42 replies to this topic

[ANV]

Stigoe, on 14 January 2012 - 12:06 PM, said:

Found it. Thanks!

Edit: That was a reply to rcadey...

[dezent]

Is this really a clone?

[dankers]

He uses the OP schematic but he didn't find any right angles in the routing so re-did the layout to use them everywhere.

So yes it is a clone but it is worse than a true clone as it is done to be as cheap as absolutely possible, 2 layer board, crap headers, likely fake Chinese parts and everything in the design that is changed is done to save money and make maximize profit. All at the cost of quality, something the OP project is not about at all.

This is a non-profit project, we are going to keep it that way and we use a non-commercial license to keep others from profiting from work they had no hand in or have not funded.

Without the OP hardware sales there is simply no way we could continue to keep the project going the way it is, we already have massive debts and in this last week I have spent over $12,000 for the project.

Lets also be realisitc; OP has changed the whole hobby for the better, no longer can people get away with charging a lot of money for 2 layer shitty boards with 8 bit processors, even die hard 8 bit projects are going to try and use 32bit MCUs shortly, one project even talsk about an RTOS like we do. Our commitment to R&D and showing the way also benefits all the other projects, both hobby and commercial. Even things like our GCS has caused others to really step up their game a great deal, not bad going for a project that is still one of the youngest around.  

A lot of people like what we are doing, they like we have changed things and they support us by buying our hardware, of course there will always be the few dishonest scumbags that think theft of work from others is a way to get rich, however buying there stolen stuff is just short term thinking as it means we lose any funds to continue to keep going.

The good thing about that board is that it does highlight really what we are doing here, the real CC is a very high quality gold immersion 4 layer board, it uses genuine parts bought from the USA, includes all the cables, comes in a nice box and is sold very close to cost.

So bottom line: this is a non-commercial project that is run in a non-profit way, we do this as we want to share what we have done with the whole community. To the people like this guy and the many others that want to try and commercialize it for their own gain: go elsewhere.

[gdub73]

Stigoe, on 14 January 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

Someone has fallen for it, 1 sold.

1 sold = 1 less person on the list wanting a cc
im not a clone fan, i would rather paid triple that buy cheap chinese crap , if every body STOPS buying this cloned shit or any thing that comes out of china the chinese wouldnt have a market, i know im going to get barked at for what im going to say next but im just pointing some thing out, no 1 likes open pilot stuff being cloned(just a fact of life aye, its going to happen) but how many people in this forum use other gear thats cloned, any thing turnigy is cloned , who uses there escs? any body? i think alot of people in this forum is guilty of buying cloned gear, if ur buying cloned gear you shouldnt be bitching about clones at all

[juz]

really, are turnigy escs clones..I don't know that.

dankers, on 15 January 2012 - 04:09 AM, said:

Lets also be realisitc; OP has changed the whole hobby for the better, no longer can people get away with charging a lot of money for 2 layer shitty boards with 8 bit processors, even die hard 8 bit projects are going to try and use 32bit MCUs shortly, one project even talsk about an RTOS like we do. Our commitment to R&D and showing the way also benefits all the other projects, both hobby and commercial. Even things like our GCS has caused others to really step up their game a great deal, not bad going for a project that is still one of the youngest around.  

yes, there has been a big change...CopterControl has changed my life...2012 will be even better because of OpenPilot. revolution, esc, osd

[dankers]

gdub73, on 19 January 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

, any thing turnigy is cloned

Whoa! I disagree with that, in fact I know otherwise and know many of the sources of Turnigy items, if you knew the history of what happened with the Deans Connectors you would see that is not the case at all and HK are really careful. Even things like the Orange gear is completely clean room reverse engineered and does not run any Spektrum code, however if there was a legal case, rest assured Spektrum would bring it as they should.

HK now have assets in the US, the EU and Australia, all are risks for them and hence they are careful. Speaking for myself, I personally would not buy ripped off items, not only for the ethical reason but because they tend to be pure junk as well.

The last time HK tried to clone something that was legal (per the license of the version they cloned) but not exactly ethical, was the KK board and it was the OpenPilot developers that made a huge fuss about it to Anthony thus helping KK get a margin per board.

No one here should shout you down for an opinion but if it is not backed up by the facts then it needs to be corrected. I hate totally uninformed opinions like this, do some real fact checking before making assumptions that could easily land you in hot water with HK.

[Fredator]

Oh the fun. Let's just assume the buyer didn't know any better ;-)

BTW dankers, check your PMs

[ANV]

How official these ones are?
http://forums.openpi...dpost__p__52921

[K Wells]

ANV, on 26 January 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

How official these ones are?
http://forums.openpi...dpost__p__52921

I saw that too...but my chinese sux....and google translator locked up

[ANV]

It says that 30 pcs available for $82 ea.
$1.90 to $4.75 for shipping

PS http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ can improve you chineese

Edited by ANV, 26 January 2012 - 10:41 AM.

[K Wells]

ANV, on 26 January 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

It says that 30 pcs available for $82 ea.
$1.90 to $4.75 for shipping

PS http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ can improve you chineese

Yep, those would be clones...I'm reasonably sure

[dankers]

It is not official, all the official OP places are listed in the OP site and the Wiki. I know the image is taken from one of our sites so its a gamble.

It's China, we expected nothing else and are not going to started getting wound up about it, if you want to take the risk, go for it and let us know what you think, could be fun.

