I'm not saying that his laserbee has a patent. But in other words, are his build methods, and processes, techniques, blue-prints, arduino, coding, etc, are they covered/protected? I.E. if someone reverse-engineered a laserbee 2.5 USB unit, and built the EXACT same thing, and sold it under a different name, could said individual be prosecuted?
I find it pretty far-fetched to believe that Radiant was waiting for the moment that a cheap, broken, year-old Laserbee 2.5W would come up for sale, just to buy it cheap to reverse engineer. If the trade secrets were that valuable, I'm sure Radiant would have bought one long ago, even new.
It's also not like Jerry goes to great lengths to hide the design of his LPMs, even in photos. There's no potting, no blurred out ICs, etc. There's a reason for that: the major value in the meter Jerry provides, or any meter for that matter, is in the sensor and its
calibration parameters--the part that makes the meter a meter. Otherwise, what is the difference? You could plug a $20 Arduino to a sharpied TEC and read off the values as a "meter" right?
You buy a Laserbee, or any meter, because it's calibrated and accurate. This is also why Jerry is charging a little less than half the price of the Laserbee for recoating the sensor and
recalibration. Yeah, it seems expensive, but those are valuable aspects of the Laserbee--and what you are actually paying for in a meter--not the LCD, electronics, etc. Hell, someone could even reverse engineer the firmware on the chip, and it probably wouldn't be that valuable.
EU legislation goes a lot further where customer protection is concerned: Warantee is obligatory for a period of time that is 'normal' for the type of product in question. As an example: A laptop has to be repaired free of charge for a period of 2 years after purchase, even if the manufacturer only gives one year of warantee. In some cases (particularly with Apple products) this has caused quite some problems, as the retailer is ultimately responsible for handling the warantee.
That type of "consumer protection" swings both ways: do I want to pay extra, as first purchaser, because of some law that guarantees a warranty period for the
next person I sell the product to--
if I do? Conversely, how many people would opt to pay extra just to ensure that what they buy
second-hand will come with whatever warranty the first-purchaser had? As far as I'm concerned, when you buy something second-hand, you're assuming some risk, for the benefit of reduced prices.
As good as these warranty laws sound, I think many people forget that these types of "consumer rights" do not come for free. They get priced into the products you pay, much like a tax--a tax you may not support or ever benefit from. If selling products to the EU region required warranty transference, Jerry could easily just tack on $20 to the original price to cover the charges--and off the blame on the EU policies.
This is like those laws that force manufacturers to warranty their products for life. They sound good on paper, but many products--like hard drives--are not worth paying extra up front for something that should be replaced over time anyway. Furthermore, I want to be given the
choice of what warranties I pay for.
These warranty policies may indeed reflect the different views across the Atlantic. The warranty rights might prop up the secondary/reseller market at the expense of first-purchasers. I guess it depends on what you value.
that last image looks kinda like a fingernail pressed into the compound.
I think it's just an epoxy fracture.
But if you break it you are shitoutofluck no matter how long the warranty is.
