Moderator Comment by Sgt Ric on August 15, 2012 at 8:35am

It doesn't matter if it's "obvious"...it's trademarked and thats that.

Comment by Tim - Arduino for Visual Studio on August 15, 2012 at 8:38am

I think the innovation is in the software. The hardware is not innovative and is just following the Arduino trend and many manufacturers are producing boards with giro/accel etc.

Companies such as Liquidware were producing their own Arduino compatible cores and shipping the 1280 long before 3dr released the original 328 and long before Arduino released the 1280. That appeared to me to be innovation.

Hobby blogs discovered the benefit of a larger gps antenna long before 3dr released the mediatek (which is no longer recommended for copters because of the antenna size)

The recent change in 3dr strategy to focus on resellers bumped the prices considerably and at that time Chris clearly stated that it is open source and feel free to make it cheaper if you can. At the same time 3DR removed the “divide by 10” checkbox for exports so, for many of us, tax bumped the prices up another 20%.

3DR is a range of products that change quickly, become obsolete quicker than more modular approaches yet has been heavily supported by non-moderators and developers. So when prices rise and value for money reduces some people will feel a little insulted or angry. The reason being that unless we have protected our childrens futures and provided security for our parents in their old age we don’t need to be wasting money paying over the top prices so that 3DR can join the mass of companies that own pick and place machines and expensive commercial properties. There are already plenty of them out there, where is the benefit, why not just have sparkfun or some other company make the hardware.

It has been said that prices have been lowered because apm2 is cheaper than apm1. The price of technology is dropping all the time, new sensors reduce the number of components required and apm2 is less modular than apm1.

Please correct me if I am wrong but it is my understanding that moderators and developers receive a 3dr discount so it isn't fair if anyone in this thread has commented on fair pricing if they are in receipt of discounts.

Diydrones is not supposed to be the marketing arm of 3DR and as such should support the community software on any hardware as long as it doesn’t confuse or add complications by being different.

It is great to see companies such as goodluckbuy.com starting to move away from shady silk screen clones (which I deplore), producing true clones of their own, free delivery and a good service.

Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on August 15, 2012 at 8:45am

@Sgt Ric, if a trademark becomes a generic term, it loses trademark protection.  Also trademark protection is not global, and is only valid in the jurisdiction that granted it.  And we all know that China doesn't care about IP rights unless someone infringes upon Chinese IP.

ie.  Ardupilot is not a registered trademark in Australia

Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on August 15, 2012 at 8:48am

@Fab, moderators get 3DR discounts?  I didn't know that (seriously), can anyone confirm that?

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on August 15, 2012 at 9:10am

Hai, I agree.  It might make more sense to call the next revision the 3DR Autopilot or something like that.  It will be very difficult to protect an Ardu* name.

Fab, as for the comment about developers getting a discount and not commenting on pricing, it's a bit unfair of a statement.  Let's ignore the fact about how much time they put in so others can benefit from their work, which in turn greatly reduces the price to those end users... Nobody is going to have access to a $200 autopilot if the software wasn't free.

But consider the cost to the devs of all the beta testing they do, and the resultant costs of that.  Look at Marco's famous crash video where he wrote off a very nice Octo.  We crash so that others don't have to.  Obviously this isn't *absolutely* true, and users have crashed due to bugs.  It happened to me when I was "just a user".  But if you follow the dev list, you'll see that some of us crash a lot testing this stuff, and I don't get any break on helicopter parts.

Anyway, I bought my first setup at full-pop.  $400 it cost me for an APM1, Mag, and GPS.  Now it costs ~$200 for the same thing.  Whether or not I get a price break on the system is irrelevant to me being able to state that the price is about half what it was just 10 months ago.  Nor does it make my statement that $200, or $400, is still a heck of a lot better price than $11,300 it costs for a DJI Ace One Multiwaypoint invalid.

Comment by Jake Stew on August 15, 2012 at 2:13pm

It will be interesting to see what happens with the new PX4.  How is that going to be marketed and trademarked?

The PX4 is clearly the next generation.  Atmel and arduino are gone.  Nobody is going to step down from the STM32F4 processor on the PX4 to Atmel's more expensive and less powerful processors once things get going.

Comment by Drone Savant on August 16, 2012 at 5:24am

@Fab with regard to the moderators getting a discount off 3DR hardware, the following article sheds some lights on the ability for that to occur. There is plenty of room for markup, allowing for discounts to be handed to selected people: http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/27/open-source-model-disrupts-the-co...

