Admin Comment by Thomas J Coyle III on December 27, 2012 at 10:31am

@u4eake,

Or give the uav market a bad name due to marginal/non-working modules sold by Chinese manufactures with no follow-on support!

Just a thought!

Regards,

TCIII

Comment by Michael on December 27, 2012 at 10:52am

Frankly, with my limited abilities there is plenty that goes wrong without having to worry about the actual hardware.  And this is coming from a guy who cuts up old gift cards to save money on control horns. 

HobbyKing is cheaper, BUT add on the cost of shipping, the potential for months of waiting (even when they have it listed as in stock), questions about quality control AND some of the worst customer service on the internet and I'll be happy to save a little longer for the real thing. 

Also, as stated above, I'm willing to spend more to support this sort of community project... and I'm extremely cheap.

Comment by u4eake on December 27, 2012 at 10:59am

Hi Thomas, your description fits 3DR just the same in my experience.  I do think it's commendable to support your own economy.  I'm no american however.

Comment by u4eake on December 27, 2012 at 11:11am

Michael, virtually ALL problems reported on this site ARE with original hardware...  since there aren't many clones flying yet.

Shipping on hobbyking is $3 if you stay under 100g, which the gps and minimosd do.  I've never waited more then 3 weeks for my stuff (granted, 3DR was faster for me).  Customer service of 3DR is no better then that from hobbyking in my experience.

But feel free to order where you like.  If you're an american, do the right thing and support your own economy.

Comment by Michael on December 27, 2012 at 12:36pm

u4eake,

I didn't mean to insult Hobby King or start a flame war.  I had two negative experiences with HK two years ago and haven't shopped there since.  They may have improved their customer service... I hope they did.  The prices HK offers make RC available for a lot more people.

I also agree with Gary McCray with regard to American companies taking advantage of "better" prices overseas.  I also agree that DIYDrones represents everything I love about community and that's worth a lot to me.

Moderator Comment by Nathaniel Caner on December 27, 2012 at 1:02pm

I've had good luck with some things from HK others not so much. Couple of golden rules with HK:

1) NEVER EVER buy anything on backorder! (They can't or wont give you any idea if it will be days weeks months  maybe even never)

2) If you do need to cancel and order that hasn't yet been shipped you MUST speak to a person live to get the order credited back to your CC or bank account. If you don't and just cancel it online you'll be stuck with a credit to your HK account.

That said have to agree with Michael overall. Although my personal experience has been OK, I've had to work hard to make it that way. An example of the quality issues would be the HK Bixler2, the plane is fine but the hardware and servos are junk. The prop adapter is total junk and had to be replaced before I could fly. I've read numerous complaints about the Turnigy motor bearings being low quality and either falling out when the engine is warm or being rough from the start. I've ordered about 30 LiPo batteries from HK and not one has given me trouble, but I've seen several orders arrive for friends with dead cells and HK's only offer is for you to pay to send them back for replacement! They were DOA and the cost of shipping was more than the cost of the battery!

I guess the advice in general is buyer beware you get what you pay for and be prepared to accept the fact that eventually you will have to absorb some purchase as a cost of low prices.

just my 2 cents

Regards,

Nathaniel ~KD2DEY

Comment by Darrell Burkey on December 27, 2012 at 1:25pm

3DR rocks! I'm sticking with them and supporting the great work they do.

Moderator Comment by Roberto Navoni on December 27, 2012 at 1:37pm

I think that the next year we start to discus about hou fight the china clone. Is not possible that our community work hard to develop new exitment technology and these guys clone our work and resell without respect our work . I see the post of Sandro on HK website and the reply .... in italiano si dice che sono degli inpuniti !!!!

Stop ! With clone !

Comment by Jonathan Price on December 27, 2012 at 2:47pm

I'm really interested in seeing how this development will affect the 3DR business model and our community. There have been others making clones of Ardu-products but none with the supply and marketing power of HobbyKing. Right now, people flying clones are a small subset of this community. If HobbyKing starts selling APM clones, people flying genuine hardware will end up being the minority.

It's still possible to thrive with competitors stealing your product. There are open-source software enterprises that seem to turn a profit despite the fact that the clone supply is practically infinite. It just involves collecting profit from different parts of the product cycle.

Some ideas:

• Cash in on the ridiculously-overpriced corporate and public sector market by offering service and support contracts. (See Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a good example of this.)
• Accept sponsorship for development of particular features or bug fixes. Many businesses are willing to provide cash or developers to a project if it means that they can save a greater amount in closed-source licensing fees. In this case, the clone makers can actually be a source of funding or code as they try to support their customers.
• A constant stream of new and updated products. It takes time to source and manufacture a product even for a cloner, and you can use that time to make your cloner's product obsolete before it even releases. For example, the MinimOSD that HK is selling is an older version, making it less flexible and reliable. (although, to be fair, the real reason for this is probably because the bill of materials for v. 0.1 is lower than 1.1, and the problems with 0.1 can be solved by using an SBEC, which HK also sells.)
• Training and certifications.

Any other ideas?

I'm sorry I didn't have much time to refine my post when I wrote it, or I would have put this up there.

Comment by Harry on December 27, 2012 at 3:02pm

I've got one of those NEO-6M GPS.  It works fine with the 3DR configuration file and the ArduIMU.  One thing I've wondered is whether I could use a different antenna since it uses a connector on the board.  That way I could have the antenna outside the plane and protect the board inside the plane.

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