4 inch display SAA-2N NanoVNA V2 3GHz with N-type

[aristarchus]

As I said OwO, let your product speak for you.

You did took parts from the earlier designs, you did reused modified firmware and software and most of all, you did came in a market where others there before you paved the way and taking R&D costs.
That is not bad, it always happen, just make your product a quality one as Hugen did.

[OwO]

You mention quality. The reason I was irritated at first was because people come to our support forum to complain about defective devices, and it turns out they were hugen's devices:
https://groups.io/g/NanoVNA-V2/topic/v2_will_not_power_on/75511802?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,0,75511802
https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/topic/nanovna_v2_won_t_turn_on/75764552?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,20,75764552
youtube.com/watch?v=4Y1x43vbVgA

He's sold about the same amount of V2 devices as HCXQS has, and there are zero reports of defective devices from HCXQS in the wild compared to 3 for hugen, most likely because HCXQS generally resolves all customer disputes and will replace defective devices. Others seem to let their customers deal with troubleshooting and fixing devices themselves.
This crap drags down the reputation of V2 devices as a whole, and sometimes we have to deal with the extra support burden as well. HCXQS support replied in that thread offering to replace the device if it is genuine, but what do they get? attacked for bringing up the subject of clones vs original.

It's not the clones that's killing open source hardware. It's the community and a few bad actors.

[hwalker]

About all you can do is keep iterating and improving on the hardware design, as you seem to be.  Cloners could end up with excess stock of an older design when the new one comes out, killing their magins.  The Arduino brand is a "good" example of how this can/does work with open source hardware, although they've made some rather bizzare missteps along the way.  What happened with Arduino clones has possibly hurt resellers as much as anyone.

You are right, that is what we are trying to do now with the upcoming V2-N (now renamed to V2 Plus to avoid confusion) that will increase sweep rate and lower noise. We will end up offering battery + 3D enclosure like everyone else. At this point we and our client are both doing fine, but we need to think of a better way to avoid new versions just getting cloned immediately. MiniVNA seems to do just fine even with clones allegedly performing better than official devices, I wonder how they pull that off.

  The MiniVNA is a commercial device, so like the Agilent and National Instrument USB-GPIB interfaces that have been cloned by Asian manufacturers, most honest people and businesses will not purchase an illegal device - so sells are still generated from those sources.

  The situation is not the same with open source, if someone manufacture's an open source design you cannot claim they are doing anything illegal so fewer people have qualms about purchasing a cloned device if the performance meets their requirements. 

   You could do like the tinySA and the new NanoVNA-F models and only release the firmware open-source to slow down the cloning until you earned a return on your investment. The open source model probably only works well for individuals who are looking to share their designs and for personal recognition.  For someone anticipating selling their project to make a profit the model doesn't make sense.  In that case I would choose another vehicle where I retained all rights.

  I don't know about your claims against hugen, I guess thats between you and him.  I do know that he asked you on the NanoVNA groups.io forum if it was OK to sell a SAA-2 product based on your open source design and you told him to go for it.  In the same message he asked who should he contact regarding royalty payments and you did not ask for any.  I also know you accused a well respected US seller of shady business practices over an honest mistake, instead of first contacting them and asking them to correct the mistake - which they later did of their on accord.  There are always two sides to a story.

[OwO]

It should be pretty obvious to you why we are reluctant to enter into any cooperation agreement with him. If things like faking order traffic and anticompetitive behavior are not beyond him, what's to say he'll report the correct royalty amounts? It's one thing to manufacture and sell someone else's open source design, it's another to try to put the original developers under so you can profiteer later.

One of the developers you mentioned: I do not want to call them out, but their current model is to violate the GPL and release binary-only firmware, doctored in some way to run only on official devices. It would be fair game if they developed the firmware from scratch.

[OwO]

Anyway I'm not telling you to only buy official devices, and I'm not trying to stop clones' sales in some way. I'm simply asking the community to get the narrative straight, and not to deceive users about who is credited with V2 design. OwOComm, HCXQS, edy555, and countless other contributors like DiSlord all deserve credit, but please do not credit a clone manufacturer with the design.

