Hi Hugen,
Thanks for joining the conversation. I appreciate all of the work that you have put into this design, and for your efforts to turn it into an actual product. Your work seems to have been the trigger that made the NanoVNA so popular this year, and why I now own a NanoVNA. I love it. It¡¯s just what I needed.
I understand the things that you said in your post, but I don¡¯t agree with everything that you said. I do understand your reluctance to release the board files, but eventually that hurts your community more than the cloners. It is greatly appreciated that you share your schematics, but the photos of the PCA on your GitHub page are wrong. It seems that you do this on purpose to misdirect the cloners, but the only people that are really confused by it are the ones who want to support you.
It may have taken the cloners a little while to copy your designs, but it seems that they have finally gotten there. I¡¯ll attach photos. This is what they do, and they are fast at it. In fact, the clone from Amazon was at v3.2, while the official Nooelec board was still v3.1. You say that you could make your PCB better to distinguish, but the performance between the clone and Nooelec board was identical. My point is that the cloners will always eventually catch up. It¡¯s what they do. Trying to misdirect them by not providing accurate photos of your PCAs doesn¡¯t really slow them down.
The people in this group however rely on you to be open with what you are doing so that they can collaborate on the designs with you. That is why many of them are here. That is what makes this group a community.
I would suggest that you try a different tactic than misdirection to fight the cloners. Use authenticity and this community. These are two things the cloners don¡¯t have. I would suggest updating your GitHub page to provide accurate photos of the PCA, remove the complaints about cloning, and then do better marketing. Have people from the group write some articles for RTL-SDR, ARRL, etc. Have people on this group spread the word at Ham meetings, and so on. Focus on the things the cloners can¡¯t copy.
That¡¯s all I have to say. I hope you don¡¯t take offense to my comments.
