To all china gear developers (My manifesto)

[artag]

My bugbear is the boards made, apparently in their millions, and copied by multiple manufacturers, with errors. And producing no documentation AT ALL!

One example is the 'blue pill' board, which is widely documented as normally being fitted with the wrong value pullup resistoor on USB. Where did they copy that from, and why doesn't anyone correct it ?

I got some TTL-RS422 adapters which were great .. except they didn't have a ground ref terminal. Which is fine on a fully isolated board but silly on one with non-isolated buffers.

It seems as though these designs are not made as general-purpose devices even though they're sold as that : they're designed for some specific job and then copied without any thought at all as to whether they could be made better (and sell more!).

[artag]

I'm very encouraged, though, by the recent trend to document boards by putting up a github project. Looks like some manufacturers are finally getting the idea of open source hardware and appreciating that letting other people improve their software for free is a benefit.

In fact, I think I've seen this primarily from chinese vendors : in other cases, the public software is more likely to be reverse-engineered (unless it was explicitly created as an open source project, but those rarely seem able to offer the low cost hardware that the chinese produce - probably because they start with the assumption of making only development production volumes).

[bd139]

Yes the good ones seem to open source a lot of their stuff. Best one I've seen and this influenced the purchase decision was the Ender 3 printer from creality:

https://github.com/Creality3DPrinting/Ender-3

Whole thing is open source end to end.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

You have to realize that those blue pills (there's dozens of similar but different ones) are all made by 13 years old chineses at home while their parents make Rigols, Micsigs and Xiaomis at work.

Our children in the meantime are uploading photos to facebook or designing trains pushed by pistons.

[bd139]

Spot on. That's exactly how it is. And it's depressingly shite.

[cliffyk]

Some years ago I bought an Asian made tank bag for a bike, the manual stated (quite accurately actually) that "It will bring comfort and convenience on your life, unlike the uncertainty of missing as is common with rear mounted bags."

[ResistorRob]

Bonjour anyone have the small 7 function red DVM from Harbour Freight?


https://www.harborfreight.com/7-function-digital-multimeter-63759.html

Only $6.50, last Summer free On coupon if you bought other things.

Very well designed and easy to use, I got 7, and its my favorite for general use, or travel/jobsite

Accuracy is ~ 0.5%.

Just the ramblings of a retired EE

Jon

I have about 50 of them. I hand them out to my friends whenever they want to borrow one of my real multimeters. Harbor Freight use to have that coupon with no purchase necessary, so I would stop in and grab one whenever I drove by. I had tons of those LED hanging flashlights in the blue cases. I actually gave them all away and don't even have one left for myself, lol. I also went through about 100 free batteries I got there on account of they don't last very long :-)

I was actually tempted to give away a few of the meters on Halloween to any trick or treaters in nerdy costumes 

[I wanted a rude username]

After all, even americans and australians don't seem interested in learning to speak / write properly   

At least the schools teach us to capitalise proper nouns. 

[Gandalf_Sr]

After all, even americans and australians don't seem interested in learning to speak / write properly   

At least the schools teach us to capitalise proper nouns. 

Agreed,

A quote from Churchill comes to mind... This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.

[Gregg]

A quote from Churchill comes to mind... This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.

Of course, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.   

[fourfathom]

A quote from Churchill comes to mind... This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.

Of course, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.   

Excuse me, but where's the restroom at?

[001]

And direct drive is great thing: one button -- one function
No menu clickers!

[Old Printer]

A quote from Churchill comes to mind... This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.

Of course, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.   

Excuse me, but where's the restroom at?

Over yonder way... I reckon 

[fourfathom]

I mis-remembered the joke.  Here it is:

A Texan is visiting a friend at Harvard, and they agree to meet at the library. He's a bit lost, so he stops a passing student. Texan: "'Scuse me, could you tell me where the library's at?" Student: "Around here, we don't end our sentences with prepositions." Texan: "All right, could you tell me where the library's at, asshole?"

[001]

Is any china maker in this tread?

[ebclr]

If you wanna make a china developers manifesto, the minimum, thing you can do is make the manifesto in Chinese, Very few China developers can barely understand English. 

[001]

Very few China developers can barely understand English.

I`m not englishman too

[001]

so actual 

[eurofox]

Very few China developers can barely understand English.

I`m not englishman too

Sure from Antarctica ..... LOL

[bingo600]

Very few China developers can barely understand English.

I`m not englishman too

Sure from Antarctica ..... LOL

I didn`t read china manuals at all
And I never seen albanian manual in china parcel too

Maybe the above is a give away ... 

/Bingo