Wired Magazine cover and article about drones

[dankers]

nice deflection attempt though.

I noticed that too, he seems to not answer anything, all deflection, obvious really. At least he admitted that marketing article was not true, unintentionally, but still.

Did I say anything incorrect with my 15 numbered items? Feel free to let everyone know which of my claims are absurd.

That seems par for the course, number 12, they banned me for that and deleted my post. What I said:

I disagree that open source is an excuse for poor quality, you can have the same, if not better commitment to quality software than a commercial project, in fact with all the code on show, it really makes more sense to make sure it is solid before a release to users.

And banned. This was a respond to Chris trying to hide an issue by saying "It's open source, what do you expect" - exact quote.

 

[dankers]

Just to cover this because I am busy, the next post byhttp://www.multirotorforums.com/member.php?3314-R_Lefebvre R_Lefebvre will be more deflection. Watch for it and maybe play the deflection drinking game, how many issues un-addressed or twisted can you spot?

Well done on marketing your project though, 2nd post here and you start arguing with people, looks great! Well done. Shame you don't have mod right or you'd just delete those inconvenient posts

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Deflection? Hardly. I simply didn't want to start airing dirty laundry here, on another forum. I don't think it's the place for it, it's ugly, most people probably don't want to see this stuff, I don't want to start a board war, etc. etc. etc. etc. But, seeing as how a few people want to persist, and will claim victory otherwise, and finally because the mods here haven't said they have a problem with any of this going on:

Yes this is indeed Kevin Finisterre Banned DIYDrones user / Ex DIYDrones WikiNinja. http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/bl...vin-finisterre This isn't about me... nice deflection attempt though.

It was not an attempt to deflect. I believe one of the biggest problems of the internet, is that some people think they can say whatever they want because they are anonymous. I use my real name. Most people on DIYDrones use their real name. I don't really think it's fair that you would come here and hide behind a pseudonym, while attacking somebody else PERSONALLY. It's frankly, just a dirtbag move. I also think it's only fair for other readers to understand the story behind why you are so upset. This very much IS about you. You were banned from DIYD, not because of criticisms you made, and you made many. They wanted to ban you for the personal attacks you made, which flies completely in the face of the academic atmosphere there. But they didn't. They banned you because you published to a tweet, something that I told you in confidence, in a private message. A message that I sent to you to try and diffuse the situation you found yourself in.

And in the interest of full disclosure, what was the situation you found yourself in?

You made the personal choice to use a cheap, crappy radio system, the Turnigy 9X. More importantly, you and others chose to use the crappy Rx that it came with, which has a really crappy failsafe mode. That failsafe mode did not work well with the APM PPM encoder software, because it was never designed to accomodate such a crappy failsafe scheme. It sucks, but that is how it is. Despite myself and a few others telling you a simple solution, to spend $30 on an FrSky Tx/Rx module to plug into your radio, which would solve the problem, and give a ton of other advantages, you persisted in DEMANDING that the devteam fix the PPM Encoder software to work with your Turnigy Rx.

Nobody had a problem with you jumping up and down, screaming about this problem, letting everyone know the issue. But you were told that you do not have the right to DEMAND that volunteer coders fix YOUR problem.

Pretend it wasn't *ME* asking the questions and just address them as best you can. I'll make a pact with to not say a single word about your response. I'll let the rest of the group judge for themselves.

Fine.

1. DIYD Moderators are known to delete and censor posts without explanation.

This is done very rarely. Almost all of your posts are still there. I think Monroe deleted a few that were really nothing more than personal attacks on me, and had little to no impact on any of the broader topics we were discussing. Some people on the internet feel that they can say whatever they want, and that they are protected by free speech rights, when they are posting on privately owned Bulletin Boards. They do not have this right. Board owners have the legal right to enforce any rules they want, in order to shape the board to be what they want. If you want a free-for-all board where you can say whatever you want, make your own. Oh, you did. That's great initiative, I credit you for that. You are now free to say whatever you want there. You might not get much of an audience however, because not that many people are very interested in that type of discussion.

Just about every board I have ever used, deletes posts, and the moderators usually don't take the time to explain why. There are rules that exist when they sign up, and those rules were broken. Why should these volunteers take the time to explain why they had to delete posts which obviously broke the rules?

This isn't about censorship, it's about keeping things clean, and mature. I can link you to posts that I myself have made, criticising things there.

