DuetWifi clones and support
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Hey All,
I browse these forums often as they not only help in troubleshooting any issues, there is also a wealth of general information here.
Now my question is regarding the Duet Wifi clones out there..
Should owners of these clones be allowed to interact on the official Duet3d forums? From my personal opinion, I say, HELL NO!! We pay a premium for a premium product, and with that comes premium support.
Your thoughts?
Maybe we need to add validation to the forums, so that you need to link your account to a board serial number
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It's a bit of a insult to injury situation though. If you have to expend extra effort to block people from seeking support not only did you not make the sale, now you have to spend to keep them out.
The hardware is open source, so as long as the license is adhered to, other boards can be made, however that explicitly comes with no support or warranty from Duet.
Now is it worth it to ignore people that bought a clone and come here for support? Some people weren't aware they were buying a clone maybe. Or maybe they've bought a clone and liked it and bought the real thing.
I think if you turn these people away entirely you'll lose them as a customer for ever. Whereas if you show them the kind of support you get from buying this product hopefully they will appreciate it and buy a legitimate product from a reseller in the future.
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@Phaedrux said in DuetWifi clones and support:
It's a bit of a insult to injury situation though. If you have to expend extra effort to block people from seeking support not only did you not make the sale, now you have to spend to keep them out.
The hardware is open source, so as long as the license is adhered to, other boards can be made, however that explicitly comes with no support or warranty from Duet.
Now is it worth it to ignore people that bought a clone and come here for support? Some people weren't aware they were buying a clone maybe. Or maybe they've bought a clone and liked it and bought the real thing.
I think if you turn these people away entirely you'll lose them as a customer for ever. Whereas if you show them the kind of support you get from buying this product hopefully they will appreciate it and buy a legitimate product from a reseller in the future.
What he said!I'm a owner of 3 duet2wifi real deal...and I also have a clone so in total I have 4 duet...the clone is for making my tests and stuff...so if the clone will get broke or damaged well I only loose 70euro as suppose of 170euro I pay for original one...
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This forum is owned by Duet and they can chime in directly with their policy; meanwhile, I will point out that they decided long ago to be open. Open far beyond this forum. Open in publishing board schematics and pcb files. Open in publishing the firmware. And open in support of anyone running any implementation of these items.
Also, as a person who contributes a fair amount of support to this community, I would like to be very clear that the open policy is one of the most important reasons I'm here. Were this a "premium support, prove you are an owner" forum... were the source closed... I'd be a minor contributor, or just asking the occasional question.
So, yeah, I'm saying that I am as opposite of the ideas represented by "HELL NO" or "...link to a serial number..." as it is possible to be. Such shenanigans would kill the spirit of this place, and that would be a very sad thing.
TL;DR Be Open.
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Of course, with the user name "inztigator" registered today... I've probably typed way too much already.
Bye, now!
Delta / Kossel printer fanatic
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@Phaedrux said in DuetWifi clones and support:
I think if you turn these people away entirely you'll lose them as a customer for ever. Whereas if you show them the kind of support you get from buying this product hopefully they will appreciate it and buy a legitimate product from a reseller in the future.
My thoughts too!
It is interesting to note that the clones aren't THAT much cheaper than the real thing and I don't know if they throw in connectors or if you are on your own. In any case, the savings of a clone aren't really worth it. Hopefully people will realize that more true value is had with the real thing in the case of Duet.
I confess that I buy a LOT of clone stuff. Sometimes I fall flat on my face but generally I am well ahead. All those clone things are bought with the full knowledge of no support and a possibility of inferior product but when you are paying 3 times the price for the real thing vs the clone then you just have to wonder. With the Duet it was maybe 20% difference (guess) - not substantial enough of a difference plus I get support (which is actually amazing support thanks to the community here). On top of that I know that if I support the real thing chances are much higher that the real thing will thrive and stick around (mind you, I have also fallen flat on my face with that theory)
To sum it up, I feel good about having bought the real thing!!! -
@Danal Must be another "inztigator" as I did not register today
My post was not meant to get anyone to wind up their undergarments
I was curious what others thought about it. I just find it annoying at the number of posts on Facebook where a clone Duet has been used and the Duet name is thrown around like it was the cause of the cheap components usually found on these boards.Bye, now!