"priced at about 2.6 times the hardware BOM cost… allowing a 40% margin for retailers and a 40% margin for the company"

I am also aware of Chris one offering a "founders' discount" to at least one individual.  

"As mentioned, I'd be happy to offer you my founders' discount on any replacement gear. It's not a huge discount (usually about 30%), but if you'd like that, just let me know what you want to order and give me an address and I'll take care of it."

Well put Fab - "Diydrones is not supposed to be the marketing arm of 3DR" , I highly respect and agree with that comment.

 

In general I think all of the negativity about clones comes from the simple fact that the letters "NC" were inadvertently left off of the licensing for 3DR products. Note the differences here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ and here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. IF "NC" were added then I think there is plenty of room for complaints about clone gear, otherwise it really is unfounded. 

 

In reality what we are seeing is no different than what goes on in the Arduino world now. Take these "clone" products as an example. http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__25085__Arduino_Mega_2560... and http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__23767__Arduino_Uno_Atmel.... Why is there no Arduino community uproar over those items? There are no different than these ".cn knock offs" are they?

This stuff has all been beat to death in the past though. I encourage you guys to take a look at the cc-community forums for similar conversations. http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2010-October/thread...

 

It is not at all fair to criticize clone quality either. Think about it... DIYD pick and place machines are likely very low end when compared to what the factories in China have. The guys in China have machines that are very very fast, extremely accurate and can handle many more reels and parts sizes. A lot more of the process is automated as well which results in less human error and potentially better quality. Clone gear does not imply poor quality. 

 

The final note on this topic is related to *support* you guys really have no way of telling a clone vs. an non clone at this point, especially when people present issues on the forums. You really can't get away from supporting them. The only way to do so would be to implement the rumored DRM code to do serial number checks on the Atmel chips to ensure that the hardware only comes from DIYD. If Mission Planner can't make the distinction between a clone and OEM... neither can you guys. Sorry to say it but you ARE supporting clones *NOW*. 

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on August 16, 2012 at 6:21am

Jake: I agree.

As far as support goes, I'm not sure who made the leap where "not supporting clones" means not supporting them in DIYDrones forum and/or not allow the code, or MP to work on the clones.  That's not being discussed by anybody but you.  Where the discussion about support comes into play is when talking about people having hardware issues, and calling up 3DR looking for help.  And possibly to the extent that people don't even understand the situation, and thinking they can send their clone boards to 3DR for warranty.

DIYDrones is not the marketting arm of 3DR.  You'll notice countless posts about other systems.  There's one about a Feiyu product on the front page right now.  There are often blog posts about KK boards at Hobby King, etc.  However, that does not mean that this cannot also be the defacto place where people with 3DR equipment congregate.  Simple as that.

Comment by Tim - Arduino for Visual Studio on August 16, 2012 at 7:53am

@Drone, thanks very much for your kind offer. I will contact you if I buy any future 3DR kit. You make good points in your post.

There might be another clone consideration... Genuine arduino products pay a rolayalty to arduino.cc with the additional benefit of being listed as an official board in the arduino IDE. Arduino.cc do not reject developer or forum requests/comments from people using genuine 3DR clones :) Blah blah!

Comment by Crispin on August 16, 2012 at 7:56am

. The only way to do so would be to implement the rumored DRM code to do serial number checks on the Atmel chips to ensure that the hardware only comes from DIYD. If Mission Planner can't make the distinction between a clone and OEM... 

 

Not seen anything about this other than a blog 10 minutes ago which I cannot read at work so I may have the wrong end of the stick.

 

Would that not a bit arrogant and not in the spirit of open source? If the code or MP only worked with certain chips known to be sourced from 3DR, would that not make it exclusive? If that is the case, then the developers would be writing code exclusively for a corporate company for free? While this would be a fantastic business model, I can’t see it leaving a lovely taste in the mouths of those who don’t gain financially from the work they put in.

 

I would say if you’re going to open-source your hardware and firmware then these things are inevitable. I would add that, in a time where people have a very short attention span and little loyalty, if it became that arrogant that “the community” would not support little Billy Jones because all he could afford was a clone, then there other communities will spring up where everyone will try and support each other.  At best you could say “sorry bud, but seller XYZ is known for selling really bad knock-offs and that is probably why it does not work. Tough break”

 

 

How do the China houses do these copies? Is it spare capacity that they are using up during the quite times or are they custom built copy houses? I would imagine the former. 

 

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