Here's one:

http://www.diydrones.com/forum/topics/diydrones-rants-and-raves?id=705844%3ATopic%3A770376&page=4#comments

Where's the censorship? There are many more which I just don't have the time to look up for you.

And for the record, the bulk of your posts that were deleted, YOU did it. You "took your ball and went home" after you were stripped of your title, which apparently upset you a lot.

2. DIYD Moderators are known to gang up on users that voice complaints and threaten them with bans and suspensions.

I really don't know what to say about this. I have seen this, but it was warranted.

Since when is threatening to ban people for breaking the rules a bad thing? If you're breaking the rules, you're going to get banned. They warned you, several times. What's the problem?

3. DIYD Moderators are known to use defamatory language, "bad words", and "libel" as you put it all the while chastising other users for doing the same.

Never seen it. Example please.

4. DIYD Developers are known to ignore serious / important safety issues

Not true. Take the time to understand, and find a fix? Yes. Inform users that this is not a problem with APM, but is in fact a problem with your side of things (Rx failsafes, not soldering things correctly, etc.), yes.

And we are not alone in this, closed source vendors do it all the time. Simply put, not all crashes are caused by the flight controller. Some of them are, but we not not Gods. We can't take a report with really vague information, and find a perfect fix instantly.

5. DIYD Developers choose to work on bells and whistles rather than focus on known problems that cause lost / broken hardware.

I'm not going to argue against this. It's true to a certain degree. The developers are volunteers, and work on what they are interested in. Nobody can tell them what to do. That being said, real problems are always fixed. They did eventually come out with a firmware which fixed your failsafe problem. It took a week or two. That's not too bad, IMO.

6. DIYD Developers and staff (like Chris) force users with safety concerns to "convince the developers it is a problem" before addressing an issue.

See point #5. Chris is my not my boss. I have a boss who pays my bills. The rest of this is volunteer work. It's a hobby for me.

I, as do the rest of the devs, take safety and reliability seriously. But that doesn't mean we will automatically jump on a problem, especially when that problem is not well understood, or the solution is not clear. There are a LOT of false complaints. Things that lead nowhere. People with setup problems, etc. There's a lot of "noise". And people are busy. Yes, you have to convince developers that you have a REAL problem before they will work on it.

To be continued:

 

[jes1111]

To be continued:

I'm on the edge of my seat!

I can link you to posts that I myself have made, criticising things there.
Here's one:

Wow! Really serious issue, that one!

the academic atmosphere there

ROFL! Like I said - Chris Anderson's Unpaid Programming Department.

Board owners have the legal right to enforce any rules they want, in order to shape the board to be what they want.

Exactly! Chris Anderson wants the board to a) serve as the ego-reward for his unpaid programming department and b) serve as the free marketing and promotion tool for his hardware sales. So when you threaten either of those, you get banned - makes sense.

Chris is my not my boss. I have a boss who pays my bills.

You don't get it, do you? Sure he doesn't pay any of your bills: he pays his bills - with your effort! Put another way, he's the head of the bogus cult to which you willingly give up your "free" time.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

7. DIYD Developers and staff force users with safety concerns to "convince the community it is a problem" BEFORE attempting to convince the developers of an issue.

See 5 and 6 above.

8. DIYD Developers get bent out of shape when you present solid technical information outlining a safety issue (or any other issue) if you present it with improper "tone".

Not going to argue against this either. Yeah, it happens. Can you really fault people for being... people? Again, many of these people are real academics. They aren't used to, and don't enjoy, dealing with typical internet behaviours. Simple as that. And given the fact that all they are asking is that you present your arguments in an intelligent, respectful, and thoughtful manner, I don't see the problem. It's not their problem, this is your problem.

9. Chris Anderson complains about "clones" yet he "cloned" the Paparazzi PPM encoder for use with the ArduPilotMega all the while *barely* giving Hendrix credit.

I don't know anything about this and can't comment on it. If Hendrix has a problem with it, Hendrix should take it up with Chris.

10. Chris Anderson claims that "Documentation and the "out of the box" experience cannot be an afterthought, or of secondary priority." Yet he allows it to be a problem on his ship. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...postcount=2396

Not going to argue this either. Yes, it's a problem. It's a problem with most open-source projects. It's even a problem with many closed-source projects. Chris would like to make it better, but again, he is not our boss. You volunteered to update the wiki, and did so for a while. What happened? Doesn't that make it your fault that the wiki is not better? After all, you were the WikiNinja.