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Initially I purchased a clone duet wifi for £100. I suffered with it for nearly 12 months, putting up with real bad connection issues and random sd card reader failures.
I then went on to purchase a genuine Duet Ethernet and had no issues whatsoever.
The professional quality, warranty and after sales service that comes with the genuine boards has now inspired me to purchase a Duet 3.I am unwrapping it tomorrow as an xmas present from my wife!
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I think we can see from the forum history that there is an established if not explicit policy to help people with RRF questions regardless of whether they "provably" have a genuine board (up to and including support for the unofficial LPC1768 port), whereas hardware specific support often comes with the caveat that "if you have a board manufactured by duet, get in touch with your authorized reseller".
Considering others in the 3d printing industry recently went so far as to add a hardware fuse to their custom 3d printer control board, I'm happy to contribute to the open community here. Arguably the price is a bit of a preselector for who is around here, but then again we have the LPC port here so it's not an absolute gatekeeper.
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@chas2706 said in DuetWifi clones and support:
I am unwrapping it tomorrow as an xmas present from my wife!
ssssh its supposed to be a surprise for you.
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@inztigator said in DuetWifi clones and support:
@Danal Must be another "inztigator" as I did not register today
My mistake. @inztigator joined the forum May 1 2019. Apologies for the inaccuracy.
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@inztigator said in DuetWifi clones and support:
Should owners of these clones be allowed to interact on the official Duet3d forums? From my personal opinion, I say, HELL NO!! We pay a premium for a premium product, and with that comes premium support.
I can share that for e.g. smoothieboard was my favorite 3d printer electronic for a long time, I have few original boards and I have over 10 boards that I designed and made by myself, so not really clone from PRC but DIY stuff and they never had issue with that and supported me every time I had issues/questions .. one of the major reasons I love smoothieboard is smoothieware that's kinda "my way of embedded development" .. good or bad it suits me and I like it for e.g. way more than RRF coding style (not saying one is better than other, it's just personal preference) .. but, what pushed me off from smoothieware/smoothieboard to look further (replicape, klipper and finally duet) is the "hell no" attitude towards ppl with PRC clones, while they are ok with DIY, for some reason they have serious issues with for e.g. MKS clones (I got one to see what the fuss is about, it is shitty made and unreliable ... but..) and I'm sure I'm not the only one, a tonn of ppl got repelled from the smoothie 'cause of that guard against clones, and "go ask those that sold you the board for help" attitude (now all those MKS clones run marlin 2.0 instead of smoothieware and users could not care less, and smoothie is getting to be less and less relevant factor in 3d printing world)..
as for the duet clones, it really depends on where you live, in the backwater country like mine for e.g. where ppl work for 200-300$ a month difference in price of 50$ can be a big deal, especially for school kids / students .. so a "small change in price" can be a big deal... other than that, shipping from PRC goes up to 5-6$, shipping from any of the sellers of original boards goes up to 100$ to these backwater countries .. so for e.g. when I was getting my duet the original from UK was 2.5 times more expensive!! I got me a PRC clone
.. I have two duet2eth, first one I got original, second one no one with decent shipping prices had original on stock, they all had wifi version, no eth, so I got one from PRC, they had it on stock.. (and tbh, I was really surprised the quality of the PRC clone was indistinguishable from original apart from crimp pins being thin PRC stuff compared to original being nicer thicker easier to crimp)so as @danal said, if the "get the f. out of here you cheap PRC clone user" attitude existed here I'm sure the user base would not be nearly as big ... and the existing users would not be happier for that...
look at the other end of the spectrum, a good example is simplify3d, software for $$$ in the sea of FOSS solutions... check out their forum, they censure what they don't like, delete comments, change comments, limit access, etc, etc.. and what's the result, I have not seen a positive post in that forum (not counting s3d employees and their fake accounts) for years... I'm pretty sure the mouth2mouth advertising that should be the main source of sales for them is close to zero .. now compare this to an open, kind, helpful, healthy community like duet's where even those who hold only a clone (for whatever reason) will encourage the sale of originals
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@smece said in DuetWifi clones and support:
(and tbh, I was really surprised the quality of the PRC clone was indistinguishable from original apart from crimp pins being thin PRC stuff compared to original being nicer thicker easier to crimp)
as fair as i understand, the prc clones skimp on the copper in the pcb for thermal transfer. something that you can not see by eye.
