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  • Shannon Morrisey May 20, 2011 at 5:38pm
    architectural similarities and derivative works are difficult enough to establish for fully copyrighted hw and sw - much more so with open source licensing
     
    at what point does an APM∂+/-xy&z no longer constitute an APM∂?
  • JJ Blackwood May 20, 2011 at 3:04pm

    Chris, Jordi, and the rest of the crew could be making 990% profit for all I care, at the price of the current boards for the capability they provide I am (and I'm guessing most others here are as well) an extremely happy customer, experimenter, and though it might be small, contributor.

    For the cost of the APMega/IMU I've had several dozen hours of entertainment flying, many more hours learning, several blistered fingers from a soldering iron, two terrified cats and a completely re-optimized organization system in my office when I didn't turn off the throttle for testing purposes. Worth every last penny and then some. Compare this with the price of going to see a movie for a couple hours and the DIYDrones experience is very inexpensive fun.

    Chris and the DIYd founders have put together a great platform for learning, supported it with an easy to use supply chain, and founded a fantastic community. Designs will come and go. Clones will happen along the way. The innovation and progress here is a huge driving force in propelling the state of the art, knockoffs can't compete with innovation.

  • Developer
    John Arne Birkeland May 20, 2011 at 2:40pm

    I am kinda on the fence with this one. I want to support further product development by purchasing 'original' diydrones hardware by 3D Robotics. But at the same time I want cheap.. DIYd may not be the best example since they already have reasonable prices. But let's use Futaba FASST R/C receivers as an example. The Futaba R608 8 channel receiver is currently $140 at TowerHobbies. The FASST compatible 8 channel 'china made' receiver at HobbyKing is $30, and has more features then the original!!! I have looked inside both and chip costs and production quality is pretty much identical, so it is all a matter of Futaba charging what they think the marked is willing to pay.

    You can also pretty much thank China for the <$20 2.4ghz receiver systems and $60 radios ( Turnigy 9X). And nobody is complaining about them are they?

    As I see it you can never compete with China on price. But on the other hand they usually don't bother with costly innovation.  Support and service is often also non existent for 'china' products.

    So this is where smaller western companies has a niche. Innovative new products of good quality, with great support and sales service.

  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson May 20, 2011 at 2:30pm
    Fab, You're confusing margin with profit and have your numbers wrong. I wrote that we charge 2.6x the BOM cost, which is two 40% (not 50%) margins (one for us and one for our retail partners). "Profit" is gross margin minus overheads, which include everything from labor and rent to insurance. Actual profit is much less and is often negative, depending on where we are in a product life cycle.
  • T3
    Krzysztof Bosak May 20, 2011 at 2:27pm
    Fab, all those low-cost theories sounds so professional, you are all good business people, the business is fair. But it has one major problem, since the beginning, that makes things doomed. It is not about unique technology or knowledge or usefullness. It IS about profit and somebody else can do it for less profit using very common mass production techniques. 100% is huge margin. Chipmakers can do progress on 10% profit while designing new silicon logic and emploing thousands. Focusing on and keeping only a simple autopilot development board production on the assumption you can have 100% profit sounds like luxury. Ppl don't have it designing full custom, much more complex systems. It won't last on such weak basis.
  • Gerry Lichter May 20, 2011 at 12:33pm
    I agree with Hamish from the first page. The USD is weaker than it was 1 year ago but they are dreaming if they think they can get $36/80. Next thing you know they'll be wanting Ryobi prices at Harbor Freight.

    If you're in that weird place between making your own board/using Wii accessories/not valuing the product support of DIY drones; Why not get an Arduino Mega & an Atmel Xplained 9DoF IMU?

    I suspect the new Phonedrone Board is going to make this all largely moot. Android is getting old enough that the market is about to be flooded with old Nexus handsets with bad batteries. Duane and Chris nailed the timing on this. I can see $30 Droids by early-mid 2012. With products like the Xplained on the market, there's just not much room for profit in the IMU/AHRS market any more. Boards like the PhoneDrone and ArduPilot create standard platforms for the hobby community to use as a vehicle for discussion and community development projects. The added value beyond the quality assurance & product support(neither of which you get from china) is reduced uncertainty when troubleshooting. My time is worth more to me than spending 7 hours diagnosing a cold solder joint/wiring problem on a Wii/Pro Mini setup. I have some MP & Nunchucks for tinkering, but the ArduIMU is what's going in my AUV.

    I'm a habitual cheapskate who frequently buys knockoffs of products from Dealextreme & company but I think they missed their mark on $/product choice.

    This is really just an example of Open Source HW/SW success. Piracy can't be stopped, so give it away instead of fighting to defend the illusion of "intellectual property" & getting bitter about "theft". Price it cheap enough to make it not worth the effort, and find alternative ways of generating a profit from the flood of customers this brings in.

    DIYDrones, Sparkfun, Arduino, Google, Linux are getting bigger while the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft are fighting upstream against irrelevancy.

    The modern realities of international trade seem to show this to be a highly successful strategy.
  • Melih Karakelle May 20, 2011 at 11:45am
    I'm designing and producing since years and i think China copies is big problem of all designers (opensource or not).

    Any small company cant win the competition with China production system. Because they are not only small companies like us. The government (or what they says) buying all components with 1.000.000 units or multiple quantities. And component costs 10-100 times lower than us.

    In my case:
    - Silicon Laboratories (a US company) producing CP2102 USB to serial chips (in Malaysia?)
    - It's price 4.5$ for one unit. ~3$ each for 100 units in USA
    - Unit cost around 5$ for me (with custom taxes, shipping to Turkey)
    - Hobby King selling a USB to serial cable from 2.8$. Including CP2102 + 1 meter cable + ferrite + DIN 4 plug + device case and plug + their profit + the producer's profit.

    This mean, you cant produce it in USA or any country except China. Because they are using same chip on 5000+ different products. And maybe they are ordering 100.000.000 units. The stocking cost is zero for small producers, they are only buying from local stocks, not from chip producer or distributor.

    This is why, it is not only a "copy" of ArduPilot Mega. Low cost, high profit and probably same quality (or will be same on second production).

    I'm very new in opensource business and following the reactions of community. I hope, The trendsetters was right about opensource and the community reflexes
  • Andrew Van Der Plaats May 20, 2011 at 6:14am

    Past experience with Chinese has shown that unless you're willing to actually place your own Quality Control people in their plant, to help insure they comply with your standards, they'll cut every corner they can.  This typically leads to poor quality/reliability.  I can sight examples ranging from electrical fixtures and smoke grenades to things like combat boots and clothing.

  • MikeInFrance May 20, 2011 at 5:55am
    I think the coolest thing to do is to contact them and make a deal: you do the mass-production, but with our quality standards and we source our needs with you.
    Maybe a licensing contract or something in that way.

    Working together is better than fighting.
  • Andrew Van Der Plaats May 20, 2011 at 4:53am

    The real harm comes when uninformed people buy their products, only to find them inferior.  Not knowing better they blame the folks who they think offered them, the company they ripped off.  Seen this happen before with other products they copied, right down to the labeling on the packaging. 

     

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