[lug] decoding weather data via radio Was: Time sync w/GPS or radio

Nate Duehr nate at natetech.com
Mon May 12 15:20:52 MDT 2008


Bear Giles wrote:
> Nate Duehr wrote:
>> Unless... the magic of Google shows you where someone else has already 
>> done all of that work and published it.  Or if Oregon is an open 
>> company about such proprietary things as their little weather 
>> stations.  Most companies making products that are priced anywhere 
>> from 3x to 10x the worth of the components (most Oregon Scientific 
>> circuit boards are pretty simple) aren't going to make information 
>> easily available about how to intercept their protocol... they'd 
>> rather sell you another receiver, and another for the other room, and 
>> another for the garage... you get the idea.

> I've never fully understood that mindset.  The components might be 
> cheap, but relatively few people have the technical expertise to produce 
> the hardware, and fewer still have the time and interest.  For the 
> occasional person who would abuse the information and go into 
> competition, there -are- legal remedies. (E.g., publish the protocol so 
> they can't easily claim they reverse-engineered it in a clean room, but 
> do so under a non-commercial use without prior authorization license.  
> You're probably better off than if they reverse engineered it and claim 
> that all trade secrets have been breached and no longer offer legal 
> protection.  But IANAL and all that.)
> 
> You might still lose a few sales to hobbyists, but will probably gain 
> far more from people buying your product precisely because they can tie 
> it into their computers.  They may not even have plans to do so, but a 
> lot of people may/will find that a sufficient reason to choose one 
> product over another.

You actually could lose the entire company to copy-cat products.  Many 
of these manufacturers actually have the hardware assembled/built in 
China, and the code is loaded into the microcontrollers from an image 
file, that would have to be painstakingly reverse-engineered by someone 
to figure it out.  Access to that final step is usually tightly controlled.

Copy-cats abound in cheap board fabrication businesses overseas... and 
only the biggest ones with "good reputations to maintain" actively fight 
this process.  But employees still walk out with silkscreen/CAD info 
about the boards and if they can get their hands on a chip that's been 
programmed, that walks out the door, too.

It's a lot more complex than just the relationship with the customer 
base for these small U.S. manufacturers of electronics.  Asia (once they 
know how the device works, or they simply copy the entire thing whole, 
knowing they can sell plenty of them before the International law suit 
can even get started...) can produce these things cheaper and faster 
than we can, due to lower pay and quality of living for their workforce. 
  Many copies are not only functionally the same, but even logos are 
copied, etc.  "Riding on the good name" of the original company.

(See recent news about counterfeit Cisco routers and switches making it 
all the way into some U.S. Federal Government locations, for example.)

Some companies even go so far as setting up Chinese divisions that can 
make and sell virtually the same product as in the U.S. for half the 
price... maybe with enough cosmetic "tweaks" so they don't look the 
same, so they can get a feel if heavy "grey market" activity starts up 
to bring in the cheap Asian versions.  The "subsidiary" is allowed to 
market/sell into certain Asian markets only.  (Disclaimer: My own 
employer included.)  That way, they can at least that way they can 
maintain SOME form of quality control and still get some revenue on the 
books instead of all of Asia just copying the things and never making a 
cent on their work.

Nate



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