summaries

At the beginning of our 10th year, we wanted to make a record of our corporate story.

First of all, as the founder, what was your original intention in creating StarView?

StarView has grown from a small team to an industry leader with many patents and serving nearly 100 colleges and research institutes across the country, what do you think was the most critical turning point?

The birth of StarView was both unexpected and unanticipated for me. I say it was unexpected because I have always had a dream to change the phenomenon that the domestic scientific research community relies heavily on imported instruments for scientific research, while it was unexpected because I did not dare to imagine that I, as a person who only worked and lived on campus, would be able to create and lead a science and technology-based company to develop.

Speaking of my dream, I have to go back to the remote sensing science and remote sensing experiments 20 years ago. At that time, when we conducted remote sensing experiments in the field, all the instruments we used were imported from abroad, whether it was the most basic spectral reflectance measurement or the measurement of basic surface parameters. I once led my graduate students to conduct leaf area index measurements in the field with a hand-held canopy analyzer imported from abroad and worth a lot of money. In the process of measurement, I found that because of the manual operation of remote sensing parameters field measurement, not only the field labor is very hard, and it is difficult to avoid the influence of human subjective factors.Even the mood and motivation of the surveyor can affect the accuracy of the values.

I remember that very summer, in the hot, sweaty sun, working with my graduate students, on the way back from the cornfield to the residential campground after completing a phase of measurements.We talked about a dream.If the remote sensing data we need on the ground can be measured automatically and the cost can be reduced, we can deploy a large number of instruments on the ground and no longer need so many people to go to the field to measure, which on the one hand solves the problem of the localization of scientific instruments, and on the other hand also solves the problem of the spatial-temporal continuity of the ground observation of remote sensing.

Driven by this dream, I then started, in my spare time, the first generation of distributed leaf area index (LAINet) research and development.After nearly a decade of hard work, our results have been fully utilized in the observation of leaf area index in the Black River BasinSince then, the era of leaf area index from manual to automated observation has begun. More than ten years have passed, and the automated observation model we proposed has led the international academic community to pay extensive attention and follow up research. At present, the ecological remote sensing observation method based on IoT technology has become a general consensus at home and abroad.

Now it seems that the research and development and application of domestic scientific research equipment is a gradual process, experiencing the process from not being understood to gradually accepted. Since it was generally believed at that time that scientific research should use foreign equipment.Even this concept has been rooted in the hearts of some people, they see you in the "drumming" of domestic equipment, and even think that you do not do business.

The turning point of the story is precisely because the results of our efforts have been widely verified in a series of field experiments of large-scale scientific research projects, which further inspired our confidence in engaging in the research and development of scientific instruments, and also proved thatWe Chinese not only only spend money to buy foreign instruments, we can also develop better cost-effective scientific instruments.

Later, it coincided with the national support for the transformation of scientific research achievements, so I decided to market the related technology based on ecological Internet of Things in order to serve more domestic and foreign users. So far.StarView remains committed to providing scientists with high-quality scientific instruments and is proud to create Chinese-owned research products.We hope that as we enter the second decade, we can further develop and innovate to provide users with better remote sensing and ecological Internet of Things products and services.

Autonomous R&D is never a quick fix. Can you share some of the team's specific challenges in terms of technology development, funding, and market development, and how they were overcome?  

The road to do independent research and development of domestic instruments is lonely, but there are always two sides to things. Lonely road, that do less people, and fewer people also reduces the future competition. That's why StarView's products are now able to receive widespread attention in today's market. However, it is true that the road to success is not a smooth one.The only way to stay positive is to stick with it and keep a positive spirit., which is what allowed StarView to develop into what it is today.

I am impressed that around 2020, a customer once asked us to provide a weather camera product that can replace foreign imports, however, at that time, we did not have a weather camera product layout. However, I have realized that there may be a large demand for multispectral imaging products in the next few years.Because I do research work on remote sensing applications, I am deeply aware of the important role of spectroscopy in revealing information about feature attributes.

Therefore, that year, I led the company team of technical personnel, almost no normal commuting time, nor the concept of weekend and double holidays, through the study and comparison of domestic and foreign multispectral imaging technology, summarized and put forward a multi-functional multispectral imaging technology suitable for the Chinese market, thus opening up a new product series of StarView.Successfully replaced and surpassed foreign weather cameras., which by now has developed into the company's main revenue growth point and is sold to overseas markets. The success of the multispectral weather camera proves a point:Not fetishizing foreign products, hard work plus innovative thinking is the magic weapon that guides us from darkness to light.

