5 ms·

I know someone who was selling an electronic module on Tindie. One day sales went through the floor. Turned out someone had cloned his entire product and was sh

by uuyi 5y ago

I know someone who was selling an electronic module on Tindie. One day sales went through the floor. Turned out someone had cloned his entire product and was shipping volume on aliexpress. He just closed up shop. I myself have spent weeks navigating the maze of dodgy NanoVNAs out there. Even one of the official resellers decided to cut costs and ship out poorly functioning clones and try and deny it. Can’t win so don’t play. Eventually the markets will fall due to crap saturation.

nebula8804 5y ago
Will the markets actually fail? Or will there always be a sucker ready to try their luck? I remember seeing this happen in the Retro Video Game community with Flash carts. Independent developer developed a flashcart for the Sega Dreamcast and was subsequently ripped off. After he complained on Twitter, most of the community sided with the cloners. They just want their cheap garbage and they have no idea/care regarding the massive effort it takes to develop a device like this. Never mind the fact that the original developer will be inundated with support/bugfix requests for the clones while the Chinese cloners disappear into the ether having stolen all the value. He eventually walked away from the project from what I recall which pissed off his original buyers and now others have stepped up with their own devices(And will probably be cloned). Luckily the one (temporary) respite you have in software/hardware is DRM. If you can implement a complex enough DRM system you can slow down the cloners from stealing your software for some period of time. It sucks but this is the world we live in. One tactic that a Flashcart manufacturer is using is some sort of serial coded firmware updates that only operates on a specific date code of flashcart. It requires the user to log into an account and get the specific firmware update that is tied to their flashcart. It has caused some complaints from the community regarding ease of use + resale woes(transferring ownership from one legit user to another) but overall this is an interesting solution. It hasn't fully prevented clones but has slowed them down somewhat. I wish there was some way this could be applied to the non-software world but you can't defeat the physical layer.
- after_care 5y ago
  It's ironic to me because flashcarts are widely used to pirate console games. Someone making a tool for pirates is complaining about their IP being pirated. Yes, I know flashcarts are also commonly used for homebrew, and I use mine exclusively for homebrew. I also understand that many of the older games have become collectors items, and wanting to play backups instead of the original is another use case. This doesn't change one of it's most common use cases, which is playing illegal roms.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Yeah I get where you are coming from. That does not change the fact that these products require massive effort to develop. In the case of PSIO(product with the serial encoded firmware) it was started by a high schooler + firmware developer from Belarus in 2012(original concept in 2010) and took years before the product was finally in a state to ship. From what I gather, their custom menu + firmware system is ~50k of C code/MIPS assembly made from scratch. I watched as this high schooler got harassed for years as people did not believe such a product was even possible. After he released it, everyone forgot about all the harassment that this product was vaporware and impossible to develop and now he continued to get hounded for bug fixes to fix timing issues with specific games(he is emulating the complete CD drive and many games expected exact timings to overcome specific undocumented bugs in the system). Now you have to throw in the threat of clones. To this day he is continuing to fully support the product despite some clones appearing in the wild. A competing product has recently appeared that takes a simpler approach to emulating the CD drive and likely has not had as extensive of a QA process. It remains a question whether this other approach is better compared to PSIO(new product only supports 3 motherboard versions out of dozens + you lose the CD drive altogether) but because the price is cheaper a large chunk of the community does not care and have moved on. The remaining community are now bashing the PSIO team for temporary slowing down development to rewrite the firmware to stop the latest round of cloners. You can look at it as theft, but others would see it as preserving and promoting software development on a ~28 year old console. This team also gone into excruciating detail to document the system to help enable new software to be developed. Just from the outside looking in, I don't know if it is worth the effort to spend years making something like this only to be harassed nonstop for years, getting your IP stolen by the Chinese and in end still be making a product that is a grey market item. I suspect that down the road we will have nothing but low quality Chinese made junk on the market if anything at all.
- foldor 5y ago
  To be fair to the GDEMU situation you touched on for the Dreamcast, the reason the community took the side of the cloners was because it was nearly impossible to get a hold of the original authentic design. He made the ordering process as terrible as possible, seemed to have a shitty attitude to his actual customers, and the demand drastically outpaced his ability to supply the market. The retro community is large, but most of the time people would rather buy from the original source over a clone product, but in the case of the GDEMU he kind of forced people to choose a clone instead.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Yeah I wasn't a customer just a follower as I am fascinated by the efforts used to create these devices. At the same time, PSIO(which I also referenced) has taken as many efforts as possible to provide the product in sufficient quantities and be as supportive as possible but there is a loud portion of the community that still berates them for their anti-clone efforts. The gaming community just seems to suck as customers. You see this with all the hate a publisher gets when they release something that isn't perfect as well. There are also people buying the Everdrive clones and then expecting support. I have seen these complaints on Reddit and in various forums. I don't know how rampant this is but its so silly.
    - foldor 5y ago
      PSIO definitely isn't beloved, I'll give you that. I think the main hate of PSIO is because their product always felt like a beta to users who expected something more polished. I'm not going to say either is right or wrong, but it's what it is. PSIO's anti piracy stuff was pretty annoying for the end user vs what other companies are doing like XStation and others can do. You're right though, that in general the end users are very much entitled assholes in general, and there are still people buying Everdrive clones, even when the real deal was still in stock and available. But Everdrive is still successful for Krikzz, and all of the clones out there are based on a very outdated design that his newer devices are far surpassing in terms of features and support.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > Never mind the fact that the original developer will be inundated with support/bugfix requests for the clones while the Chinese cloners disappear into the ether having stolen all the value. This seems like an opportunity in disguise. Provide paid support, possibly after upselling the crowd to genuine product if required. Then word-of-mouth will be to the original dev's benefit; few will side with the fly-by-night cloners. DRM makes your product less "hackable" by the customer and less likely to sustain a committed community. It's a very short sighted approach.
  - dendriti 5y ago
    The people who are buying Chinese knockoff pirated flash carts, are not the same people pulling out their credit cards for paid support. Also, retro gamers are a notoriously difficult and time-consuming market to support.
  - Sirened 5y ago
    Often times users don't even know they have a fraudulent product. Some of these clones are literally just your product (third shifted) and so short of assigning bonded, single use serials (which is easy to say and very hard in practice) there's little you can do to distinguish between a legit and fraudulent product. This wastes your customer service time by supporting customers who didn't even end up paying for your product, which is overall very bad.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Is there an easy way to tell the clones vs the original developer? Legitimately curious in this Dreamcast item
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Typically they have their own website. Like I mentioned, I believe this specific developer has thrown in the towel but others are making competing products. Typically their website has a list of authorized resellers or sells them directly.
- krsrhe 5y ago
R0b0t1 5y ago
Found someone who makes NanoVNAs yet? I saw some of the newer OSS model of that, but was weirded out it was some random Chinese company on Amazon.

