pollen Robotics has structured the robot's software. The decision to use Rust for all system daemons, the JSON-RPC-over-Unix-sockets communication pattern, and the signed-update-with-rollback system are all design choices that smaller robotics teams can learn from. The update system in particular — where every update is verified, health-gated, and reversible — addresses a problem that many hardware startups underestimate: how to safely push software updates to devices in the field without bricking them.

The integration with Hugging Face for policy sharing and cloud training is also worth studying. By making policy sharing a first-class citizen of the platform (the workflow explicitly includes "publish the policy" as step four), Pollen Robotics is betting that community-created behaviors will drive the robot's long-term value. This is the same dynamic that has made Hugging Face central to the NLP and computer vision communities, applied to physical robotics.

Relevance to Pakistan and Emerging Tech Ecosystems

For technology builders in Pakistan and similar emerging markets, Microduck is relevant in two ways.

First, as a learning tool. The $399 price point, while still significant in local currency terms, is within reach of university labs, maker spaces, and serious self-learners. The fact that the full training pipeline is open-source means that students can learn reinforcement learning for robotics without needing access to a university robotics lab with expensive equipment. A student with a decent GPU and a Microduck can run the same sim-to-real pipeline that top research labs use.

Second, as a product design case study. Pollen Robotics is a relatively small company that has managed to build a sophisticated robot at a consumer-accessible price point. Their approach — using a commodity SoC (Rockchip RK3566) rather than a custom chip, standard servos rather than proprietary actuators, and leveraging the Hugging Face ecosystem for infrastructure — demonstrates that meaningful robotics products can be built without the resources of a Boston Dynamics or Tesla. For Pakistani hardware startups thinking about building educational robotics platforms, the Microduck playbook is worth studying.

The challenges of doing this in Pakistan are real: component sourcing, import duties on electronics, and the lack of local PCB manufacturing all add cost and complexity. But the Microduck bill of materials — commodity SoC, standard servos, ToF sensor, camera — consists of parts that are globally available and individually inexpensive. The expensive part of robotics is not the parts; it is the integration, the software, and the sim-to-real pipeline. Pollen Robotics has shown that a small team can nail that integration.

Product Builder's Perspective

From a product-building perspective, several design decisions in Microduck stand out.

The choice of a bipedal form factor is bold. Bipedal locomotion is significantly harder than wheeled or quadrupedal locomotion, and most educational robots at this price point use wheels. By committing to bipedal walking via RL, Pollen Robotics is making a statement: reinforcement learning for locomotion has matured enough that a small robot can do it reliably at a consumer price point. This was not true two years ago.

The decision to ship pre-trained policies rather than asking users to train everything from scratch is important for the out-of-box experience. A robot that does nothing on day one is a poor educational tool — it needs to work immediately to build confidence, then open up for deeper exploration. The seven shipped policies provide that immediate gratification, while the open training stack provides the depth.

The Hugging Face integration is a strategic advantage that few robotics companies can match. Being part of Hugging Face gives Microduck access to the largest community of machine learning practitioners in the world, a familiar platform for sharing models, and cloud training infrastructure. For an independent robotics company, building this kind of community platform from scratch would be nearly impossible.

One open question is durability. A bipedal robot that is 25 cm tall and weighs 800 grams will fall, and falling is where small robots often break. The accessory pack includes spare motors and cables, which suggests Pollen Robotics expects wear and tear. How well the robot survives months of student use in a classroom setting remains to be seen.

What to Watch Next

  • **Shipping and real-world reviews**: Microduck is scheduled to ship before Christmas 2026. The gap between pre-order and shipping means that independent reviews of build quality, battery life, and sim-to-real reliability are still months away.

  • **Community policy development**: The success of the platform depends on whether users actually create and share new behaviors. Watch the [Microduck GitHub repository](https://github.com/pollen-robotics/microduck) and Hugging Face for community-contributed policies.