[aristarchus]

@OwO,

I do not think that anyone did that.
I have not seen any post either here or in the nanovna groups that someone appart from edy555 has any credit for original design, it is mentioned in the githubs too though.
Everybody so far with whatever changes did always mention edy555 for credit.

Only you keep insisting that you have something like a 'modified original design' and everybody else is a cloner.
Just try to make your products (which are derivatives of edy555's work and others who followed him) with as good quality as Hugen did, that is all at least I am saying.

[hwalker]

Anyway I'm not telling you to only buy official devices, and I'm not trying to stop clones' sales in some way. I'm simply asking the community to get the narrative straight, and not to deceive users about who is credited with V2 design. OwOComm, HCXQS, edy555, and countless other contributors like DiSlord all deserve credit, but please do not credit a clone manufacturer with the design.

Gabriel,
  I looked at aristarchus's original post and see that he only directs reader's to hugen's AliExpress store which say's:

 "3GHz vector network analyzer, designed by OwOComm, under the LGPL license agreement, it is completely manufactured according to the v2_2 files issued by OwOComm at https://github.com/nanovna/S-A-A Development Department, in line with the original technical specifications designed by OwOComm."

That doesn't sound like a deception about who the design belongs to.  Its more of a deception that when hugen asked for your permission to manufacture a V2 based on your open source project and you gave your OK, for you now to turn around and say he stole your design.

You are a terrific designer but your marketing leaves something to be desired.  You will lose respect if you continue to tear down and bad mouth your competition instead of just continuing to develop superior products that keep you ahead of the crowd.

Other manufactures are able to include batteries in their products because they perform the necessary MDS testing to do so.  They don't tell half truths about not being able to include a battery because of safety reasons.

Hugen has two products that use 4" displays with a 3rd in development  for the tinySA project.  Its no wonder that he has purchased a large stock to support those products.

You back up your claim that he is producing "crap" with a post from a user on nanovna groups.io who decided to repair his own unit rather than ask hugen for a replacement.  That does not infer hugen would not have rendered customer support if asked.  On the contrary if you looked at other posts on groups.io where customers had problems with the NanoVNA-H4 casing, hugen was quick to address the problem to each customer's satisfaction.

I think Tindie was not the ideal choice for distributing your design.  At one point they threatened to no longer sell overseas because of negative reviews.  Think how many sells that probably cost you.  Your V2 design is innovative, but whoever directs the marketing dropped the ball.  As much thought that was put into the design should also have been put into the packaging.  If you set the V2 side by side with current 3.2" V2 or the recent releases by hugen, the Tindie offering is the one that looks like a clone in comparison. You have no distinctive logos or labeling that let buyers identify the product.   Its no wonder some buyers are confused when making a purchase.

If you believe hugen is manipulating statistics on Alibaba unfairly then why not complain to them?  In an open forum like this it just sounds like griping.

Hopefully the marketing issues will be corrected in your upcoming releases. The community as a whole always wishes you well.  Its probably time to leave the open source experiment behind.  Open source hardware should be like open source software and not used as a vehicle for a commercial venture.  Just my humble opinion.

[OwO]

Agree, we will probably close source future designs (for a limited time). Enough debating for now, let's leave the issue to rest.

[cdev]

I've been reading up on low cost VNAs generally, and its possible to trace their development- basically they all build on each other's previous work. All technology is like that now.

Maybe the open source model is the correct one? I certainly think it is better than the all closed model. Microprocessors now make it possible to do so much more with less.

The story of the mcHF QRP transceiver is particularly challenging to figure out.

Designed in the UK by a British ham starting around 2012 or so, now a mature product. Now being widely copied by (Chinese?) manufacturers. (Its quite overpriced I suspect, if you buy it from them.)  I'd rather build it myself!

 What do people think about that? I think an open hardware platform, if its acknowledged to be open, I dont have any problem with manufacturers competing to make parts of it better. As long as they contribute improvements back into the source.

