I haven't even used an "official" Arduino; all of mine are "clones", Nano's and Uno's. But it should be noted that Arduino was only ever just the spec, the design and everything was all public.

 

I'm interested in this topic -fake MCU's -I am wary of them but can only barely imagine that this would be a profitable pursuit. What controller was supposed to have been faked?

 

China has a long history of building counterfeits. The Arduino was a popular counterfeit but since it was open-source the fakes became clones. From the video, apparently the Atmel chips were being generically and poorly made and stamped Atmel. I recently saw an article about Louis Vitton counterfeits. The real bags have an RF ID chip in the frame. Now the fakes from china also have a chip, making counterfeit ID more difficult. If there is a popular name brand item in the market with a large consumer base, china has no compunction not to cash in. Doesn't matter what it is. Back in the 80s china was caught counterfeiting Grade 8 bolts. These are the highest grade of steel bolts and are used for structural steel high rise buildings (among many other uses). These bolts were being sold on the open market and went into many of the tall buildings under construction at the time. And when tested did not even come close to the Grade 8 specification. China was making any grade of steel bolts and head stamping them with the Grade 8 distinctive marking. No regard for safety or quality, simply selling a cheaply made product to a highly lucrative market for greater profit by adding a false ID to it.

 

I'm interested in this topic -fake MCU's -I am wary of them but can only barely imagine that this would be a profitable pursuit. What controller was supposed to have been faked?

There are family "businesses" that salvage components from scrapped electronic assemblies. They'll even salvage SMT caps that sell for less than half a cent each. When you can live on a few dollars a day, pennies matter.

I have an Arduino clone from Ali Express that appears to have weak outputs. I was trying to do a cheap and quick 5 or 6 digit counter using an HP LED display from a calculator. I spent a fair amount of time scratching my head when it didn't work. Then I found that the outputs couldn't sink/source even a few mA so I put putt some inverters or buffers on the outputs. I've been meaning to do some testing, but haven't gotten around to it.

The microcontroller is marked Atmel MEGA328P. No clue about how manufactured the board.

 

I'm interested in this topic -fake MCU's -I am wary of them but can only barely imagine that this would be a profitable pursuit. What controller was supposed to have been faked?

Certainly profitable if you can produce many Arduino-type boards for cheap and sell them for a few dollars, beating out all other competition. A couple years ago I bought what I thought was an "official" Arduino on eBay. Turned out to be a fake. So that's an even bigger profit margin if you can sell for a higher price what amounts to an even cheaper product. And, of course, eBay makes it difficult (has little interest) to put a stop to that.

 

I bought my first Arduino Uno clone about a year ago from a reputable place (can't recall where at the moment) for $6. Then I found that I could get them on Ali Express for about half that. As I recall, a genuine Uno was closer to $30.

 

While it is certainly inconvenient to get a knock-off hom experimenter product, it can be a total disaster to have it in an industrial control system. It seems that the Chinese government has decided that war on us can be done much cheaper this way. Sell us junk pretending it is OK. Those controller chips did not meet the temperature range specs, which may not ever be a problem in a hobby application.
And the grade 8 faked bolts were an attempt at murder, plain and simple. A bolted building collapsing kills people. And that has been in the news for a while.

 

While it is certainly inconvenient to get a knock-off hom experimenter product, it can be a total disaster to have it in an industrial control system. It seems that the Chinese government has decided that war on us can be done much cheaper this way. Sell us junk pretending it is OK. Those controller chips did not meet the temperature range specs, which may not ever be a problem in a hobby application.
And the grade 8 faked bolts were an attempt at murder, plain and simple. A bolted building collapsing kills people. And that has been in the news for a while.

So many cities over there that you and I have never heard of that still have millions of people in them. I'd say they have a problem of enforcement difficulty. And murder requires proven intent. Let's not get too melodramatic.

 

they have a problem of enforcement difficulty

The problem is a very corrupt government that has little incentive to oversee much less enforce foreign intellectual property rights. I had a friend years ago in Hong Kong. Lun was a young unmarried Mechanical Engineer working as a field support engineer for an Allison Transmission factory distributor of industrial/commercial hydraulic power products. He hated the Chinese even though he was of Chinese descent. Chinese engineers were poorly educated, barely capable of reading or writing, typically only spoke Cantonese. or pidgin English, and not Mandarin and would work for almost nothing making his career future very dismal. He was trying to get out of Hong Kong (with his elderly parents and an unmarried younger sister who all lived with him in a tiny apartment and all of whom he supported) to Canada or the USA. I lost touch with him over the years but I remember him telling me of a "tongue in cheek" article in the Hong Kong Times newspaper. It was regaling the wonderous news that the Chinese had finally been able to counterfeit eggs and how these now faux eggs would be widely available soon, at a much-reduced cost, in the local markets. Such is life in china.

 

So many cities over there that you and I have never heard of that still have millions of people in them. I'd say they have a problem of enforcement difficulty. And murder requires proven intent. Let's not get too melodramatic.

