Comment by Luke Olson on September 27, 2012 at 12:05pm

I think buying a clone is "safe" but I wouldn't buy one because the price is too high. At $189 I could just spend another $10 and get a newer version of the APM from 3D Robotics directly which will help with the cost of design of the next APM from 3D Robotics. If it were half the cost or less I'd probably try one.

Comment by Dror Caspi on September 27, 2012 at 12:06pm

Why?  It's not even cheap.

Comment by Alex Hills on September 27, 2012 at 1:04pm

I thought clones were not allowed to use the Ardupilot Mega 2.0 name?

Comment by Muhammad Al-Rawi on September 27, 2012 at 1:50pm

I wouldn't buy it even if it was half the price. You won't get any gaurentee in quality or reliability. I'd spend my money towards innovation and development than cloning. 

Comment by quadrocopter on September 27, 2012 at 2:52pm

Buying clones is not recommend, it will fail its just a matter of time.....

The last clone i used worked really well, right up until the neighbour started whipper snippering...

Epic Fail !!!

Comment by Crashpilot1000 on September 27, 2012 at 10:32pm

A week ago goodluckbuy had a clone for 100$ less. That's a pricepoint i would start thinking of buying one clone for a rover or for experiments. BTW: If you want to go the cheap way buy this http://dx.com/p/crius-all-in-one-pro-v1-0-multiwii-megapirate-fligh... and this http://dx.com/p/cn-06-gps-receiver-super-u-blox-gps-module-w-active...

and then upload http://code.google.com/p/megapirateng/downloads/list. I wouldn't go that pirates ng route because it is not so hassle free and has no datalogging - but maybe it's an option for some people.

Comment by dincer hepguler on September 28, 2012 at 1:59am

we have a worldwide group of Ardupilot enthusiasts all over the world here and buying clones outside the community is not ethical... all the research and development of Ardupilot is funded by sales of them from the store... i never can think of buying Ardupilot from outside our community....

Comment by Miguel Martín Mateo on September 28, 2012 at 3:23am

We are all agree that clones would affect the vision of outside our community if they are used and have problems (low performance, bad components and/or implementation).
But how can we warn people outside DiyDrones about these 'bad' components.

Comment by bGatti on September 28, 2012 at 7:52am

This is evidence of an artificial angst which has emerged in the Open Source Hardware world - which uses the promise of Clones (aka derivatives, forks) to inspire loyalty. Despite it's democratizing rhetoric, this model collects value from many (source contributors)  - and renders profits to the few (Industrialists). In this respect, the model is not that far from slavery, fiefdom, capitalism, sharecropping etc.

The solution to bringing OSH in line with it's stated ideals is to create a patent alternative, underwritten by the community, in keeping with the soaring rhetoric. Then you could identify products which are not in conformance (because they are not contributing a reasonable portion of proceeds to the patent pool) rather than merely trying to scold consumers into fealty to the "authentic" platform.

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on September 28, 2012 at 8:01am

That's an interesting commentary bGatti.  You raise some good points, but there's a counterpoint that kills the "fiefdom" concept:  The source contributors do so of their own free will.  They are simply able to walk away at will, go do something else, if they wanted.

Slaves can't do that.  So the analogy is incorrect.

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