11. Chris Anderson was once an end user with valid complaints, yet he ignores his own users complaints about the same issues. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...postcount=2359

Again not going to argue this. We try, but don't succeed as much as I'd like. Chris does not ignore it, but again, this is an open source project, and he is not our boss. He doesn't have the ability to force anybody to fix the problem. So what can he do?

What is the solution?

12. Chris Anderson uses Open Source as a crutch for plausible deniability. Oracle and Apache are wonderful examples of Open Source projects that are polar opposites of Ardu* projects.

I don't have an opinion on this. I'm a mechanical engineer, I don't know anything about Oracle or Apache. Open Source does give plausible deniability. It's a fact of life.

13. Several issues often fester for over a year, and or get marked *invalid* if the developers don't feel like fixing or addressing them. http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/...237&q=throttle or http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-m.../detail?id=424 are great examples.

I don't have a lot of info on these issues.

I do know on the first one, they fixed the ROOT CAUSE of the problem. They fixed the I2C blocking bug. It took about a month to figure it out. As for the watchdog timer, maybe there's a reason it hasn't been implemented, I'm not sure. I do wonder how the watchdog timer would operate, if the problem is that the code or the processor is simply hung. If the watchdog timer is in the main code, but the code isn't firing (which is why it isn't responding in the first place), how is the watchdog timer going to work?

The second issue, sounds like the guy simply wasn't using the right fuses? I don't know what he was doing, or why, but it isn't standard operating procedure for using these systems. It sounds like he was going off on a limb. Everybody is busy. Is it any surprise that it took a while for somebody to help him with his one-off problem, which was really just a problem of him not find the documents himself, for what he was trying to do?

14. Chris Anderson makes no effort at regression testing or creating a general development lifecycle.

Completely not true. We try to do the best we can. Every piece of code is peer reviewed by the head developers and extensively test flown before being released. If you are an expert at this, why didn't you volunteer your help?

15. 3Drobotics has began to selectively refuse certain repairs all the while soliciting for users to send boards in for fixes, even after blatantly stating they don't repair them.

I can't speak to this. I don't know anything about it.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

You don't get it, do you? Sure he doesn't pay any of your bills: he pays his bills - with your effort! Put another way, he's the head of the bogus cult to which you willingly give up your "free" time.

How is this different than any other volunteer run, open source project?

Are the people at CyanogenMod paid? I'm using their code on my phone. I love it. It's not perfect, but it's better than what came on the phone. I don't think they are paid. They must be doing it for the love of it.

I'm happy doing what I'm doing. My *hobby* used to be flying model airplanes. Now my hobby is learning how to program, learning electronics, and tinkering with my helicopters. If Chris is getting rich (and I don't think he is selling them at $200 each), I couldn't care less. I'm having fun. End of story. I think everybody on the team is in the same position.

Are the people who made CyanogenMod upset that Samsung makes money selling the phones that their software runs on?

 

[jes1111]

I can't speak to this. I don't know anything about it.

Plausible deniability. Yep, works well, that does. Very convincing.

 

[DIYDroneSafety]

Considering that I made a pact with you to not say anything about your post. I will kindly ask you, do you want me to respond? If you prefer I will honor my original offer and allow your retort to lay without rebuttal on my end. You certainly left some nice meat to chew on however.

Let me know, I am cool with either option.

Take care.

 

[jes1111]

Here's a useful link: http://factnet.org/support-groups-people

 

[Langdale]

I'm new to this Forum but is this post every going to end? The 2 people involved ( and I know neither) are just engaging in a game of tennis. Backwards and forwards. 15 - love, 15 all etc. etc. Please, draw a line, get a life and move on, if you still want to have a go at one another, go private....

Peter

 

[R_Lefebvre]

I have to say first off, that this is me talking here, not as a team member, but me personally. And I do this only because you are now attacking me personally. I do not in any way represent DIYD or Ardu*.

So you are part of the project and I know more than you and I don't even follow it. How can you kickstart something when you "adopt" it from elsewhere? To kickstart something surely that does not mean to take a complete code base of another project?