Selling a very inferior part that is primarily used in the building of high structures certainly shows intent. What other use is there for one-inch diameter three inch grade 8 bolts???Certain sizes are mostly used only for fastening beams in construction. These are not bolts used for anything else. So they were produced and sold knowing exactly what their use would be.
In addition, Because China IS a police state, the government DOES have a good idea of what is being produced and shipped out. Been there and observed that. Behaved very well and spent lots of money on food and was regarded as a good guest and so I had no problems at all. And I said nothing at all about the police activities I saw until after i was safe at home in the USA!!! When one is inside China One MUST know how to act.

 

The BIG problem is that the majority of those products are NOT made for export but for use in china. It is vendors in china trying to make a few bucks and selling "mail-order" that are getting those substandard (by any recognized international standards organization) products into the international supply chain. That and international companies turning to china for their product manufacturing due to labor costs and having products produced in substandard chinese manufacturing facilities. My father, many years ago, got roped in by the USSR to a study of bolt manufacturing in the USSR. Ostensibly they had a problem with bolts made by X company not fitting nuts made by Y company at a Soviet "truck" (actually T-38 Tanks and space hardware) manufacturing facility. Utter and complete lack of standards and qualifying components. China has also had such problems to overcome. Things that many of us here take for granted.

 

I find eBay great for passive components from suppliers that have good feedback and proven selling history. This applies to Aliexpress as well but at least there you can see photos with the product reviews (ironic as it's a Chinese site). As with both of them, don't purchase something that has not been sold before. Arduinos I have bought have failed but the price I pay for clones means 50% can fail and I've still saved money. Let’s face it, Arduinos are education tools, not really designed it be integrated into consumer devices, it's a jack-of-all-trades MCU. This so far all applies to hobbyists projects. Whereas, repairing consumer products, any protection devices (both personal and circuit), High power resistors, high value capacitors, discretes (not always including diodes), ICs, and anything with tight tolerances requires more traditional sourcing.
As a hobbyist I simply cannot justify the postage from RS if I needed a 68uH axial inductor, I'll get it from eBay. However, if I need a MOSFET driver and IRF540 I'm only going to get those from RS/mouser etc. Horses for courses so to speak

 

I have not received it yet, but the listing showed this picture. I will follow up here once I receive them.

View attachment 216912

Following up on my post - I received the diodes and tested them. Forward diode test showed 355 (EDIT: mV I assume?), and reverse biased on MOhm range shows about 50K. I don't think I've ever seen a diode show any conduction in reverse on an ohm meter. So I'm thinking these are real. Does this sound right?

 

Hello again,

I forgot to mention another thing which i will in a minute.

Bur first,as i mentioned elsewhere on this forum, i was involved in a class action lawsuit with AMD over their 'fake' CPU cores which i purchased from NewEgg, and also another class action lawsuit over fake capacitors which i purchased from either Digikey or Mouser. So i guess we live in the age of fake electronic parts and have to test everything we get before we use it. I should also mention though that these were the only parts i had received from either AMD or the two suppliers that had a problem, and i bought a lot of parts from the two parts outlets. I also had good results with AMD CPU's in the past up until that problem.

But about eBay, everything i bough from them directly i found has a problem in that the product description by the seller did not reflect the true nature of the product being sold, it was always misleading. So i consequently stopped buying from them. They may have a good return policy though but i did not feel like being bothered. That was a mistake on my part.
However, i did buy some parts from a friend who bought them from eBay, and was given some other parts from eBay.
The first are a set of 1/4 watt 1 percent resistors (they might be 1/8 watt). I found the strangest thing about these resistors, just as i would expect from eBay given my past experience. The problem was that the leads on each and very resistor had a steel core. I found this to be very strange because i tested other resistors i had since the early 1980's or before that, and not one of them had a lead that was steel or iron. They all had copper core leads, tin plated. This problem with this is that makes the leads magnetically active and so might react in ways not expected in anything but the simplest of circuits. For example, circuits with close nit parts that include inductors, or perhaps RF circuits. Steel or iron has a much higher permeability than copper for sure. Another very unusual thing is that they are harder to solder than copper based leads. This came as a big surprise when i tried to solder them. It takes more heat applied for a longer time to get them hot enough to get the solder to flow normally.
I got lucky on one part though. I was given some light depended resistors type GL5528, and although i did not test all of them (about 20 or 30) the ones i did test all have good light response in that they seem to meet the specs. The ones i did test were picked at random with no bias of any kind so i think the test was statistically indicative of the whole lot. I was even able ot use one in a project i was working on very recently and had good results.

 

A benefit of using Ebay is you get to come to the forums and ask "why does not circuit not work?"

 

A benefit of using Ebay is you get to come to the forums and ask "why does not circuit not work?"

So, really, it brings people together.

 

https://www.sparkfun.com/news/350

https://www.sparkfun.com/news/364

https://www.sparkfun.com/news/384

https://www.sparkfun.com/news/395

10 year old articles

 

So, really, it brings people together.

Unexpected convenience factor!!

 

I have ordered Atmel controllers via eBay, but I give them a quick check by programming them to see whether they are real, then I make sure they are segregated from controllers bought from authorized distributors. So far, no complaints (knock on wood).

 

My rule regarding buying stuff on Ebay: If you can get it through a retail channel, then get it through said retail channel.