[hwalker]

Agree, we will probably close source future designs (for a limited time). Enough debating for now, let's leave the issue to rest.

Sounds like a plan to me Gabriel.  Whatever disagreements we may have I truly respect your hardware and firmware design skills.  Its a very rare skill set  for one person to have.  I hope OwOComm appreciates your contributions.  The rest of us certainly do.

[eb4fbz]

...
In the NanoVNA area, everybody knows that edy555, cho45 and hugen79 are the pioneers, edy555 has the original idea active since 2016. Everybody is reusing with modifications their initial concept, the opensource github firmware, methodology, PC applications and PC to device comunication protocol.
...

Yes... and nanoVNA architecture was copied from 2007 DG8SAQ VNWA (Manufactured by SDR-Kits). Just changed two DDS with the Si5351, but the reflection bridge and downconverter components are a direct copy.

[cdev]

I was reading an old article in QEX a few days ago about it and I noticed that the older unrelated  "NanoVNA" family used similar (widely available) compoenents.

Yes... and nanoVNA architecture was copied from 2007 DG8SAQ VNWA (Manufactured by SDR-Kits). Just changed two DDS with the Si5351, but the reflection bridge and downconverter components are a direct copy.

[aristarchus]

Well,  with this VNWA cost nowadays from £339.00 to £564.00, I'm really very happy that some eastern guys manage to have a similar product from 30 to 70 bucks having additional an LCD.
That looks like a miracle to me.

[cdev]

Me too, I very much agree.

Well,  with this VNWA cost nowadays from £339.00 to £564.00, I'm really very happy that some eastern guys manage to have a similar product from 30 to 70 bucks having additional an LCD.
That looks like a miracle to me.

[eb4fbz]

Well,  with this VNWA cost nowadays from £339.00 to £564.00, I'm really very happy that some eastern guys manage to have a similar product from 30 to 70 bucks having additional an LCD.
That looks like a miracle to me.

Oh, and this is not unfair? VNWA is not an open design, it's novel architecture was published at QEX, but never for commercial use . VNWA3 schematics are not even published to avoid chinese ripoffs, it's a commercial design they have copied, and you are talking about fairness and chinese pioneers 

[aristarchus]

@eb4fbz
I could not care less when overpriced closed source products that are more than a decade old get phased away.

From what I know, those eastern NanoVNA guys wrote their own firmware, software, did their own boards, added great new features and delivered a real wonder at cheap prices for everybody.
You say that they took some component from an earlier decade long design, so what! everybody is doing that. You say that Tek, keysight, rigol, siglent, lecroy, etc they do not do it themselves ? 

If you ask me who has offered more and helped us better then I say those eastern guys.

[galileo]

He got "attacked" because he pushed FUD and his responses showed no self reflection. I was (temporary) banned for pointing out
uncontroversial facts about GPL. Most people want you and consequently them to succeed and you did a fairly good job of mitigating the
damage but they need to work on their PR and business plans. I have zero confidence in buying from them: If they ban people on a public
forum what can I expect in a support email?

This crap drags down the reputation of V2 devices as a whole, and sometimes we have to deal with the extra support burden as well. HCXQS support replied in that thread offering to replace the device if it is genuine, but what do they get? attacked for bringing up the subject of clones vs original.

[galileo]

Gabriel did not do that, you on the other hand claimed that she ripped of edy555 which is not true and should be
fairly self evident from the design. Even the design process has been quite open, Gabriel discussed it on the NanoVNA group
while it was still in alpha stage.
Don't muddy the waters, it is already bad enough with all the confusion.

Only you keep insisting that you have something like a 'modified original design' and everybody else is a cloner.
Just try to make your products (which are derivatives of edy555's work and others who followed him) with as good quality as Hugen did, that is all at least I am saying.

[Kibabalu]

Apart the 'originator' and 'beneficiary' discussion, does somebody already collect experience withe the device resp. the whole kit?