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@Veti said in DuetWifi clones and support:
@smece said in DuetWifi clones and support:
(and tbh, I was really surprised the quality of the PRC clone was indistinguishable from original apart from crimp pins being thin PRC stuff compared to original being nicer thicker easier to crimp)
as fair as i understand, the prc clones skimp on the copper in the pcb for thermal transfer. something that you can not see by eye.
yes it is very possible the PRC pcb is 1oz, I doubt that original is more than 2oz (cause 3oz requires 10mil clearance and that's too much for both the mcu and the drivers) so not a huge difference .. the bigger issue might be the metalization of thermal vias under the drivers but I'm making PCB's in PRC factories for 20+ years and never had issue with that...
I'm more afraid they use sub-quality parts, e.g. fet's can be PRC knockoffs or mcu can be second hand.. but looking at the price of the clone, if they were skimping much the price would be much lower, these are fairly expensive clones and we know PRC sellers have puny margins. for e.g. me doing soldering myself, acquiring parts using a huge discount I have at farnell / digikey and making PCB in PRC factory cost me approx the price of the PRC clone..
anyhow I'm always encouraging ppl to buy original, there's always enough small details PRC "engineers" don't understand and do wrong + if you really want the product to thrive and progress you need to support it
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What an offence seriously?!?!? Rich people can afford Without thinking, middle level buys what affordable and homeless has nothing to loose....
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@Veti said in DuetWifi clones and support:
the prc clones skimp on the copper in the pcb for thermal transfer. something that you can not see by eye
most if not all do 35um/1oz, without a side by side comparison its tough to spot by eye; relatively easy to measure with a micrometer as the corners with screw holes are bare FR4 giving you a reference to measure the copper thickness.
but yeah, the (for the most part*) open and welcoming community is a big pluss for duet, and not supporting cloned hardware isn't a big deal as most of the support is for the open firmware anyway, which almost doesn't care if you go DIY/LPC/whatnot.
*)I'm not quite the saint some of you are, and I hope you know who you are<3
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@inztigator said in DuetWifi clones and support:
Now my question is regarding the Duet Wifi clones out there..
Are you asking about supporting Duet HARDWARE or supporting RepRap FIRMWARE? Your comment refers to hardware yet implies firmware. Its kind of like the commenting on religion and ethnicity. One does not mutually exclude, or include the other.
I do run the LPC port on one of my printers. I also own 2 Duet 2 boards and Duex expansion boards and 2 PanelDues- by your logic, have I 'spent enough' to qualify for support to ask about the LPC installation?
I didn't port the LPC fork. I just use it. dc42 has frequently contributed to the discussion and supported and championed the effort overall. And why shouldn't he- it spreads the gospel of RRF. He offered support on the IR Sensor board when I was trying to get it working on Marlin.
People will ask me if the LPC port is 'as good as a Duet board'. I always tell them that its worth consideration as an alternative to Smoothie and Marlin. If you want a real Duet board but don't want to spend a lot of money, then get a Maestro or look for used Duet board.
There is rumor as well that there other ports in the works by others that will provide RRF 2 and 3 to more platforms.
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I suppose its more targeted at the hardware side of things. Seeing some of these clone boards melt down and then people assuming it was an original Duet board is where things get sketchy, but clearly not something that is easily resolved due to the chinese way of doing things as cheap as possible.
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@ViralTinker said in DuetWifi clones and support:
What an offence seriously?!?!? Rich people can afford Without thinking, middle level buys what affordable and homeless has nothing to loose....
OK
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@inztigator said in DuetWifi clones and support:
and then people assuming it was an original Duet board
isn't that more a problem with people assuming things than Duet and the clone wars? i for one would be looking at wiring before any potential board/clone issues if something melted. there are those among us who will run mains voltage through an tv aerial cable as part of a fixed installation..
