Jaycar blatant ripoff!!!!

Thanks for that link Don. I've rung and spoken to Jaycar and the guy told me they've been flooded with complaints and links about their apparent theft of intellectual property and their marketing people are sorting out a response. Perhaps there's another side to the story but I bet I'm not going to like Jaycar's version.

Cheers Bruce.

That they would produce a similar kit is understandable but to copy the box and documentation so blatantly is disgraceful in my view.

I noticed it has been brought up on the EEVblog forums. A video from Dave would surely give plenty of world wide exposure to this blatant rip off.

I admit I haven't watched the video, but looking at the two product pages linked in the description, I can't see what the fuss is about.

Jaycar packages an equivalent kit to Freetronics; with their own colour and branding so I don't see how consumers would mistake it for a Freetronics product. I hardly think Freetronics would have patented their kit design, so what's the problem?

The Freetronics Arduino (and possibly the Jaycar one as well) is only an unofficial copy of the Open-Source Arduino design, so I don't understand why there would be any sense of loyalty to them in any case.

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** Watch the video - it explains things.

** This is not a consumer "rip-off" but an imitation of a existing product including packaging and documentation. ** It's a copyright issue - not a patent breach.

Jaycar have had the Freetronics kit cloned by the Chinese and are selling it using a brand they own.

The minor copyright infringement and the money involved does not justify legal action.

.... Phil

It's clear that they've copied the packaging design and the instruction book, not just developed their own.

Depending on the terms of the open-source licence used by Freetronics, that may, or may not, be a breach of copyright, since open-source is not the same as public domain.

Sylvia.

OK, it did. It also highlighted the quite nice resistor colour chart that Jaycar ripped off. That page will be handy to keep on my computer.

OK, though anyone who's seen an ALDI store will understand that such practice is hardly unusual.

Yes the project guide has clearly been copied, at least with some images. I doubt if the packaging would qualify as a copyright breach, he says himself that there are differences and that they never had the design files.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with them copying the overall kit design, besides it being a lazy. There's nothing revolutionary about it (as I say, if there were they should have patented it). However Jaycar should have been honest enough to develop their own project guide, especially as they no doubt have the resources to do so.

Unfortunately.

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As the video explains this seems to be routine for Jaycar. The only thing I can do about it is to boycott Jaycar. Is there a comparable shop in Melbourne's Eastern suburbs?

Hardly any few and far between nowadays.

I knew I'd seen a similar resistor colour chart before somewhere:

That photo is from the data section of the Dick Smith catalogues from the '90's and 2000's and a full size colour one was sold cat. no. B-1000

A few years ago I printed off one from the 'net that also showed the temperature coefficient colours for 6-band resistors. Unfortunately I lost the file, it's probably still online somewhere...

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Easy enough to remember the code. From my apprentice days -

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Black Brown Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Violet Gray White Bye bye Rosie Off You Go to Birmingham Via Great Western Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Virgins Go Without

There are many versions of that last one. :)

Unfortunately the more fickle memories among us can need some reassurance that 8 was Grey, not Green, and 6 was Blue, not Brown.

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Though I'm finding it less useful to know these days, because the 1% resistors I buy seem to be coded with various shades of brown on a blue background. I used to be confident that I could correctly read the code, but now I have to check every one with a multimeter.

Sylvia.

Yes, I've run across a few truely impossible ones. Lighting can be important though, florescent lights don't put out the complete colour spectrum, which can be the cause of colour code issues.

Holding it up next to a window, or taking it as a potentially well needed excuse for a breath of fresh air, can be useful. Though I find that once the doubt has been planted, I usually confirm with the DMM afterwards anyway.

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Rather than store every value in a separate draw (which would take too much room), I long ago decided to store them according to the first two digits (so 27, 270, 2K7 etc. go in the same draw). That means that I only have to look at the multiplier band to locate the one I want. It used to work fine.

But I find that now I cannot reliably distinguish brown from red, red from orange, orange from yellow, which means that I'm at risk of getting a resistor that's an order of magnitude out, and often enough the multimeter confirms that. It's a right pain.

Sylvia.

Seconded. I used to use them often before I knew better but now they are a very last resort for time-sensitive items that need to over-rule prefernces.

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Shaun. 

"Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy  
little classification in the DSM*." 
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1) 
(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

It's the only *local* option here but I may do a lot more mail order in the future and give Jaycar a big miss.

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Xeno 

First they ignore you, 
Then they ridicule you, 
Then they fight you, 
Then you win. 

Mahatma Ghandi

Likewise, there is nowhere else I can buy locally. I've started buying mixed packs of components (as well as selected items) from AliExpress so I'm less likely to need to go to Jaycar for anything at all.

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Shaun. 

"Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy  
little classification in the DSM*." 
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1) 
(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

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I call shenanigans on all theistic religions