  • **Educational adoption**: Whether universities and schools integrate Microduck into robotics curricula will determine its long-term impact. The sim-to-real pipeline is pedagogically valuable, but curriculum integration requires more than a good robot — it needs teaching materials, lesson plans, and instructor support.

  • **Competitive response**: If Microduck proves popular, expect similar products from other open-source robotics companies. The combination of RL locomotion and sub-$400 pricing is a new market segment.

  • **Pakistan-specific opportunities**: If import costs can be managed, Microduck could be a viable platform for advanced robotics education in Pakistani universities. Maker spaces in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi that already have 3D printing and basic electronics capacity would be well-positioned to use it.

Conclusion

Microduck is not just another educational robot. It is the first time that sim-to-real reinforcement learning for locomotion has been packaged into a $399 consumer product with fully open-source software. For educators, it offers a way to teach one of the most important concepts in modern robotics — the sim-to-real pipeline — with physical hardware that students can hold in their hands. For makers and hardware builders, it is a reference design for how small teams can build sophisticated robotics products using commodity components and open-source tooling.

The robot is not without limitations: it is small, bipedal walking is inherently fragile, and the real-world durability and sim-to-real gap will only become clear after shipping. But the approach — open-source, community-driven, integrated with the leading ML platform — is exactly the direction that educational robotics should be moving.

For anyone building educational robotics platforms or working at the intersection of STEAM education and hardware, Microduck is worth paying attention to.

Sources

  • [Pollen Robotics — Microduck product page](https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/)

  • [GitHub — pollen-robotics/microduck](https://github.com/pollen-robotics/microduck) (Apache-2.0, 559 stars as of August 28, 2026)

  • [GitHub — pollen-robotics/microduck_rl](https://github.com/pollen-robotics/microduck_rl) (RL training stack)

  • [Pollen Robotics homepage](https://pollen-robotics.com/) (confirms Hugging Face acquisition)

  • [Hugging Face — pollen-robotics profile](https://huggingface.co/pollen-robotics)

]]><![CDATA[How a Pakistani helped Argentina win their first FIFA world cup]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/how-a-pakistani-helped-argentinahttps://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/how-a-pakistani-helped-argentinaFri, 04 Apr 2025 05:01:36 GMTSource and credits PaperClip: https://x.com/Paperclip_In/status/1736622241570603013

When Argentina lifted their first-ever FIFA World Cup in 1978, a remarkable Pakistani born in Bhopal left his indelible mark by helping the Argentines win the trophy. On the anniversary of Leo Messi and Argentina's World Cup victory, looking back at this incredible story.

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To unearth the personal accounts for this immensely interesting story, we spoke to Ijaz Chaudhry, an eminent sports journalist with roots in both Pakistan and the UK who has written, reported and spoken in several prestigious sports newspapers and on TV/Radio channels

1978. Argentina was politically turbulent. Democracy was in tatters, the country was in the grip of a dictatorship. That year, Argentina hosted both the hockey and football World Cups. The hockey event was held in March, and the football extravaganza followed in June

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When the Pakistan team landed in Buenos Aires, manager Waheed Khan told the media, “I won`t let any European team destroy the beauty of the game of hockey to win the world title through penalty corners.”

Though, among the favorites, Pakistan had failed to win a global title since 1971: (1972 Olympics - 2nd, 1973 World Cup - 4th, 1975 World Cup - 2nd, and 1976 Olympics - 3rd). His statement caught everyone's attention

And what a stellar performance Pakistan had given. Right from the first match, the Pakistan team displayed a beautiful attacking brand of hockey mesmerizing crowds and connoisseurs alike

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They won each of their six pool games, as well as the semifinal (against West Germany) and final (against Holland) at the Polo Ground, becoming the first nation to take home the championship twice

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During their victorious campaign, the green shirts created many sublime records. Their total of 35 goals was a new highest for a single edition of the World Cup, while only conceding 4 goals along the way

Records aside, it was the style and manner in which they shattered the defenses that captivated everyone. Argentines who had only vaguely heard of Pakistan before the event began to applaud them. They also caught the eye of a special someone