Here they are in 2010 trying to decide which project to take: http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/wh...pter-should-we

So kickstarted eh? Really. Deflecting about open source won't work, what I am specifically bothered about is someone making claims they did something when they did not. Most disgustingly this takes away credit from the good people that really did that work and a blatant attempt to rewrite history for personal ego gratification. This intellectual dishonesty is simply repulsive, it staggers me that Anderson knew that was not true but wrote that anyway.

Sure the leader of AeroQuad welcomed it as they paid him to port it to their platform. You are simply not getting it, it matters not if there is any code left, how can you claim to kickstart something when you take it from elsewhere? So, knowing this, it's simply not true right?

A) I don't know that you do know more, you probably just think you do. That you and others have made completely untrue claims about things that I DO know about, confirm that idea.

B) You do know more about the history than me. I only got into all this ~8 months ago. But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.

How can you kickstart something when you "adopt" it from elsewhere?

So lets look at this objectively, using the only allegation which has actually been proven to be true: That Arducopter started with Aeroqud code. Then let's also make it abundantly clear, that the Aeroquad people welcomed Chris et. al. to take their code and make it work on the APM. In fact, some of them even ASSISTED him in the effort. At that point, they were in effect, part of the team.

Now let's consider Kickstarter.com. What is Kickstarter.com? It's a place where people, hopefully with fully formed ideas, go to get funding to put their ideas into production. They often have working prototypes even. For example:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1757054094/xbee-handheld-controller

Look at those working prototypes with fully functioning code. So what are they doing? They are kickstarting production of their product.

What did Chris Anderson do? He started a company to kickstart production of flight controllers. And they are being made domestically. So he kickstarted domestic drone production.

Compare that to OpenPilot (and I hate to do this, I didn't intend draw comparisons, but since you insist). Has Open Pilot kickstarted anything? If I understand correctly, they haven't produced any boards since like... January or something? It's all paid for out of pocket, and they don't have enough money to fund production which can meet demand. Can you buy an OP board right now? No. Not unless you go grey market anyway, and then pay SOMEBODY ELSE profit. Is OP involved in the Domestic Drone Boom? Sales aren't Booming. And it's certainly not industry because it's not being manufactured on an industrial scale. It's being done in somebody's basement.

What about the KK board? Well, it's not really a drone, since it has zero autonomy. And it's basically being made and sold in China now anyway, so it's not Domestic to the US anyway.

Good, thank you for admitting the premise of the article you posted was false, well done for being honest at last.

That's not true that I said that, don't put words in my mouth.

Let's look at it again.

"How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom".

Can you name to me, one other project, which is manufacturing "Drone" boards, on an industrial scale, in the US?

Nope, he opened the code up to the whole community as he wanted to, certainly not just for DIYDrones and he selected to not go with DIYD for hardware manufacture either. I think he also knew it would unlikely be useful to you as there is not much from an advanced F4 code base that will be helpful on an 8 bit ATMega.

It would be foolish to assume that they are stuck with an 8 bit platform. It's not a secret that ARM is coming to Arduino, and that there will be an ARM based Ardupilot board.

I don't you are using that word correctly, it means deserving reward of praise which from your earlier the tone might not fit, perhaps you mean mysterious? In actual fact people do praise that we value quality over just a pump and dump scam. As Chris Anderson states clearly here: http://blog.ponoko.com/2010/11/16/te...%80%94-rule-1/ their number 1 rule, is to make a profit, ours is not. You guys carry out your rule number 1 well, very often at the expense of your users.

I never saw that before, I'm glad you posted it. I agree with him 100%.

If you read the article, he is not talking about Profit as in: Take Home Pay for the Owner. He is talking about... well actually overhead. Many of these projects get started on an altruistic basis. The desire to give to others without profit. It's a laudable goal. But what does it entail?

Does risking the financial stability of your family with the only goal to help others have fun make sense to me? It doesn't to me. My wife would kill me if I took my life savings, to manufacture boards, have to spend untold hours reworking them in my basement, and then selling them for nothing. Not only that, but taking on the risk that you are. First, that the boards don't work/don't sell. Second, that somebody, right or wrong, launches a lawsuit against me, and I haven't paid for any insurance, or any legal advice, or legal defence fund, nothing. She'd leave me. And rightfully so, because it's foolish.

Second, what good are you doing for anybody, if you haven't produced a board in many months, because you don't have the money to fund further production, because you didn't make any money on the first batch? Who are you helping? Wouldn't your altruistic goals of supplying low-cost flight controllers to hobbyists everywhere be better served if you could actually continue production?

