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Hmmm Now hobbyking is selling:
ArduPilot Mega V2.5 Flight Controller USB/GYRO/ACC/MAG/BARO
72 USD for the hobbyking APM 2.5 board
Are hobbyking selling this under license or is it a CN clone?
Can hobbyking use the name Ardupilot 2.5?
Comments
The spirit and power of Open Source is that you can quickly get a design working and to market if you choose. The key is that any innovations you make must be posted if they include or use (with some exceptions) any other Open Source projects. This allows for great innovation and development in the industry.
If HK had taken the APM design / code and *improved* upon it. Doing anything to inject their own investment back to the community, then I believe nobody would have any qualms with them. The problem comes from them taking an open design, *purely copying* it and selling it a very tight margins.
Zero engineering investment for them. All profit. And in the meantime, the people who put the actual work into designing the APM receive no reward for their efforts. This can force competition, push down price and increase availability, which is good for the consumer. However, usually there is some work needed to clone a product. Here it's just copy-paste.
TL;DR: Hobbyking is pushing down prices, which is good for the customer. However, it contributes no intellectual return to the industry. Most of the time though, they have to at least work a little to copy a design.
Would that be profiteering from other peoples effort. Can't help feeling that DIYD and 3DR is tasting some of it's own medicine here. Did the profits from ArduThing ever reach the hands of the original innovators and hard working open source developers? I wonder.....
@Dionh: The chip on 3DR is a 16MBit device, which means it is 16,000,000bits /8 = 2MByte see https://www.sparkfun.com/products/301
The HK post says 4MP so it could mean anything
I agree with jo buying from 3dr if you live in south africa is very expensive. The only deference is the HK apm has only got 4mb ram instead of the 16mb the 3dr board has Where the rctimer apm is a exacted copy
+1 jo
apm is a open source software and there are some bugs which could create crash so we are many to prefer to pay less and no fear if we break something...
It is not even half the price.
Summarize unworkable GPS LEA-6H with reversed contacts, power module, case, wires, soldered pinounts and you will find a little profit of 3RD behind APM.
Completely agree as usual John. I would not be participating in this hobby if it wasn't for Hobby King. For too long, the big hobby distributors set prices much too high, for items with very little innovation. Too much of the price of hobby hardware was going towards supporting 2-3 levels of distribution, and advertising costs. I do, or did, support the local hobby shop. But it wasn't those guys getting rich. You just have to look at the market for RC Transmitters, even today, to see how little effort the big guys were putting into product development.
When HK can develop the 9XR, and pay for all the tooling for the shells, etc, and sell it for $50, when Futaba sells something equivalent for $400, that tells you how much Futaba and all the middle-men are making.
However, this clone is different. If Hobby King can only manage to cut the price in half, and not even having spent *anything* to develop it, that tells me that 3DR's price is already pretty fair.
But in this case, there is zero tooling, and no development? Just copy the design, and rent pick-and-place machine time... And it's only half price? I don't mind buying from the originator.
HobbyKing is a bit of a dilemma. On the one side they have more or less single handedly reduced R/C prices to sane levels compared to what stuff used to cost earlier. Much of this by removing all the costly middlemen and insane brand markups. But on the other side they are also making shameless copies of other peoples work.
Hobbyking has now renamed the product HKPilot and edited some of the text so it is not an exact copy of ours (although they still copied all the features text). However, still absolutely no credit given to the creators, and no links to documentation or design files, so now it's just a violation of the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA licence. (BY = credit. SA= share alike).
Ok so APM is open source, me I work on open buy. !!
When I have disposable cash to buy my hobby equipment / toys/ RC stuff I want 2 things, value for money and good service. more than that I want to support the businesses that support ME and the future developement of new stuff.
Yes, I buy things from HK that I cant get locally or that I am prepared to risk the lottery of will it work or not (servos for example), buy 4 probably 3 will be great.
Will I buy an APM from HK? Never, Never, Never. I have around 1500$ invested in my UAV. I will not trust a HK APM with no quality control to bring it back home to me.
Also consider the developement of this product (and 3DR radios etc) Like most people I want a bigger, faster, better APM, will that be designed by HK? dont think so!!
3DR get my business through Canada Drones because that is the right thing to do. Life is not always worth saving a few dollars.
One last point. Many people here want to use ther UAV commercialy (eventually) , to do that you will need to prove your aircraft is technically correct and safe to fly. One of the questions will be what equipment is installed to control the UAV,, I think you may have a problem convincing an inspector that your 79$ rip off clone, made in china will be acceptable!!
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