Handibot KS Campaign duplicated on IGG by scammers (shutdown now)

[notzippy]

Thought this was interesting, same campaign running on different crowdfunders at same time

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1320575205/handibottm-a-smart-digital-power-tool
http://igg.me/at/Handibot/x/1733288

Seems like as soon as they hit there goal that started a igg campaign, personally I would have been annoyed having pledged a not so early bird price to learn of the second campaign... Pretty odd marketing campaign if you ask me..

nz

[Stonent]

Seems a bit fishy to me...

[NickAmes]

Seems a bit fishy to me...

Running campaigns on two separate crowd-funding websites does seem a bit odd, but ShopBot is a well established company, and there's nothing terribly challenging about the concept.

[CanadianAvenger]

Flex funding on IGG to boot... something does not smell right here.  I've messaged ShopBot on Kickstarter to explain themselves, I'll post back their response [if any]. [Sadly neither KS or IGG let you post a public comment/question unless you back] - I suspect the IGG one might be a scam by someone else, as Shopbot makes no mention of the IGG campaign on their website [only the KS one] or their twitter feed.

[Andy Watson]

I suspect the IGG one might be a scam by someone else,

Looks like it's been directly lifted from the KS site - even the goal of $125,000. At least they're not greedy, on IGG they're only asking for $70,000.

[GeoffS]

The thing I find annoying about Handibot is that they boast open source but provide no information about either hardware or software design.
I want to make one!

[CanadianAvenger]

They just replied to me. The IGG campaign is not them. I've forwarded the link to them so they can take action.

[Update] And just like that the IGG campaign is gone!  Chalk this victory up to the existence of this forum!

[CanadianAvenger]

The thing I find annoying about Handibot is that they boast open source but provide no information about either hardware or software design.
I want to make one!

You can download a step file here: http://www.shopbottools.com/mApplications/handibot_components.htm

But I would expect detail to be scarce until after the close of the campaign, and possibly up until the first units ship. If they release the info too early they may lose sales/backers. They promise it will be open, so we'll have to wait and see.

[Ted_ShopBot]

Hello All:

It looks like you figured this one out ... and we certainly appreciate the heads up from people on this forum. We had no idea about the double posting and have been incredibly stressed all morning trying to get it taken down from Indiegogo ... We're guessing that because the funding works differently on that site, that whoever posted thought they might get a short run of contributions delivered before anyone caught on. Anyway ... it's down now. Many Thanks !

On to Handibotting: We plan to get all open source materials up as soon as possible in a GitHub repository. For open source hardware, this will be the full current model as well as some form CNC files. As noted above, our current STP file is available from the website. We favor using our own OpenSBP syntax for tool paths for production of hardware (just because it is easy to work with) but will probably do some sort of G-code listing as well for those who are ready to cut on other equipment. On software, to spare you an overly long discussion, I'll refer you to our developers page (http://www.shopbottools.com/mApplications/developers.htm) where we discuss our road map for moving to open source for our control system software and our support for the system being developed by the TinyG guys. Most of our pinouts and circuits are posted, but open source CNC software is definitely a work in progress for us at the moment. And on hardware; open is open. When don't plan to hold off until the end of our campaign or require a pledge. If we're slow to make anything available, it's because we are a small group just struggling to keep up with things ... and being a bit distracted by our Kickstarter campaign and challenges like this recent one.

Ted Hall, ShopBot Tools

[notzippy]

Shop-bot tools and all

Glad we were able to put this to rest in a quick manner. Thanks to the avenger for contacting shop-bot I probably should have done so myself but it was such a well crafted clone that it could have almost been legit...

IGG has got to improve there monitoring of projects, There are some decent ones there but there is also a load of BS there as well.

And to think I found both campaigns when I was looking for a wireless router  .

Shop-bot : Does the new title for this message thread look good to you ?

Nz

[CanadianAvenger]

well the search got the "router" part right

I'm glad we were able to kill this quickly, the ShopBot guys are good people, and have done a lot for the maker community. I agree that it was well crafted [well it was just a direct copy/paste] They took the time to create a legit looking user account, it had me guessing too. I'll add this one to my already long list of reasons why not to back projects on IGG!

[Ted_ShopBot]

Hi Nz,

Yes ... many thanks for the improved title!

Ted Hall, ShopBot

[GeoffS]

The thing I find annoying about Handibot is that they boast open source but provide no information about either hardware or software design.
I want to make one!

You can download a step file here: http://www.shopbottools.com/mApplications/handibot_components.htm

But I would expect detail to be scarce until after the close of the campaign, and possibly up until the first units ship. If they release the info too early they may lose sales/backers. They promise it will be open, so we'll have to wait and see.

Thanks for the link, I missed that the other day when I was browsing their site.
Might be a bit chicken and egg - I'll need a CNC router to make one of these 

[Stonent]

I almost flagged the IGG site last night but hesitated until more information was known. I was concerned maybe it had something to do with taking the product internationally.

[MacAttak]

Unfortunately this isn't such a rare occurrence. Any successful KS campaign has a real risk of a scammer posting a flex-funding clone of it on IGG to try and make a few quick bucks. This happened with 3Doodle and a few other projects.

IGG really is a cesspool of scammer-friendly services.

[CanadianAvenger]

The difference here is that the scammer managed to launch the campaign while the KS one was still running. Given that the KS campaign isn't that old, the scammer must have started the process pretty much the day the KS campaign launched.

[MacAttak]

That's usually what happens. The 3Doodler clone sprung up right in the middle of the KS campaign and they had to scramble to get it shut down.

[CanadianAvenger]

Oh, I didn't realize that. All the ones I've seen happened after the fact, so this seemed a bit different to me this time. [I never saw the 3Doodler clone one]