How do you feel about the black market for your boards? OTHER people profiting off your work?

Good, here you go:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...&postcount=242

Nice, basically the same deal as you are doing here, going to other forums and spamming links trying to market your own stuff, despite it not being true.

Wow. Something else I'm glad you brought to my attention. The history is ALLL becoming clear to me now.

At first, I read that PM, and though "OMG, that's terrible. I can't believe DIYD would do that! I will look into it, and find out who's responsible."

But I see Chris basically did that, immediately. But you seem to have chosen to ignore it.

I've just been told about this post. Can you tell me who sent that PM? (you can PM me the info if you want). I agree it's inappropriate and was not done with my knowledge or approval. It's not the way we at DIY Drones work and it's embarrassing for our community. My apologies, and as soon as I know who sent it I'll ensure it never happens again.

--Chris

I've PM'd Jardu (who just joined RCG yesterday, which suggests a fake/prank user) to find out what's going on.

Agreed. Let me know and if it's actually anyone in the DIY Drones community, which I very much hope it is not, I'll put a stop to it pronto. We've got nearly 10,000 members, so it's hard to police all of them, but this sort of behavior is unacceptable and I don't mind cracking down it if does indeed turn out to be one of our guys.

Then you proceed to get in an argument with somebody else on another project, Amir, I don't even know who that is. The only constant I see here is you seem to like stirring up drama with other projects. "He's not open source". "He's making profit." "He didn't really kickstart anything."

Why don't you stop spending so much time worrying about what other projects are doing, and just concentrate on your own?

I realize you have well and truly drunk the coolaid, the dev team there is cultish and Anderson sets it up to be you guys against the world,

To the contrary! It appears to be you, roaming around the internet, attacking other systems. What are you doing here? Attacking. What did you do at RCG? Attacking. What do you do on your own board? Attacking. It's just the typical, childish, internet behaviour. DIYD hosts discussion and and topics about many other systems, including closed source systems. Yours was even represented at one point. But I guess that stopped because of all the problems.

you like to drag down people like Dean Goode for his prices despite he was trying to earn a living,

What is with all this "you" stuff. I have never in my life heard of Dean Goode, and I couldn't care less about him earning a living. I am not DIYD. I am not Chris Anderson. I am not employed by Ardupilot, 3DR, Arduino, or anything like that. I work at at a small industrial factory. I fly helis and write code for fun.

And why does it seem like you now are defending him for making a living, but then attacking others for doing the same?

So, this is pointless but I wanted to call you to task anyway, you're like one of those Mac Vs PC or Xbox Vs PS3 type guys. I am also very glad you hitched your cart there after what I have just heard about you deleting posts and bullying users you have found the right place.

Holy cow man! What is your problem? ME deleting posts? I've done no such thing! I don't have the power, I'm not a MOD! More baseless accusations! Bullying users? Where? Proof please. Kevin and I did both get into it at one point, it was mutual, though I should say that he was quite a bit more personal and insulting. However, I sent him a PM to apologize for my behaviour. Make amends. And he accepted my apology, and we conversed about the situation, and all was good. Then he published to Twitter some of the comments I made in that PM.

I'm really sorry I stumbled into this whole mess now. What a really sad, sad state of political BS.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

I'm new to this Forum but is this post every going to end? The 2 people involved ( and I know neither) are just engaging in a game of tennis. Backwards and forwards. 15 - love, 15 all etc. etc. Please, draw a line, get a life and move on, if you still want to have a go at one another, go private....

Peter

Peter, I agree. I apologize for my part in all this. I had no idea what I was stepping into here. I did not know the history between these groups, or that any of this kind of behaviour was going on. If you recall, all I originally did was ask for proof of these allegations that we were stealing code. Myself having worked hard on the project for 8 months, I took offence at that, and asked for proof.

To this point none has been provided. But the whole thing has snowballed from there.

Kevin, no, I don't really want you to respond. I want this to end. I had no intention of coming here to stir up trouble, and don't want to continue this. If you respond, I will feel like I need to respond, I would prefer the whole thing closed. I admit to knowing that I'm going to be clobbered here because it's now 3 on one, since most DIYD people normally don't participate in this kind of mudslinging. And two of the opposing people also like to throw out lies and baseless accusations to support their ideas (not you, to your credit again).