It was César Luis Menotti - the iconic and rebellious head coach of the Argentine football team. Surprisingly, he had been coming to watch the Pakistan games along with his coaching staff. The Football World Cup was merely two months away

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They also took notes. Much loved chain-smoking Menotti himself attended Pakistan's matches. He and his assistants were even seen at Pakistan`s practice sessions. All this was also reported in the Argentine media

Towards the end of pool matches, on a rest day, Pakistan’s manager Waheed Khan, who had played for Pakistan`s gold medal-winning team of the 1960 Olympics, was informed that Menotti had come on his personal plane to see him

Waheed, who was born in 1934, in the Indian hamlet of Raipur in the Bhopal district, emigrated to Pakistan in 1949 together with his parents and made his home in Karachi’s PIB Colony. They had a detailed discussion, mainly centered around Pakistan`s attacking strategy

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Among other points, Waheed stressed the use of wingers when penetration through the center becomes difficult; midfield possession to frustrate the opponent when not finding gaps in their defense. This would lure defenders to come forward resulting in gaps

They discussed the strategy of double attack i.e. if a move from the right side fails then make all the effort to immediately initiate a move from the left side on the assumption that most of the opponents' defense had become concentrated on one side

Menotti also personally watched a training session of the Pakistan team with Waheed, where Waheed practically demonstrated the strategy to Menotti. He noted a few points and then left the ground

On June 25, 1978, Argentina, led by an inspired Daniel Passarella and dashing long-haired Mario Kempes, won the FIFA World Cup for the first time defeating Holland in the final, just like Pakistan did a couple of months ago

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A few weeks after Argentina won the first FIFA World Cup, Waheed Khan received a telegram in Karachi. It was from César Luis Menotti acknowledging the fact that the Pakistan hockey team's ploys came in very handy to him and the winning squad. A story like no other

Image attributes: Personal archives of Ijaz Chaudhry. El Grafico, César Menotti holding the World Cup won with Argentina, public domain from Wikimedia. El Grafico, Daniel Passarella holding the FIFA World Cup trophy, public domain from Wikimedia.

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]]><![CDATA[Made in Pakistan]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/made-in-pakistanhttps://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/made-in-pakistanSun, 21 Jun 2020 03:23:32 GMTSalam

Assalam Alaikum and welcome to the 4th edition of my Made In Pakistan newsletter. I’m happy that we’ve made it to the 4th edition as when I started this newsletter I wasn’t sure if I could keep the momentum up and keep writing. And if you’ve been a subscriber from the 1st edition, you might have noticed there is no set schedule for the newsletter. I’ve done this on purpose, as based on my current projects, I’m unsure if I can meet the weekly or the fortnightly publishing target. So the goal is to keep releasing new editions, until this becomes a regular habit. Speaking of habits, there is one habit, which we all have and can’t control, “Procrastination”. Here is a very cool Ted Talk on procrastination which I’ve often used in my lectures (in my previous life, I was a professor).

Creative Pakistani Projects

One of the things that fascinates me a lot is the interjection of technology with different fields. For example, there is wearable electronics, where electronics is being embedded into fashion (read clothes), like the work of Anouk Wipprecht a Dutch American Techno Artist, whose Spider dress practically implements the definition of personal space.

Then there is using code to generate art, you can use processing language that has been the go-to language for Digital Artists as well as visualisations. The image below has been created in processing. By the way we teach it to young kids 8-14 at LearnOBots STEM Camps.

Julia Set
*Image from http://programminginprocessing.com/

Then there is digital activism, if you haven’t then you have to read the story of Aaron Swartz who was sued by US govt. for releasing research papers into the open from the MIT network, that were otherwise locked under subscriptions. Aaron eventually committed suicide, and documentary on his life is a must watch.

Then there is the Japanese Professor / Artist at MIT and University of Tokyo, Sputniko (who explores the boundaries of technology and culture. I attended one of her lectures in Tokyo and her projects are to say the least very creative and different.