Just want to say again, the one thing that is a problem with clones: OP Hardware has a small donation to try and cover the running costs of the project, the clone guys disrespect this and care little about the people and the passion here, when they kill OP or stunt it's development due to lack of funds, they just move on to their next project to clone.

Please for one minute don't think we are dumb and do not realize we could turn this commercial and make a lot of money, CC is worth much mroe than we sell it for as the eBay sales show, we know this but still we don't raise prices and I promise to you that going commercial will never will happen. Its not the idea or the motivation behind OP, we use a Non-commercial license to stop others seeing this good nature as something to exploit.

Electronics also have a huge economy of scale, by us keeping the production it helps everyone and we keep the prices down, fragmenting production is not a good thing. I do think Open Hardware where it is free for everyone to make can work very well, however depends on what: break out boards, development board and small stuff aimed at hobby developers it is great and a good business model. However commodity projects that have a large appeal and also take massive amounts of work and infrastructure to make, it is a badly flawed business model. It can only work if your stuff is second rate and no one wants to clone it, or you start the planned obsolescence dance which hurts your customers.  

Our use of the NC license is common sense and pragmatic, it also fits as we ourselves are non commercial.  Everyone wins in our case except the people looking to profit off work they had no part in. Furthermore, you only need to look at the KK board, started off as totally free for commercial use, once costs started going up, others started making money from it, the later versions were changed completely and commercial use was disallowed.

[flitelab]

I wonder what they actually ship you, if anything?

[dankers]

flitelab, on 26 January 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

I wonder what they actually ship you, if anything?

Be interesting to see, but the guy that runs the store is passionate about Autopilots so I don't think we can assume the worst, I'd say it would be likely you would get a CC clone back but still a gamble. However a lot of these guys on Taobao will wait till they get enough orders before doing a run of boards, this might make it harder to buy, even though it shows stock, this can not always be the case.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to try and order one, the problem with it is that by the time you get it, it would likely cost more than a genuine one.

We've known about this guy for a long long time, I don't agree with it but hey, it's China.

[flitelab]

Ya I'm curious to see if its a clone that looks just like the real thing or one of those horrible versions we have seen on eBay.  If its an exact copy I think there is some concern since then people can't tell it from the real deal and it could lead to support and other issues.

Best we can say at this point is only buy from an OP approved source.

[Adverse Effects]

what would happen if you put up the plans and stuff with a fault that will fry the cpu if made that way but not say what it will do

then put in a note saying if you want to make thes contact us for permission (and the fix)

that would stop thes guys wouldnt it?

other thing you could do it code the for the GCS so it will only work with CPU's you allow

Edited by Adverse Effects, 26 January 2012 - 12:40 PM.

[dankers]

flitelab, on 26 January 2012 - 12:23 PM, said:

Ya I'm curious to see if its a clone that looks just like the real thing or one of those horrible versions we have seen on eBay.  If its an exact copy I think there is some concern since then people can't tell it from the real deal and it could lead to support and other issues.

Absolutely. I agree with you, but I also don't want to say stuff we can't prove. I don't agree with it or condone it, but there is not much we can really do against a Taobao seller and as it's much the same price as the real thing, it would for sure cost more once Taobao fees have been paid. It's why I left that post in the Chinese forum untouched, really, we can't change it so no point wasting time on it. He seems more keen to provide boards to the Chinese AP guys than to start churning out 100s on eBay, he is no threat to us. Also saves me work shipping to China.

While I have not seen his OP Clone, I have seen one of his ArduPilot clones and it is better than the genuine one, his clones are for sure produced in a high end factory and the quality of the silk screen on his Ardupilot clones is as high as the ones on the CC, I would guess that DIYDrones use Gold Phoenix or a similar medium quality PCB manufacturer, whoever this guy uses is better.

Quote

Best we can say at this point is only buy from an OP approved source.

Yeap as that supports the project, saves confusion and a lot of hassle, it is also going to be cheaper.

[dankers]

Adverse Effects, on 26 January 2012 - 12:37 PM, said:

what would happen if you put up the plans and stuff with a fault that will fry the cpu if made that way but not say what it will do

then put in a note saying if you want to make thes contact us for permission (and the fix)

that would stop thes guys wouldnt it?

other thing you could do it code the for the GCS so it will only work with CPU's you allow

That is really not us, I know you have the best interest at heart but that is just so far removed from how we are and what we want to be like. I wouldn't want to be involved in a project that did those things. There are many places that take Open Source projects and play games with licensing or use being Open as some marketing scheme, its a pet hate of mine. There is actually a term for it called "Openwashing", if you look around at some projects you will see it in action, they are businesses that use "Open Source" as some marketing tactic.

For example, we could *easily* stop all clones of OP in less than an hour by using a locked and closed bootloader, if we were without any ethics we could still claim "open source" but that would be a joke and a complete betrayal of everything we are about.

[Adverse Effects]

ok no prob

i just hate seeing people getting ripped off

like my uncle was  30+ years ago and i have been about 2 years ago we are both inverters he has lots of patents but i carnt afford to get them so i just dont show anyone else any more

if you want to know more just ask ;-)

Edited by Adverse Effects, 26 January 2012 - 01:38 PM.

[Caustic]

Can always implement a security chip search that checks if the hardware is valid and simply flashes some LED sequence if not. That would not affect any of the hardware (other than a small power loss) and would show up on any board update.

Easy way and any OP supporter would instantly know if it is a clone or not. You do not need to cripple things for hardware security if you are just trying to verify instead of cloak or protect.