[KE5FX]

Apart the 'originator' and 'beneficiary' discussion, does somebody already collect experience withe the device resp. the whole kit?

I received the SAA-2N package from the Zeenko store on Ali Express today.  After messing with it for an hour or so, I want to believe that this is some kind of obscure exercise in market manipulation or dumping, sold at a small fraction of cost.  Because if it's not... wow.  Pack up the tent, they win.

I don't have time to write a long-winded review, and I don't know/care anything about the politics or the debate regarding who ripped off what, but: get one.  It performs amazingly well all the way to 3 GHz, even without calibration.   Basically 80% of a FieldFox N9912A VNA at less than 1% of the price.

[G0MJW]

It's a great design. Does anyone know if the 4" display and metal case is available as an upgrade? I already have the SMA version. I won't buy a complete new unit as I will wait for the new improved version. Even better a 7" display..

If not perhaps it's possible to design one to use a readily available enclosure like a Hammond extruded or diecast box 1455 or 1590 series.

Mike

[switchabl]

If you add a metal case, be sure to check if it still meets the performance specifications with the case. There is a real chance it will degrade the port isolation unless you also add some RF absorber material to deal with reflections. Has anyone tested how the 2N version does in that regard?

[KE5FX]

If you add a metal case, be sure to check if it still meets the performance specifications with the case. There is a real chance it will degrade the port isolation unless you also add some RF absorber material to deal with reflections. Has anyone tested how the 2N version does in that regard?

On this one, crosstalk at 3 GHz is about -55 dB uncalibrated or about -60 dB when calibrated.  I haven't taken it apart yet but I'd be surprised if the housing is responsible for much of that. 

Edit: added photo with calibration enabled:



In any case, if -60 dB at 3 GHz isn't enough for you, you should probably spend more than $70 on your network analyzer. 

[analogRF]

Unfortunately, in eevblog so far we see only OwO posting and this person's opinion.
Regardless, I guess Hugen 'speaks' with the quality and completeness of his products.
BTW, it is totally unfair IMHO, when OwO is trying to show as an original idea product and everyone else is a cloner.
In the NanoVNA area, everybody knows that edy555, cho45 and hugen79 are the pioneers, edy555 has the original idea active since 2016. Everybody is reusing with modifications their initial concept, the opensource github firmware, methodology, PC applications and PC to device comunication protocol.
I completely understand, although not my liking, why a newcomer in 2020 like OwO wants to twist that, it is ..good business practice   

In any case, after starting working in my life, now I'm in my fifth decade in business and markets, I've seen enough and witnessed enough to have my own opinion on who is honest and who tries to deceive in a particular situation.

For you OwO, I do not know who HCXQS is or who you are or what business relationship you have and to be honest I'm not interested to read it in a forum post where everyone writes whatever without proof. If your products are good then they will 'speak' about you.
I do like the idea that nowadays devices are insanely cheap and Hugen's got an excellent packaging. This packaging is where you need to focus. Just dont give half finished gizmos, pay attention to detail and quality like Hugen does.
Then your product will shine and stand out. Its up to you.


Aristarchus.

you should first study what the original edy555 design was and what the original SAA-2 was (designed by OwO) before making these comments...first gain some knowledge about the internals of these devices

[switchabl]

On this one, crosstalk at 3 GHz is about -55 dB uncalibrated or about -60 dB when calibrated.  I haven't taken it apart yet but I'd be surprised if the housing is responsible for much of that. 

That may be mostly noise floor and not leakage. But looks maybe a bit worse than mine.

Here is a measurement with the 2.8'' SMA tindie version, both ports terminated into 50ohms, 100 measurements averaged. SOLT calibration, but no isolation correction.
[And the same with a short at port 1 to check for leakage from the reflection path (doesn't seem to be much of an issue).]

Note that I still can't really resolve leakage below 1.5GHz even with 100 averages. Considering the low-cost construction this is really impressive. It also means that there is potential for improving the dynamic range significantly by decreasing the noise floor (which is promised for the upcoming version).