However what I really want to talk about is the work of 3 Pakistani artists / musicians Jahanzeb Safdar, Changez Basir and Daniyal Ahmed who are working on the crossroads of arts and technology. Their performance at 2019’s momentum conference was pretty amazing and their channel Karachi Community Radio has interesting content. These guys code live music using Python programming language which makes it very creative. Have a look at their performance below.

Python is a very powerful language that is very easy to use and recommended for beginners. It can be used for developing applications in AI, Data Science, visualisations as well as hardware. In fact it is so easy that we teach this to young kids at LearnOBots, so if you have any younger siblings or cousins, feel free to recommend them our upcoming camps. Details are on our FB page.

Pakistan and Space

In my last edition I talked about how we can learn from Elon Musk’s (apologies for the typo in Elon’s name last time) SpaceX. In this post I want to further dwell on the fact that just after SpaceX successfully put Americans in Space after almost a decade, within the next few days they launched another 60 satellites which is part of their global high speed internet initiative. And right after that we had satellite launch from Rocketlab. After watching these back to back launches, I was reminded of the scene from the movie Gattaca, where we are shown rocket launches every few minutes. It seems like we are very much approaching that future where Space flight and rocket launches will become a norm like Air travel. I just wish and hope, I can hop on one of these flights soon In Sha Allah.

The Similarity of the World in Gattaca and the World Elon Musk ...

However the question that I would like to ask here to generate a discussion, is where do we (Pakistan) stand in all of these milestones that are being achieved by humanity. It is extremely important to start this discussion and start thinking about our role that we must play to become a space nation. I believe this is not even hard anymore and private companies around the world are proving that. Some of the ways that come to my mind include

  • Promoting Space and its allied subjects

  • Promoting private companies to get interested in this field by creating conducive policies

  • Explore if our coastal areas like Gwadar and Balochistan can be used as Space ports for private companies like SpaceX or RocketLab or maybe Chinese private space enterprises

  • Make this conversation part of our culture, by creating content and pushing it on different mediums

  • Inspire today’s generation to take up this challenge for Pakistan

Future of Pakistan

I’ve been working on this last point (Inspire today’s generation to take up this challenge) for the past 6 years at LearnOBots, which I co-founded in 2014. We have worked with thousands of Pakistani children inspiring them to become Makers, Scientists and inventors. My dream is to see Pakistanis create all kinds of tech and solve all our and then world problems using tech and eventually become world leaders in Science and Technology. I hope to see more high quality Pakistani products like cars, rockets and high speed trains all Made in Pakistan.

This reminds me of a wonderful product that was developed in Pakistan, and I wish it still existed so I could buy one for myself. I’m talking about Adam Motor Company’s Zabardast Jeep. At the time of its launch it was a very highly rated Jeep with great performance. Unfortunately the company went bust, which is a story for another day.

One of the ideas that has been stuck in my head for quite a long time is to create a Science & Technology channel for Pakistan. There is serious dearth of such content that is localized, and shows the science and tech happening in Pakistan. In fact, this newsletter and its content is probably step 0.01 of that dream. If anyone of you have an interest in this area, I’d love to talk to you and at least have a conversation on how we can do this. Let’s hope I’m able to get success in my current projects, so I can work towards this one as well! Feel free to reach out if you have any ideas on which we can work together towards this goal!

Cool Pakistani Products

I met Zaid and Nasir of EjaatTech in Karachi initially and then Nepal where we were part of an accelerator together. They are true makers/ hackers and their work shows that. One of the cool line of products that they have are learning tools for kids. I’ve seen their journey, from idea to execution, and the products look really cool. I would highly recommend exploration of their products play planks and tiny polka dot.

Recommended Book to Read

I love reading and the book that I’m reading these days is Michio Kaku’s “The future of Humanity”. The book is pretty cool and from 2018. If you’re interested in Tech and the future this one is a must read.

Cool Hack of the day

As part of our internal engineering hackathon at LearnOBots we make and break things. We had a few old 3D printers lying around that were of no use as we could not order new parts for them. So we hacked them and created two cool new projects out of them. A laser engraver and a CNC machine. The CNC one was also featured on Hackaday’s daily feed.

