The Stories That Shaped Our Journey: Marking 15 Years Together
As we celebrated our 15th anniversary early in June, we held story-sharing campaigns to connect with our valued community. We were amazed by the outpouring of responses we received – nearly 120 engaging stories from community members in over 40 countries and regions. Reading these heartfelt anecdotes filled us with gratitude and inspiration. From the customer who used our products to start his own business, to the teacher who used our technology to enrich her students’ education, each story demonstrated the power of what we do. Even simple messages about how our products have made daily life easier carried great meaning.
Behind each submission is an individual who cared enough to share a piece of themselves. We are honored to be a part of these meaningful moments and touched by the trust our community has placed in us over the last 15 years. These stories are a testament to the passion of our members, which continues to drive us forward.
As a small token of appreciation, we provided some coupons to contributors. But the greatest gift was the vulnerability and openness they gave back to us. Now we would love to highlight 10 of these impactful stories with our community. As we embark on the next chapter, we will continue drawing inspiration from this privileged relationship with the people we serve.
☘️ Sergio from Italy
What you see in the picture is a control and monitoring system for all the home-automation systems of my house, that I completed back in 2012. At the time I wanted to use a metal push-button to start the whole system, but such a button was unfindable on common electronic web stores. Except for Seeed Studio, which had exactly what I was looking for. And 11 years later, Seeed Studio it’s still a source of inspiration and amazing products.
☘️ Jihwan Myung from China
I am a career biologist, a path that has been long to traverse. The most challenging aspect of conducting behavioral experiments is automating measurement devices. These devices are often commercially available but are typically expensive and limited in functionality. In the research field, the most commonly used data acquisition devices (DAQs), which integrate analog-digital (AD) converters and microcontrollers, were those from National Instruments. These came with a costly set of software, making them too fancy for early-career scientists like myself. Then, I discovered Arduino. The Seeed Studio’s Grove shield series significantly lowered the entry barrier. With their system, all I had to do was connect the relevant sensors and actuators using a standard cable, which automated most of the processes needed for my experiments. This allowed me to produce actograms of mice’s circadian behavioral activities under various light cycle conditions and helped me publish well-cited papers in respected journals such as PNAS and Nature Communications. The software is available for everyone on GitHub, and the hardware description will be announced in a short paper soon. I am grateful to have encountered Seeed Studios, which facilitated my entry into the field and made many things possible.
☘️ Wendell Capili from Philippines
There was a competition exactly 12 years ago (October 2011) and I won 2nd place! The competition is to use as many Grove components as possible and I made a guard dog with a passcode and a motion sensor on it. The prize was a generous supply of Grove components! Thank you Seeed Studio I also was able to put this on my resume and helped with some credentials with my job! More about the competition was here.
☘️ Gennady from Ukraine
The Seeed Studio board was my first board for programming in the Arduino environment! I had never done programming before. The seed of my thoughts fell on fertile soil, lovingly created by the Seeed Studio engineers in the form of a huge set of electronic modules. On this first board I created and tested more than ten of my Arduino projects. I even used an original floppy disk box to protect the board. Thanks to Seeed Studio, I went from a regular person to a programmer. Also, this small board allowed my comrades to take their first steps in programming. Everything always worked reliably. I also bought other modules from Seeed Studio. They always beat high quality. The Seeed Studio staff always quickly answered my questions and provided the necessary support. I can recommend Seeed Studio products to everyone. I wish the Seeed Studio team every success and new achievement!
☘️ Michel Morin from Germany
In 2014 a group of friends and I forked an open-source musical synthesizer project called Braids from Mutable Instruments and added a bunch of features and shared our work on Github. Seeed fabricated high-quality PCB‘s for me which I populated and enclosed with custom acrylic front panels that I designed. A DIY-piezo trigger system was created to play this synthesizer.
☘️ Neil Turley from Portugal
Well done on your Seeed Studio Platform, I have been keeping an eye on its evolvement for some years. The Grove Sensors that we will be using from our stock have the date 2013 written on them, which demonstrates the wanting to generate this IoT Solution for some time. We are also developing a Validation IoT Platform, using Seeed Solutions, intending to empower the application of Sustainable Solutions throughout Europe.
☘️ Osman EL-BABA from Ivory Coast
In 2012 , being the head of IT team for a GSM operator with an emphasis on innovation and creating internal projects I took the decision to create an R&D lab based on open-source hardware & platforms … back then we ordered several items from Seeed ( one of the most impressive devices were the Arduino and it’s shields and one of them is the Grove Shield that facilitated the connection of sensors) that helped in creating multiple values added telecom projects mainly a GPS tracking project and introduced us early to telemetry, M2M and straight to IoT & the creation of our first UK company … fast forward in 2016 we ventured to preach about Smart Homes with Home Assistant and Raspberry Pi spearheading technology in West Africa.
☘️ Aaron O’Malley from Australia
Treasure chest birthday cake – This project was made for my son’s birthday, built with parts from my first Seeed order! XIAO controls the servo and lights, with random timing and motion to add life. The cake was all edible, delicious – and really enjoyed by all. The Volcano island birthday cake was also controlled with an XIAO. It had twinkling blue jelly water around a cake island that was home to dinosaurs and a glowing firey red rocky road volcano that expelled smoke, before red lava jelly oozed from the volcano (miniature electronic solenoid released it from a modified cream canister under pressure.)
☘️ Robert Strohmaier from Austria
We have been using Arduino microcontrollers at our university to teach our students multimedia development and interaction programming since 2006. In 2010 we placed our first order at Seeed Studio and we were excited about the variety of sensors at reasonable prices. I think in 2019 we moved from circuits on breadboards to the Grove system. This system revolutionized the way of working with electronics for us and our students. Thank you very much for your products and please continue your great work and R&D activities.
☘️ Thomas Vikström from Finland
Inspired by Benjamin Cabés artificial nose, I had two objectives: to learn how to use Wio Terminal, and to see if/how it is possible to create an artificial “tongue” that would be able to correctly classify different liquids with the help of machine learning. To reach the objectives, I purchased a Wio Terminal with a battery chassis as well as two liquid sensors from Seeed Studio, a TDS and a turbidity sensor. With my programming background, it was very easy to get started with the Wio Terminal, and by using the Edge Impulse platform it was similarly straightforward to create a machine-learning model. After a couple of iterations, I completed a model that was able to correctly classify five different liquids. By adding more sensors, for example, a pH-sensor, it might even be possible to classify different types of wine. The project was a success and showed how it is possible to use affordable consumer-grade or hobby electronics to prototype solutions that might be scaled up further for professional and industrial usage. This was one of the most fun, exciting, and educating projects I’ve done!
We hope you enjoy this glimpse into some of the meaningful stories members have shared with us over the last 15 years. It’s just a tiny sample of the inspiration and purpose our community gives us daily. If you have an experience with Seeed that has impacted your life or work, we would be honored if you would consider sharing your story with us. Let’s continue learning from each other and growing together.
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