StarView Technology has a high reputation in the industry. In addition to technical strength, corporate culture is also an important factor. Could you please talk about the core concepts of the corporate culture and how these concepts are integrated into daily management and team building?

At present the company has achieved initial industry recognition, but we still have a long way to go. Looking back at the company's development history, we are able to come to today's scale, first of all, thanks to the support of our customers, at the same time. We also know that it is StarView's company mission to continue to provide high-quality ecological IoT products and competitive domestic equipment for the majority of scientists. In this process, the company adheres to the "Innovation-driven, quality first"corporate culture, on the road of innovation, the company staff up and down one heart, to serve the user as the core work objectives, dare to think, dare to do, dare to do, step forward.

In the field of domestic scientific research instruments, there is serious homogenization competition. How does StarView Technology establish a differentiated brand advantage and expand its influence? Does StarView have the confidence to go to the world stage?

You are very right, ecological instrumentation market is a very narrow track, it can be said that this narrow wooden bridge has been "bustling", how to see a different landscape in this crowded road? When I founded StarView, I joked with my friends that we, being from a national key university and key laboratories, must not repeat others' old ways.We need to be innovative in our work. Innovative in two ways.The first is to make products that are useful and that no one else has, and the second is to make features that are already available but are not.Over the years, we have had more than a dozen existing series of products, all of which follow these two principles. Let me give you two examples:

Leaf area index network monitoring system is the first principle we follow completely independent innovation and lead the domestic and foreign counterparts to catch up with the product.Until the introduction of our products, the industry had never imagined that Leaf Area Index could be measured automatically and unattended!

The weathering camera series is the product of our second choice. Before us, there was no lack of weather cameras in the market, and they had been applied in the domestic and international markets for many years. However, I found that the existing weather cameras at that time could only capture color images, and a few of them had infrared bands. Both of these weather cameras could not meet the needs of remote sensing weather monitoring because their imaging principles and spectral bands were very different from those of remote sensing applications. It is precisely because of the recognition of the problems of existing products that we have developed a real weather camera suitable for remote sensors. There has been a large amount of validation data showing thatOur climatic cameras are radiometrically corrected to obtain vegetation indices that are consistent with the physical meaning on remote sensing.

"If you don't have it, I'll have it. If you do, I'll have it."is a brief summary of the two options mentioned above.

In the current environment of tariff wars and under the complex system of the world, talk about your future development of research instruments?  

The tariff war launched by the United States this time has played a serious role in undermining the development of globalization. The increase in tariffs will certainly increase the difficulty of U.S. products to enter the Chinese market, and naturally increase the market share of domestic instruments. However, we should recognize thatRegardless of whether there is this tariff war, the development of China's scientific instrument industry should be emphasized at the national strategic level.. Domestic instrument providers, on the other hand, cannot expect to capture the Chinese market lost to foreign products through this tariff war. There may be an increase in market share in the short term, but in the long term, theResearch and development of new products, improve the quality of products and services, to obtain user recognition is the way of sustainability. At the same time, I don't think the tariff war will last, and the foreign manufacturers who briefly walked away will surely come back.

Star View formula in ten years ago began to layout the domestic scientific instrument research and development, it can be said that we have walked on the right road, however, we should also realize that we only do better, even say better than foreign manufacturers to do better, in order to afford the domestic users of our love. To product quality and quality service to develop the market, and not just rely on foreign manufacturers to exit the short-term gap.

Looking ahead to the next decade, what is your strategic plan and vision?  

That's a big and difficult question. Honestly, the very inception of StarView was both serendipitous and common-sense, so it's hard for me to say what I could have imagined at that point in time that it would have grown into ten years from now. And now that I'm asked to answer what the next decade will be like, it's hard for me to say exactly how big it will be. But.In terms of the general law of things, if one chooses the right direction at the right time with the right group of people, the odds are that one will do the right thingThe market is relentless and ever-changing. Of course, here is only probability, the market is relentless and rapidly changing, only those who can be keenly aware of the wind direction and steady the rudder, it is possible to laugh at the ebb and flow of the tide.