So, I'm done. Lock it, or don't. I can't control that. I can only control myself and ask that you do to. I'm sure jes1111 and dankers will continue to get a few shots in. I can only ask that any readers fact-check anything they say. Just because I don't respond or defend does not mean what they say is true, I'm just not going to continue this back and forth.

I'm out.

 

[DennyR]

Just to cover this because I am busy, the next post byhttp://www.multirotorforums.com/member.php?3314-R_Lefebvre R_Lefebvre will be more deflection. Watch for it and maybe play the deflection drinking game, how many issues un-addressed or twisted can you spot?

Well done on marketing your project though, 2nd post here and you start arguing with people, looks great! Well done. Shame you don't have mod right or you'd just delete those inconvenient posts

I don't really have the time for this but David you seem to cause unpleasantness where ever you post. I guess you must be a redundant school teacher or something like that. As for The OP board it is a great little device that has given pleaser to many people however it is about as reliable as an MK BL-2 on a damp Guy Fawkes night. Due no doubt to your own personal manufacturing shortcomings. Perhaps you should take a look at how DIYDrones do it.

 

[dankers]

Nice long post, sorry, it's just a wall of text and like everyone else, I'm simply not going to read it. Sorry you wasted your time but as you can not see reason or are even aware these threads are of no interest to people. Many have seen this before and it is just a religion to you, as you said, you hitched your cart to Ardupilot. Rather than be rational, objective and realistic you are instead letting it define who you are, hence take it all personally and and now will defend it to the death, even if you are wrong. Personally, I never hitch my cart to something, I will always keep my mind and my options open, this is a much healthier attitude and it's a shame you do not. So to continue would be like trying to argue with a religious nut, so I won't.

If however you want to learn, I need to be again clear; what annoys people is simply your leader taking credit for something he had no part in at the expensive of the people that did do it, this is called lying. Simply as that, your attempts to get it mired in petty details do not work, that article was dishonest and proven it to be the case.

A lot of us have seen it all before, we've seen the attacks on Paparazzi, AttoPilot, PicoPilot etc and all when they were given no right to reply. My advice is that DIYDrones need to start working with the wider community, however what you are trying to do is transparent: you are trying to become the whole community and will use whatever sly and underhanded tricks you can to achive this, including writing dishonest articles trying to claim to invented everything. Can you not understand why people in other projects would take a serious exception to this when it is simply untrue?

You also need to be aware that Anderson uses the fact that the project is disliked for very valid reasons to circle the wagons and make it a cultist atmosphere, like many cults the leaders are manipulative and good at controlling weaker minds, their devotees will go to hell and back for them even though they are being used. Some break out but many will drink the coolaid.

 

[dankers]

Hi Denny, nice to see you again, see you have not changed my friend. Nice try with the personal attack, sorry I make you feel like that, I am happy your project is going as well as OP and I agree, the OP community really is an unfriendly place as I post there so much. Oh wait

I will make DIYDrones hardware much better and cheaper, sure.

 

[jes1111]

Absolutely

 

[dankers]

Absolutely

Might be a good idea and prove a point to be honest, we get a load of this "manufacturing" crap as we want to make sure things are right. DIYDrones have different policies and release things as soon as they can, this could work well to fund OP for sure. Not only that but they claim to want people to make their hardware, so it's a huge win / win, people get better hardware and cheaper, DIYDrones get their wish of others making their hardware and it eases their current supply issues, we get to prove a huge point that we can manufacture things well plus some funding of OP.

So thanks Denny, nice idea!

 

[jes1111]

Re: your long post above about "US Made" - I believe (according to information on the DIYD site) that the 3DR factory is in Mexico, which is not (yet) part of the USA.

 

[dankers]

I think they have 2, on in CA and one new one in Mexico?

Jess, I would not worry about it. I am not going to get drawn it to it more, I said that I do not like that article and that is what I disagree with. OP did not kickstart anything either, we stand on the shoulders of the amazing projects that did but that should be respected, simply; credit where credit is due.

This advice from Thomas Paine is good: "“Attempting to debate with a person who has abandoned reason is like giving medicine to the dead.”

 

[Stacky]

Im guilty of it which is something I regret but could people please stop with the personal attacks and snide remarks, this forum has been so great so far because its been able to be a civil place where friendly advice and opinions are shared. It would be nice to keep it that way.