We got support question for Arduino EKG/EMG shields which do not work correctly.
We did the initial questions to make sure they use correct drivers and software, and it seems the customer did everything correctly but couldn’t get correct signals but only noise. Then we asked him to send us picture of how he is connecting the boards.
To our surprise we got picture with blue mask boards. All our EKG/EMG boards are with red mask, so we found these guys easily. All their contribution back was to remove Olimex from the silkscreen and to put their name on the boards, although they keep the OSHW logo they didn’t put their CAD files available for download, which is not great loss as they didn’t contribute at all except to change text on the boards.
On top of this probably they didn’t even test the boards as the one in this particular customers didn’t work.
What is most annoying is that they link all our files to their web page, so mislead people that they buy our boards.
olimex 
Jul 05, 2017 @ 12:10:22
Hmm, that sucks! Can’t you somehow get them with any leagal means?
Jul 05, 2017 @ 13:10:34
It’s OSHW project no problem that one copy it, but at least to do it properly and to respect the licensee i.e. to provide CAD sources for the changes done and not to send customers to us for support! We got good tip from Twitter to redirect all requests from their site to this blog post, so at least people are aware they buy fake product, it’s good they didn’t copy the soldermask color so we can easy distinguish fake from original shields, otherwise we would be very puzzled how non working boards get to the customers!
Jul 05, 2017 @ 17:51:51
yes, but isn’t this a violation of the OSHW-license they claim to use?
e.g. if you modify some GPL licensed code and use it in your own proprietary sw and you dont make that public with GPL license again, you really can get problems, which happend in the past multiple times.
I know, in this case those guys are in china so it will be almost impossible to catch them, but you still can sue the traders in the EU if there are any.
And i see it as illegal to link all the olimex docs in the website, because that gives the buyer the impression that this is a real olimex product and that would be a clear product fraud, OSHW or not. If they relabel all the docs… ok, but then nobody would expect to get a real olimex quality board.
Jul 05, 2017 @ 17:59:53
all their document links now are redirected to this blog post so at least people will be aware of the situation 🙂
Jul 05, 2017 @ 18:03:55
That was a very nice idea! Maybe that is the best way to deal with this 🙂
Jul 05, 2017 @ 18:48:21
Report them to OSHW. Hopefully there will be a way to prosecute scoundrels like these. Come to the OSHW summit in Denver in October. There needs to be a solution for scumbags like these. Thanks for exposing them.
Jul 05, 2017 @ 20:13:17
Unbelievable, they are people, that don’t understand the idea of Open Source project and don’t respect the work of the others.
Jul 06, 2017 @ 09:28:15
Was the board finally fixable? What was the exact problem?
Jul 06, 2017 @ 09:30:47
no idea, we had no physical access to this board and suggested this user to contact the vendor he purchased the board from for further help
Mar 17, 2021 @ 08:59:37
Unfortunately, I ordered 6 shields for my students, Non of them worked. I thought they come with different color then i realized they are fake.