My guess from working with china is not that they so much tried to save a little money but that the supplier sold them fakes as the real thing. China companies rip off other china companies just as readily as anyone else.
Tried two different computers, two different browsers, and two different ISP connections. its near impossible for them all to have the same exact issue. See my post above #1778.
That does look like some kind of local issue, could be your ISP’s local cache is the problem or who knows what. It is very strange you are the only one reporting the issue though.
And for the record, the lights will not be shipping for at least a weeks, most likely 2 weeks, so there is no major rush.
I would try the things I listed above and see what happens.
I highly doubt that they know they are fake, unlike some manufactures lumintop has never complained about the cost of components for their lights, they will simply pay what is needed to get what is needed to make it work. Except in cases where they simply can not source the components at all.
They appear to work fine though, so it is possible that they are “real” but made “off-the-record” which is another common Chinese trick when making products for overseas companies. I am not going to speculate as long as they do the job though.
Fake uses a voltage divider to detect battery voltage on Pin 7 from what I measured with DMM 0.7V and 2 resistors
I removed one of them and it works not sure why the voltage divider is there it increases parasitic drain
I did not see these things mentioned before and could effect 2 separate computers if they were used to access the lumintop site before they updated it.
As I said, I don’t think they did go with a “cheap chineese distributor”. That is not what they have shown to do in the past, even with some really expensive parts we worked with on another project.
It is very hard for them to see it is not original if they do not have one to compare and the one they get works as it should. I doubt they even see the components before the drivers are delivered. Most of the time the assembly house sources these things and then just delivers the final drivers.
Just ask anyone here to look at a chip by eye with nothing of reference and tell if it is a fake, same thing with lumintop. Heck I could not tell it is a fake without them side by side.
On top of all that, if it does what it is supposed to do, why would they even look? They would just assume that the parts delivered were the parts they ordered. I bet if I looked at the prototype drivers they sent me they would have the same MCU, I didn’t even notice because the MCU worked as intended so why assume that it was not the right one?
While it is not ideal, it works and has not had any issues. Lots of possible explanations, could even just be old stock from 10 years ago with different markings for all we know.
Lastly that is a GT-mini driver, not a GT70 driver. So isn’t this the wrong thread anyways?
ok, i logged into the internet using my phone & cell carrier to get it to work. Just curious, is the short tube still available for the GT, and will the conversion GT70 kit still work with a the single battery carrier in the short tube with the GT70 kit? ( not sure if i missed the info on that mentioned before as this tread is huge.
Even the marking has a spelling error
its always been a 20SU code for size and while the fake shows 20U
and there is no MCU that has not the triangle on it
Fireflies had the excact same fake MCU from a chineese distributor and huge programming issues with it
receiving prototypes with it I was also not able to flash it
all Atmel MCUs even the cheap 13A have always markings on the back side
I had completely forgot to order the short tube when it came available as i was going through a family disaster and away out of town during that time i believe, so i missed it. >.<