by uuyi 5y ago

nebula8804 5y ago

Will the markets actually fail? Or will there always be a sucker ready to try their luck? I remember seeing this happen in the Retro Video Game community with Flash carts. Independent developer developed a flashcart for the Sega Dreamcast and was subsequently ripped off. After he complained on Twitter, most of the community sided with the cloners. They just want their cheap garbage and they have no idea/care regarding the massive effort it takes to develop a device like this. Never mind the fact that the original developer will be inundated with support/bugfix requests for the clones while the Chinese cloners disappear into the ether having stolen all the value. He eventually walked away from the project from what I recall which pissed off his original buyers and now others have stepped up with their own devices(And will probably be cloned). Luckily the one (temporary) respite you have in software/hardware is DRM. If you can implement a complex enough DRM system you can slow down the cloners from stealing your software for some period of time. It sucks but this is the world we live in. One tactic that a Flashcart manufacturer is using is some sort of serial coded firmware updates that only operates on a specific date code of flashcart. It requires the user to log into an account and get the specific firmware update that is tied to their flashcart. It has caused some complaints from the community regarding ease of use + resale woes(transferring ownership from one legit user to another) but overall this is an interesting solution. It hasn't fully prevented clones but has slowed them down somewhat. I wish there was some way this could be applied to the non-software world but you can't defeat the physical layer.

