Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Counterfeit products, or not?
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amyk:
Printer manufacturers use these ICs in huge quantities and the price does go down significantly if you buy millions or more.

There's also the negotiation and guanxi factor that the Chinese are very keen on; I've heard it phrased thus: "If you know the right people and have the right connections, 1 million or 10 million parts may cost the same."
thm_w:

--- Quote from: janoc on September 22, 2019, 02:30:23 pm ---(e.g. had STM32F103s that worked inside a cheap STLink clone but wouldn't reliably work with custom firmware. A fresh chip bought from RS had no issues.)

--- End quote ---

What kind of reliability issues out of curiousity?

Also possible:
- Remarked GD32F103's or other compatible (forget the name)
- Remarked STM32F103 in a lower grade (ie less flash memory, or some section of the flash was bad), since its not possible to actually tell which device you have unless you trust the silkscreen. AFAIK device ID is the same for quite a few parts. But it seems rare to have this problem.
- Earlier revision (maybe, if it was ever fixed in eratta)
CatalinaWOW:
You also have to understand your user base well.  Those stepper drivers used in 3D printers apparently have a pretty low failure rate.  I am not seeing screams of anguish from users and these are sold in fairly large quantities.  Certainly tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands.  But that application has pretty good control on the environment.

If your customers are likely to short outputs, stall motors, run in extremely dusty or hot or wet environments and otherwise abuse your equipment you will need to spend far more effort on protection, fault tolerance and idiot proofing than goes into the dirt cheap modules.  It still might pay to buy them and then plug them into a protection wrapper.
janoc:

--- Quote from: thm_w on September 24, 2019, 12:23:02 am ---
--- Quote from: janoc on September 22, 2019, 02:30:23 pm ---(e.g. had STM32F103s that worked inside a cheap STLink clone but wouldn't reliably work with custom firmware. A fresh chip bought from RS had no issues.)

--- End quote ---

What kind of reliability issues out of curiousity?


--- End quote ---

It has been a while but I recall the chip had issues with accepting code over SWD (verification failures and what not) and was dead as a dodo when connected to the PC.

Most likely a reject with defective flash where the original firmware has just fit into the good portion of it and mine didn't.
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