If you’ve read this far, you probably liked it. And if you liked it, please spread the word. Until next time!

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]]><![CDATA[Pakistani Drones in US Airspace!]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/pakistani-drones-in-us-airspacehttps://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/pakistani-drones-in-us-airspaceMon, 01 Jun 2020 21:33:48 GMTاسّلام علیکم اور گزشتہ عید مبارک

Assalam Alaikum and Eid Mubarak! This year is turning out to be one of the saddest and the strangest. The world is completely upside down! The COVID situation is getting bad in Pakistan and I know about three people personally who have lost their loved ones due to COVID 19. Then there was the plane crash just before Eid. All of this made this probably the worst Eid ever! With so much negative news all around, it is really hard to stay positive, however being a geek, the SpaceX launch last Sunday returned some of my excitement. In fact it made me realize that as Pakistanis, we can learn a lot of lessons from this launch.

Lessons from the SpaceX Launch for Pakistanis!

SpaceX launch live blog: news and updates from the Crew Dragon ...

Lesson#1: Perseverance:

Perseverance is a great quality. If you have a goal and go after it with perseverance, eventually you will achieve it. It took SpaceX nearly a couple of decades before they were finally able to launch humans into space. So if you have a goal and you keep working towards it without giving up, and working hard, eventually you will achieve it! Let’s stop looking for shortcuts and start focusing on long term goals!

Lesson#2: Startups & Entrepreneurship:

Founding a startup seems exciting, and Elon Must has proved that you can create a startup about what you’re passionate about and it does work. The only problem is that many of us see the overnight success which usually takes many many years to achieve! However it seems like this is another line of career that many of us can choose instead of the usual career choices!

Lesson#3: Public Private Partnerships:

What Sunday’s launch has proved is a very interesting model. The US government created the demand and a private company fulfilled the supply. This is a great win win. Not only NASA would have saved money by outsourcing their development, they’ve also helped an American company to achieve what most can only dream of! I believe the Pakistani government must adapt this model in many fields to solve the uncountable problems that Pakistan faces! They can’t possibly solve all problems, so this seems a great model. The government should focus on fixing the fundamentals, whereas it should partner up with local Pakistani companies and startups, helping them fulfil government demands, solving problems for the general public. What a great win win this could turn out to be for everyone! For example, education is a very huge problem in Pakistan, but it is not a difficult problem to solve. All the government needs to do, is to allocate budgets, create a demand by identifying the problems that need solving and outsource these problems to be solved by Pakistani startups and companies. This will not only help the government, it will also create startup success stories!

Pakistani Drones in US Airspace!

Here is another Made in Pakistan story! Integrated Dynamics is a company based out of Karachi that designs and manufactures civilian drones. Back in 2006 I joined the company as a software developer and was awed by what the company had achieved and was achieving. One of the things that I found was that the Integrated Dynamics had exported its drones to many countries including the United States. In fact, Made in Pakistan drones were being used for surveillance on the US Mexico border! The company was founded by Raja Sabri Khan who is an MIT graduate and a brilliant engineer. I can say that as I’ve worked with him, although for a short while and I’ve seen his work first hand! Integrated Dynamics is one of the coolest places to work at!

My first project was to write software for an Antenna Tracking System which used GPS data coming from a UAV and translated it into motor movements to keep the antenna pointed towards the UAV. It was necessary as directional antennas improved the range of the UAV. We used to test it by sending out a Bolan with a transmitter and testing the antenna from the office window, looking it track the car outside as it went from one end of Korangi creek to the other. I also learned some great hacks and intelligent design that went into the design of their products! For example, at that time a VCR was used to record digital information of a complete mission that the UAV was transmitting. The whole mission could be played back in the software by reading that digital data from the video tape! I found it to be a pretty cool hack to use off the shelf technologies in UAV systems.

