Clones and Fakes

Learning New Things 

Well, I am just about 'recovering' from the shock of the steel/boat price increase. After receiving the news on Friday afternoon, luckily, I spent the weekend with my friend Chris at his place in the Cotswolds helping him paint the kitchen. I was more than happy to help a dear old friend, but boy, it was hard work - largely the 'prep' as it is such an old place, nothing is square or straight, so it took ages to get everything masked off. Anyway, it kept my mind busy, although I didn't sleep well at all during the night. 

Monday I was still exhausted and in a bit of a funk. I got up and, I think for the first time, shortly after I thought to myself "no, I can't face any of this" and went back to bed for most of the day, which isn't like me (I can happily lounge around in bed all day, but generally that's a pleasurable activity, rather than due to feeling a bit defeated and despondent). However a few days later, I have reconciled myself and and back on track (I hope), although any day now the actual revised invoice will arrive, rather than my back-of-the-envelope estimate, which might set me off again....

Apart from the steel hull, I am doing everything myself and it is resulting in an awful lot of "learning", probably the most in volume and continuity since I was at university. Even when I have a general idea of the topic, invariably, canal boats or marine in general will have their own subtle spin on things.  I am sure I will write more on the subject - especially all the electronic gizmos that I have to integrate for the electricity/power system. Most of that equipment is coming from a Dutch company called Victron. They have a good reputation, if a bit pricey, but hopefully by having the majority of the equipment from the same company means it will all integrate relatively painlessly (check back in a few months when no doubt I will be cursing why it is not all working...). The batteries are coming from China, as is the kit that you need to stop the lithium batteries metaphorically blowing up (the particular chemistry of these batteries is actually quite safe, which is why I chose it). One of the reasons for selecting the particular Battery Management System, as well as it being somewhat cheaper than the alternatives is that, according to forums online, you can get it, if not to 'talk' to the Victron system, at least to give a few 'nods and grunts' as it were. 

Victron has a USB output as one of its communications ports and the BMS needs a serial interface, so I have been discovering USB to serial convertor devices. They are little gizmos, available for a few pounds on eBay. I then had to enter the world of flashing or reprogramming some of the chip attributes, which you can do with a program provided by the chip manufacturer. So I got the device on Tuesday and eagerly put it into my laptop. But try as I might I could not get the new attributes to stick. I tried and tried, following the instructions, but nothing. So I did a bit more hunting on the internet. Apparently, the chip used in a lot of these devices, especially the discount ones on eBay use 'cloned' chips - i.e. knock off copies. The original manufacturer has tried ways in the past to stop this, mainly by 'bricking' or disabling cloned chips when they are used with Windows drivers. The knock-off merchants response to this, it seems is to make the supposedly programmable chipset read-only - i.e. you can't re-reprogram them, which is why I was having such difficulty. 

I couldn't see any way around this apart from to start again with a non-cloned chip. I wasn't going to take my chance on eBay, so I turned to dear Amazon. I am trying to minimise the £s I am sending to Mr Bezos. At the moment, this will be the boat the eBay built. But sometimes it makes sense. So I paid about 4 times what the eBay one cost and the next day was swiping into the local Amazon Fresh store around the corner to pick it up (It was free delivery if you collected and even though it was not meant to be next day delivery, it was).

You can see from the picture that it is likely better quality (it is the one in the plastic case).

Gingerly I put it in the laptop, fired up the re-programmer and tried to alter the required attributes. I flashed it to the device, took the device out, and then plugged it back in and to my joy the changes seem to have held. So it looks like it IS a genuine chip. 

It's back in the box now until the  BMS arrives from China and the Victron stuff from a place in Gloucester.