Comment by Drone Savant on August 17, 2012 at 6:11am

Jake I was trying to be respectful, it is fairly obvious that  R_Lefebvre was talking about OpenPilot and its "Janitor". I'll just stop the code words as you suggest. ;) Since we are making clarifications I will add one as well. The OpenPilot hardware issues that were presented above as a contrast in quality to 3Drobotics were perhaps not fully or properly explained.

I want to emphasize that the fine individual that is referenced above in the 1-4 numbered items actually hand tests each OP board before they go to the public. The "recall" as I phrased it wasn't actually a "recall" at all in the traditional sense as the hardware never left inventory, nor did it make it into the general publics hands. Proper QA testing led to a condition where not a single board was shipped to the public with a known flaw. In essence what I was describing as a "recall" was more so quality control than anything. You can't exactly have a "recall" in the traditional sense without having actually shipped product. The "axing" of board revisions that I mentioned above quite simply should have been phrased differently. 

I mentioned that folks familiar with the project have seen this in action... what I was pointing out was this gem on the production-status page. http://www.openpilot.org/openpilot-production-status/ we have:

"December 2011: A hardware component in the latest batch (none have been delivered to distros or users yet) is defective and the ALL CCs have to be reworked. (We would like to avoid our end users having to find this problem and send it back) So no ETA for a release at this time."

 

The key phrase for the contrast between projects was intended to be "We would like to avoid our end users having to find this problem and send it back". The word "recall" has a negative connotation in some circles so I wanted to make sure to emphasize no poor products are shipped in Project X aka OpenPilot, QA simply won't allow for it. 

Need an Apples to Oranges comparison on QA? As an APM2 user for example I am not at all happy about seeing Chris paint the APM2 power and brown-out problems out as something that is "already in the manual", when in reality it is simply a QA issue that was never brought to light. http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/help-apm2-wont-power-via-output-r.... It is quite funny for me to note that in a side by side test of an OEM APM2 vs. a GLB clone APM2 from China, oddly enough the Chinese APM2 does not have brown-out problems. In 5 days of flying... my OEM APM2 has been grounded. Ever have a brown-out while testing cool new features like flip.pde? Let me tell ya it is a scary time to have a brown-out! 

The APM2Protection page was created August 3rd...where the heck is the general public announcement, where is the forum Sticky note? Why would you not email people that have purchased APM2's from the 3drobotics store and warn them?  I randomly discovered this because my Quad  browned-out during the middle of a flip.pde test. It scared the heck out of me. https://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/source/browse/APM2Protecti.... The OpenPilot project would NOT handle this issue in the same fashion, hence why the comparison by R_Lefebvre was slightly slanted.

These sort of issues are exactly why it is not fair to act like you only receive poor hardware support from Chinese and Sri Lankan clone manufacturers. 3DRobotics is doing their own bang up job there... 

Thanks for stepping up and taking ownership on some of the false information regarding the GPS Jake...

Comment by u4eake on August 17, 2012 at 1:35pm

I have to agree with drone Savant on the hardware support.

My dataflash on my oilpan stopped working quite a while ago.  There's no physical damage to it or any bad or degraded soldering visible under microscope.  The dataflash chip just went bad.

The advise from 3DR drones : disable logging and carry on...  This works mind you...  but I had already figured that out myself.  It's not so convinient for debugging and it's not what I payed for.

Never made a big deal out of it.  I'm used to buying chinese stuff and getting no support.  Only, this wasn't chinese stuff...

Another thing that bothers me greatly is that you never know when to buy stuff from 3DR drones.  The STABLE product life cycle is just too short.  Buy early and you get the childs deseases.  Buy late and you risk having an unsupported board a good year later.

Comment by Jake Stew on August 17, 2012 at 3:13pm

It would be nice if 3DR stepped up to their obligations a bit more.  The power issue and the failsafe issue should have been handled better.  It's really easy to keep an email list of people buying these products and send them an email when a major flaw is uncovered.  It's kind of troubling that they don't even warn people when a potentially dangerous, even life-threatening, situation is uncovered.

I'm hoping that they are using the new PPM encoder firmware on the units they are shipping, because they haven't been aggressive enough about warning people about it or helping them upgrade.

With the power issue they have a fix, but they're not notifying anyone.  I also don't see a page in the store to buy or request the parts to perform the power fix.

A lot of these issues could be helped if they had a real wiki instead of a pseudo-wiki that only a select few can edit.  The documentation would improve tremendously if more people were working on it.

If it sounds like I'm being harsh... well the top dog has to take some heat.  Being popular you should expect to have to operate with higher standards in mind.

Comment by Drone Savant on August 21, 2012 at 8:43am

"It's really easy to keep an email list of people buying these products and send them an email when a major flaw is uncovered" - Oh you mean like the one that is created when people login to the shopping cart? You know the same list that they used to send out THIS notification?

Dear Drone Savant,

Sorry for the inconvenience this situation may cause but due to a design change required to improve performance, we are currently not shipping the 3DR Radio USB-433 Mhz "Ground" module (BR-3DRUSB433).

As a customer who has ordered the telemetry kit that includes that item, we are offering a choice of alternatives. 

1. You can switch to a kit that includes two of the "Air" modules and a FTDI cable that will allow one module to be connected to your ground PC, to provide the same functionality as the original kit.  This would replace the "Ground" module  and the USB extension cable originally included.  There is no extra charge for this replacement.
2. You can wait for the revision and receive the kit as originally described ( Air + Ground Modules, and additional accessories). We do not currently have an ETA for that, but we expect it should be a matter of four to six weeks.
3. You can cancel your current order and place a new one once the revision becomes available."

If you have any more concerns, please let me know.

Best regards, Yvett
3DRobotics            

 

Can you say consistency? I knew that you could. 

Comment by Jørn Ramnæs on December 29, 2012 at 3:48pm

There is a big discussion on this on rcgroups, and a search in the TM database shows that your TM's are registered in the USA and nowhere else on the planet. Should they then be able to use the APM etc. name in the rest of the world? The APM name is registered to an Italian company in the EU, can you and the cloners then sell your products under this names there?

One can register a name for TM, and one can protect the registered TM. How this is registered, i dont know, but i think the chinese have seen this hole of opportunity and are using it for what it's worth.

I own a cloned card to, and i think that the use of the APM name should be seen as a quality mark and let the cloners use the three letters as a part of the name like Arduflyer APM. You could at least ask them to name it that way.

Comment by Anish on December 29, 2012 at 3:54pm

I guess this is the challenge with open source hardware :), i would let the masters have thier final say @chris, @tridge ;)

Comment by Jørn Ramnæs on December 29, 2012 at 4:05pm

This is the challenge of every TM or product that's being sold worldwide and not registered or patented everywhere it's sold. There is no moral when it comes to making money you know.

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