Most of their products were finished with such high quality that it was hard to believe they were Made in Pakistan products! Integrated Dynamics is one of the coolest companies in Pakistan and I was lucky to experience that company for a short period! I wish someone would make a Discovery Science type documentary about this Pakistani company.

Cool Products Made in Pakistan!

CodiBot is a very cool Educational Robot that anyone can use to learn the basics of Robotics and coding. It is a great platform to start with and is based on the Arduino microcontroller! Moreover it has many cool sensor and actuator attachments along with coding guides! It has been completely designed and manufactured at Pakistan by LearnOBots. Here is the cool part! I’m the designer of the robot and LearnOBots is my company :). In fact I’m planning on running some YouTube sessions where I’ll be teaching the basics of building Robots using CodiBot and I’d like to know if you would be interested in watching such content? Please fill my questionnaire here and fwd to anyone who would be interested!

Cool Hack of the Day

I once put my hacking skills on the line by accepting one of my friends who flies a military helicopter to update his GPS firmware from Russian to English! And I almost failed.. Read the Cool hack of the day here!

Stay home and Stay safe and until next time!

Find me on Twitter on @shamylmansoor

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]]><![CDATA[Made in Pakistan: More interesting stories]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/made-in-pakistan-more-interestinghttps://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/made-in-pakistan-more-interestingFri, 15 May 2020 21:05:28 GMTSalam and خوش آمدید

Welcome to the second edition of my newsletter Made in Pakistan. If you haven’t read the first edition yet, you can read it here. If you like the newsletter, please recommend it to your friends and do share your feedback by commenting or on Twitter!

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The COVID-19 situation

Since a lot is being written / talked / reported about COVID-19, I’m not going to be writing about it much, except if I find something that is Made in Pakistan and truly worth sharing. I did cover about a very interesting open source project in my first edition. Do check it out.

Cool Pakistani Maker to look out for

Badar Kiyani is a Pakistani student studying in the US who runs a Facebook page called Badar’s Workshop where he shows his projects. One of the cool things about his projects is their cleanliness! Most maker projects have wires dangling out, as most Makers are mostly about getting something to work, but very few actually create something that is aesthetically pleasing and Badar definitely does that. You can check his projects out on his Facebook page.

A bit of Pakistani Tech History

One of the main reasons for starting this newsletter was to share some of the most inspiring stories about products and initiatives Made in Pakistan. Many [young] people haven’t heard about a company Digital Communications (DC) that was designing and building hi-tech products like telecom switches and pagers in Pakistan. I’m not saying just designing or just manufacturing, they were doing both from the ground up!

At their peak, they were also building hardware products that were being used all over Pakistan. DC hired some of the best engineers of top Pakistani universities, many of whom founded their own companies, after DC closed, due to the sudden death of its founder. If you’ve been reading about Silicon Valley and its history, you may have read about the Traitorous Eight or the ‘Fairchildren’, the eight men who left Shockley semiconductor to create Fairchild semiconductor 1957. Out of these 8, another 2 later left and founded Intel in 1968. Even though not of the same magnitude or with a similar impact, this Pakistani company which eventually closed down produced many new companies which were started by engineers who left DC. One of them is Systems Engineering (Not to be confused by the software company Systems Ltd) where I did my first job as an embedded software developer. Their products that I also worked on around 15 years ago can now be seen everywhere in Pakistan! Can you guess what it is! Read on!

Cool Products Made in Pakistan

Systems Engineering designs, develops and manufacturers Digital Clocks better known as Salaat Clocks that display Namaz / Jamaat timings. There are many different models, for homes to Masajids to public places. When I was working there, the product was in its infancy and although it was being sold, it wasn’t as successful as today. If you have been to any masjid in Pakistan, chances are you would have seen this product, whether in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad or the Motorway or even small towns like Kallar Kahar. This clock is present in almost every major city and town in Pakistan. It’s a true Pakistani product that has been successful in the local market and has been improved over time and definitely requires its own story to be told. I still remember how the company faced many difficulties with people trying to copy the product, to grounding issues in the PCBs (Printed Circuit Board), to buggy software (being written by someone like me!) , but despite all these issues, the company’s founder persevered and continued development and I would consider it as one of the most successful Pakistani products being sold today! If you want to order one, please go ahead, take my name, I’m sure you’ll get a discount!