after_care 5y ago
It's ironic to me because flashcarts are widely used to pirate console games. Someone making a tool for pirates is complaining about their IP being pirated. Yes, I know flashcarts are also commonly used for homebrew, and I use mine exclusively for homebrew. I also understand that many of the older games have become collectors items, and wanting to play backups instead of the original is another use case. This doesn't change one of it's most common use cases, which is playing illegal roms.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Yeah I get where you are coming from. That does not change the fact that these products require massive effort to develop. In the case of PSIO(product with the serial encoded firmware) it was started by a high schooler + firmware developer from Belarus in 2012(original concept in 2010) and took years before the product was finally in a state to ship. From what I gather, their custom menu + firmware system is ~50k of C code/MIPS assembly made from scratch. I watched as this high schooler got harassed for years as people did not believe such a product was even possible. After he released it, everyone forgot about all the harassment that this product was vaporware and impossible to develop and now he continued to get hounded for bug fixes to fix timing issues with specific games(he is emulating the complete CD drive and many games expected exact timings to overcome specific undocumented bugs in the system). Now you have to throw in the threat of clones. To this day he is continuing to fully support the product despite some clones appearing in the wild. A competing product has recently appeared that takes a simpler approach to emulating the CD drive and likely has not had as extensive of a QA process. It remains a question whether this other approach is better compared to PSIO(new product only supports 3 motherboard versions out of dozens + you lose the CD drive altogether) but because the price is cheaper a large chunk of the community does not care and have moved on. The remaining community are now bashing the PSIO team for temporary slowing down development to rewrite the firmware to stop the latest round of cloners. You can look at it as theft, but others would see it as preserving and promoting software development on a ~28 year old console. This team also gone into excruciating detail to document the system to help enable new software to be developed. Just from the outside looking in, I don't know if it is worth the effort to spend years making something like this only to be harassed nonstop for years, getting your IP stolen by the Chinese and in end still be making a product that is a grey market item. I suspect that down the road we will have nothing but low quality Chinese made junk on the market if anything at all.
foldor 5y ago
To be fair to the GDEMU situation you touched on for the Dreamcast, the reason the community took the side of the cloners was because it was nearly impossible to get a hold of the original authentic design. He made the ordering process as terrible as possible, seemed to have a shitty attitude to his actual customers, and the demand drastically outpaced his ability to supply the market. The retro community is large, but most of the time people would rather buy from the original source over a clone product, but in the case of the GDEMU he kind of forced people to choose a clone instead.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Yeah I wasn't a customer just a follower as I am fascinated by the efforts used to create these devices. At the same time, PSIO(which I also referenced) has taken as many efforts as possible to provide the product in sufficient quantities and be as supportive as possible but there is a loud portion of the community that still berates them for their anti-clone efforts. The gaming community just seems to suck as customers. You see this with all the hate a publisher gets when they release something that isn't perfect as well. There are also people buying the Everdrive clones and then expecting support. I have seen these complaints on Reddit and in various forums. I don't know how rampant this is but its so silly.
  - foldor 5y ago
    PSIO definitely isn't beloved, I'll give you that. I think the main hate of PSIO is because their product always felt like a beta to users who expected something more polished. I'm not going to say either is right or wrong, but it's what it is. PSIO's anti piracy stuff was pretty annoying for the end user vs what other companies are doing like XStation and others can do. You're right though, that in general the end users are very much entitled assholes in general, and there are still people buying Everdrive clones, even when the real deal was still in stock and available. But Everdrive is still successful for Krikzz, and all of the clones out there are based on a very outdated design that his newer devices are far surpassing in terms of features and support.
zozbot234 5y ago
> Never mind the fact that the original developer will be inundated with support/bugfix requests for the clones while the Chinese cloners disappear into the ether having stolen all the value. This seems like an opportunity in disguise. Provide paid support, possibly after upselling the crowd to genuine product if required. Then word-of-mouth will be to the original dev's benefit; few will side with the fly-by-night cloners. DRM makes your product less "hackable" by the customer and less likely to sustain a committed community. It's a very short sighted approach.
- dendriti 5y ago
  The people who are buying Chinese knockoff pirated flash carts, are not the same people pulling out their credit cards for paid support. Also, retro gamers are a notoriously difficult and time-consuming market to support.
- Sirened 5y ago
  Often times users don't even know they have a fraudulent product. Some of these clones are literally just your product (third shifted) and so short of assigning bonded, single use serials (which is easy to say and very hard in practice) there's little you can do to distinguish between a legit and fraudulent product. This wastes your customer service time by supporting customers who didn't even end up paying for your product, which is overall very bad.
Melatonic 5y ago
Is there an easy way to tell the clones vs the original developer? Legitimately curious in this Dreamcast item
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Typically they have their own website. Like I mentioned, I believe this specific developer has thrown in the towel but others are making competing products. Typically their website has a list of authorized resellers or sells them directly.
krsrhe 5y ago

R0b0t1 5y ago

Found someone who makes NanoVNAs yet? I saw some of the newer OSS model of that, but was weirded out it was some random Chinese company on Amazon.