Emphasize the importance of authentic GPS modules [DISMISSED]

Topic: Emphasize the importance of authentic GPS modules

Proposal type: Hardware [X ] , Software [ ] , Other [ ] : _________________

Description:
I’m a total newbie. I somehow finished my autonomous boat with the communities help. As someone who is an outsider to the RC community, I believe the ardupilot applications will grow.

On the wiki pages of mandatory hardware part, you should add a warning like this:
warning: We highly discourage the unbranded gps/compass modules’ use in ArduPilot projects. As they usually have fake ublox modules which lack important components such as flashable memory and noise filters etc and chances of having a good gps signal is therefore highly hindered.

Gps and compass are vital parts of the system and the clones don’t perform as intended.

Planned amount $$ (USD): 0

Estimated time for completion:
5 minutes

this is just a humble request. if i really knew how bad those units were i would buy the good ones.

How does a buyer determine a bad one from a good one? :slight_smile:

Fake ublox is bad. Original is good. Fakes lack SAW filter, low noise amplifier, tcxo, flash and rtc.

Stressing the genuine ublox modules w/ compass would properly decrease the amount of topics about compass calibration and high hdop etc.
:slight_smile:

There is no way for a normal users to tell them apart. They have fake ublox labels on them. Equating cheap to fake is not valid either. There are plenty of good inexpensive GPS/Compass modules available.

While this is true I can not agree that there are genuine ublox modules on aliexpress etc. Almost all of them are fake. Even on Amazon there are many fakes. Maybe a list of recommended sellers may be added, or at least you should mention about the counterfeit ublox modules.

My pixhawk is a cheap clone. It works well. But the 16gb sd card was a fake one with 100MB card. I had no idea! I discovered it after trying to run the bin logs. I had to disable gps requirements on FC. Because gps speed and horizontal estimates were out of the tolerance range. And this is happening because of a low performance counterfeit product. People report twice satellite count on real units.

However this is just my perspective. If my fake unit was really good i would not have such a perspective :slight_smile:

There is no way you can justify your statements. Have you ordered every GPs/Compass sold through Amazon and Aliexpress and determined they are all fakes?

There is no such thing as a “fake” 16gb sd card. There are good quality and bad quality. Only you as a shopper can decide what to buy.

Even recommended resellers can get bad stock so there is no way to make such recommendations.

Your only recourse is to use the net to determine what other people have used successfully.

the sd card was a 16gb labelled unit which was actually 100mb. This is why i called it as fake.

sure i didn’t test all.

It was most likely simply defective.

This is a genuine and very serious problem. All I can saw, all of our gear uses genuine uBlox.

I have used few no brand ublox GPS and all of them works fine. 2 years ago i have written a blog about this. I believe all of them use the same core chip which is original ublox M8030 for an M8N. Difference between them is availability or brand/quality of other components

  1. TCXO
  2. LNA
  3. SAW Filter
  4. Flash
    Any of these four things may be absent in a fake model or may be Cheaper version(if its ST then its OK) of these components may have used. Cheaper version components actually does not affect much. If you are buying form banggood or similar sites look for reviews and user uploaded TEARDOWN images now you can see which components are present and which are not.
    Performance of the GPS also depends on the antenna so don’t ignore that. Radiolink, Holibro are economical and good proficnc here is good but a little bit higher price.

This isn’t really a proposal for any funding so I’m closing it.

In any case, we have a list of stores in our wiki (http://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/docs/common-stores.html), these are the ones we trust (although we don’t give any guarantees on it). This isn’t to say that any other store doesn’t have good hardware - but we can’t look at every shop in the world.

As with every other piece of electronics, look for known brands, everything else may be good or bad.