Made in China!
Don't know what to say.
Ardupilot mega IMU: 520 rmb = 80 USD
Ardupilot mega 240.00 rmb = 36 USD
I found Ardupilot Mega + IMU board on (taobao)
I have no idea about quality, sensor or anything else.
Any comments?
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Comments
"The annoyance for me is they actually link to the real APM wiki and say it's the English version"
Because it is English version. Not French or Polish. For you they are to the east, for them you are to the west. Part of global community. The most active part. But the most spreading potential is in China.
Let's face it: developed countries make design and let the others use their design. It is how it is in global economy: there is 2-3 year window for each innovating product and it is obligation of the visionaries to move on to the next one. Same with computers, but in our case the product was simpler and the innovation was shorter lived. At the end of day, when the job of programmers is free, why shouldn't the job of ppl packing the things in the bag and shipping it be paid, once the product is mature and can be produced worldwide. China is low tech factory, US is world leader in technology. The technology has been spread, now in the best interest of diydrones is move to the next TRULY innovative ideas, not just variations of the old schema as this could be immediately cloned.
There are assets to maintain advantage: production facility for advanced prototyping, the production capacity to make a product that can be only tested when used in thousand units (not just by a dozen initial freaks), innovation, contacts and tons of inspirations.
For me the saying about quality is not really and argument since the part of ardupilot is testing every single pin and internal functionality anyway - this is what is understood as quality testing of the final product so this is already left for the final customer, since the beginning.
Interesting... but I think using terms like "china copy", "clone", "counterfeit" and even "plagiarized" in this context is a bit misdirected.
The design is opensource. Anyone can take the design files and manufacture it and sell it for whatever they want, so this isn't a "copy" but rather an alternate source for hardware. Where manufacturers will compete is on price, quality, support, and availability. Judging by the comments here though, there is a strong loyalty to the original designers and people feel more comfortable buying parts from DiYDrones. This is good, and the way it should be.
About the use of the name and the logo, normally you have to retain any copyright notices of the original design. In that sense, to just remove the DiYDrones logo and give the board another name sounds even more dubious to me. How should they do it?
There are other 8 bit usb-programmable platforms (TI Launchpad) which are priced at $4.95 or a half-order of magnitude less than Arduino, so the price premium for first-mover-open-source is in the range of ~4x - to say nothing of the quantity premium.
There are so many uav controllers, we can make it base them for sale. why copy? This will never progress.
That's the way it goes...
The MK was cloned long ago - illegally of course since it isn't open source. Sold for a third of the regular price and then imported to the US.
This surely harmed the margin as it will do in the case of DIYDrones.
I'm pretty sure the cloners had the files for months and just pushed the button when the AC2 code went public...
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