Cool Hack of the Week

Doom on the Raspberry PI (NanoPI)

If you have a Raspberry PI lying around or a NanoPI then there is nothing better than playing Doom on it! Follow the tutorial and enjoy!

Share your feedback on Twitter and don’t forget to share with your friends! Stay safe and see you next week!

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]]><![CDATA[Welcome to the first edition!]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-first-editionhttps://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-first-editionSat, 09 May 2020 00:24:21 GMTWelcome to the first edition of Made in Pakistan where the main focus is on Technology happenings in Pakistan.

Why another newsletter?

There are many good sources to get news about tech in Pakistan, two of the most popular ones are TechJuice and ProPakistani. However since they’ve become quite big, a lot of great tech news is not covered and, bring in the commercial aspect, we miss out on more cool tech happenings. So why not share the not so newsworthy but lots of tech-worthy news through this newsletter!

The COVID situation!

It’s not possible to talk about something these days and not talk about the COVID situation. Where ever we look, whether offline or online news channels, we are being bombarded by charts and statistics about the spread of COVID. However, the focus of this newsletter is to talk about tech Made in Pakistan, and that’s what our focus will be! And of course we will start with Tech that is Made in Pakistan for dealing with the COVID situation..

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Ventilators!

One of the most interesting things that has been a result of the COVID-19 virus spread in Pakistan is the coming together of tech enthusiasts to solve one of the major issues facing our country, the availability of ventilators. Since these are expensive, and generally very few in number, as the virus spreads, more and more people require them. There are many initiatives going on right now, and I know two of the teams behind these initiatives, however I’ll choose to showcase one, that is making excellent progress and showing great teamwork.

The OpenVentPk Project

The OpenVentPk project started around March 15th when a public call on social media invited like minded tech enthusiasts to design and develop a ventilator locally. Within a few days a Google spreadsheet was shared, where hundreds of volunteers singed up to provide their services for free! One of the best things about this project is that the team has decided to open source the design, which can be accessed on their Github page.

My source of information has been Muhammad Umair who has been posting regular updates on Facebook. His latest post on Tech Geeks shows update#13 (as of May 9th 2020) which includes a 3d model along with other updates! This is a very inspiring project and you can still be a part of it as the call for help is still open..(openventpk@gmail.com).

At the moment Pakistan Engineering Council is evaluating a number of such locally developed ventilators, and soon we will be seeing Made in Pakistan Ventilators In Sha Allah.

Fixing existing Ventilators

There has been another team of volunteers who have been fixing the existing broken ventilators in hospitals in Pakistan. On May 1st around 204 ventilators had been fixed by these volunteers. My source was FB updates from a friend.

Cool Products Made in Pakistan

Do you know JalBujh is a Made in Pakistan product that helps save Natural Gas usage. Designed for the Geysers that are common in Pakistan it simply plugs on top of an existing geyser and allows users to control the thermostat using an app! I’ve worked with the creator of this product and he is a great guy who has been supporting Pakistanis in tech for quite a while now! Here is a fun fact, the gas bill of a well known university in Islamabad reduced their Gas bill from around 7 million a month to 3.5 million! This is absolutely amazing!

Cool Hack of the Day!

If you have access to a DJI tello drone, code it to fly using Go language!

Be safe, stay indoors and see you in the next edition!

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Disclaimer:

None of the products I’ve mentioned here is sponsored content.

]]><![CDATA[This news letter brings you news and views about the tech happenings in Pakistan.]]>https://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/coming-soonhttps://madeinpakistan.substack.com/p/coming-soonFri, 08 May 2020 22:40:32 GMTWelcome to Made in Pakistan by me, Shamyl Bin Mansoor. Professor turned tech entrepreneur, self-proclaimed tech freak!

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