DFRobot Open-Source Hardware, Sensors & Edge AI Modules

DFRobot is an open-source hardware company founded in 2008 from a local maker community, with an office and factory of about 130,000 square feet in Chengdu, China, more than 300 employees and over 2,000 products designed. It supplies sensors, controllers and single-board computers that let engineers, integrators and schools build IoT, robotics and edge AI prototypes and small-volume products quickly.

The range includes Gravity plug-and-play I2C/UART sensors for gas, distance, flow, pressure and water quality, Fermion breakout boards, FireBeetle 2 ESP32-C5 IoT boards, LattePanda x86 single-board computers and compute modules, UNIHIKER touchscreen boards and the HUSKYLENS 2 AI vision sensor rated at 6 TOPS. Newer edge AI kits combine RK3576 and RK1828 accelerators, alongside a robotics kit, an EDGE101 industrial controller and a private LoRaWAN gateway. For education, DFRobot has offered STEM kits such as Boson and micro:Maqueen with the Mind+ programming tool since 2013, and it also customises and assembles PCBs and electronic modules for automotive, energy, aerospace and medical customers.

• Gravity and Fermion: plug-and-play sensor and driver modules for gas, distance, flow, pressure and water quality.
• Industrial sensors: RS485 Modbus RTU water quality sensors rated IP68.
• IoT boards: FireBeetle 2 ESP32-C5 boards and a private LoRaWAN gateway.
• Computing: LattePanda x86 single-board computers and compute modules.
• Edge AI: HUSKYLENS 2 vision sensor and RK3576 + RK1828 edge AI kit.
• STEM education: UNIHIKER boards, Boson and micro:Maqueen kits with Mind+ software.

An aquaculture technology company in the Mekong Delta can build pond monitoring stations with RS485 water quality sensors and a LoRaWAN gateway. A system integrator can prototype AI camera inspection with HUSKYLENS 2 or the RK3576 edge AI kit. Schools can run AI and robotics classes with UNIHIKER boards and micro:Maqueen kits.

Engineers can assemble working prototypes from standardised Gravity sensors and boards without designing custom circuits, then move to industrial versions such as RS485 Modbus sensors and the EDGE101 controller. Edge AI modules with ratings up to 128 TOPS allow on-device vision and LLM projects. Schools get complete STEM kits with programming tools. Products are available in Vietnam through local distributors, which simplifies purchasing and support.

Edge AI is moving onto low-cost boards and sensors, letting small teams add vision and language models to devices, while industrial IoT projects need ruggedised sensors with standard interfaces. In Vietnam, demand is growing from aquaculture and agriculture monitoring, factory digitisation and STEM education, all of which rely on affordable, well-documented hardware.

Founded in 2008; office and factory in Chengdu, China, with 300+ staff and 5 million+ units manufactured. ISO 9001 certified since 2014, recognised as a national High and New Technology Enterprise in 2016 and an Intel Global Partner. Vietnamese distributors listed on its site include mLab, ProE, HShop and TPE.