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Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

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Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#141

Post by vinhboy »

tzs wrote: post #63

I've got one genuine one that I bought from Sparkfun near the end of 2015 and 10 more I got from Amazon in the middle of last year. I haven't gotten around to doing anything with the 10, but the genuine one has been hooked up to an RPi for a while, which is controlling a space heater. That was still using a solderless breadboard, so it was an easy matter to swap in the 10 one by one and check if they were genuine. As…

Very cool analysis. Thanks for doing that and providing data. I also got one of these from eBay for my RPi a few years back. I haven't played with it in years but I remember being frustrated because the temperature reading did not match my home thermostat.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#142

Post by robk »

jbay808 wrote: post #95
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live outside the US. Both Digikey and Mouser will charge me $20+ to ship anything (tried with a small capacitor). Farnell will let me put stuff in the shopping cart, then when I select "individual" as the customer type, tells me that they only ship to companies and redirects me to a "partner site" for individuals, which promptly fails to load (things like this have conditioned me to avoid official distributors). RS…

A lot of the time, these struggles are invisible to those living in the US. It's similar with McMaster-Carr; typically an American hobbyist will ask why one would look anywhere else for hardware parts, not knowing that (at least for many years) they would only ship to corporate partners for orders outside the US.

This is the situation https://raptorsupplies.com specializes in, Getting high quality parts at relatively small order sizes shipped easily overseas at reasonable prices

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#143

Post by robomartin »

kd5bjo wrote: post #132
robomartin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One bad example after another. Why is this so hard for folks to grasp. The proper example would be fake iPhones made in Switzerland sold in the US as through they were real iPhones. If that's the case, then, YES, Apple would be right to brick them with an update. Absolutely. I ask again: In what alternate reality would Apple be required to allow fake iPhones, look the other way and just let them be?

Your example is also off, because we’re talking about an internal component rather than an entire device. If a repair shop doesn’t use a Genuine Apple replacement screen, does Apple have to support it? No. Is going out of their way to physically destroy these replacement screens anti-consumer behavior? Yes. A key point here is that it’s impossible for the malicious driver to know what representation the seller made t…

Read my comment about how there are at least two separable problems in this issue. Perhaps then my position will make sense to you. Continuing to argue through hypothetical examples is pointless, it's getting sillier and sillier and farther away from key issues.

Counterfeit goods is not a victimless crime. It costs jobs. It costs progress. It costs entire industries. Don't blame the victim. Consumers just happen to be caught in the middle of what, at the end of the day, is a political mess.

One could argue consumers are the victims of politicians and their terrible policies. That's where this gets complicated and we could end-up understanding that the FTDI problem has its genesis a decade or two ago.

I mean, what's FTDI supposed to do? Shut down and let the fakes take the market? What would happen to quality, reliability and support then? A business like FTDI doesn't run on pink unicorns. If fakes destroy their market they are out, a bunch of people lose their jobs and good luck with support for any chip or predictable performance and quality from anyone.

The choices we make have consequences in the short and long term. This is just a microcosm of what the world has allowed China to get away with.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#144

Post by fulafel »

robomartin wrote: post #137
javawizard wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of: > the FTDI case was a case of the company intentionally shipping malicious code used to brick the clones don't you understand? FTDI does indeed have the absolute right to create drivers that only work with their products, but to intentionally damage a third party product so that it no longer works anywhere else, including with that third party's drivers, seems egregious.

There are two issues here, and they are separable. One is the issue of intellectual property theft and what a company has a right to do in order to protect itself. FTDI invested massive amounts of money to produce excellent solutions for a number of problems. I have personally been using their chips in my designs for over twenty years. I don't even remember when I started, it's possible it was at the very start of th…

I don't think it's productive to go around saying "an entire country is openly stealing intellectual property" here any more than citizens of other countries saying the same thing about US as a nation and personal data. IPR is a contentious field of intl agreements band there are no moral absolutes. But damaging physical property is pretty clearly unlawful in most jurisdictions.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#145

Post by panpanna »

DanBC wrote: post #140
panpanna wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you are blindly defending FDTI and blaming the designers, let me add another crucial detail that might change your mind: A lot of fakes were distributed through reputable sources as originals. So you could for example build a medical device using expensive original components from digikey, only to see it breaking in the hospital for no apparent reason. I bet people have _died_ due to FTDIs actions.

> A lot of fakes were distributed through reputable sources as originals. So you could for example build a medical device using expensive original components from digikey Medical device manufacturers would want both certificates of conformity and traceable parts. They'd want these if they built the product themself; they'd specify this if they got a sub-contract manufacturer. If the component supplier can't offer tra…

The problem is that these devices came from legitimate sources with the right paperwork.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#146

Post by IAmEveryone »

kregasaurusrex wrote: post #36

Trust in hardware supply chains when manufactring a PCB for a product can be quite fragile: when one component operates outside of spec, the entire device could be rendered useless. In the case of the DS18B20, the author states in the 'Warning' section that the primary way of determining counterfeit sensors is to check the ROM output compared to a known format. When counterfeit parts like this are added, it creates v…

That's a lot of fancy words for essentially restating that old adage about three million parts being required to launch a rocket, all of them being delivered by the cheapest bidder.

And yet, these rockets (mostly) got off the ground quite safely!

Because these statistical vulnerabilities are rather obvious, and it isn't quite just the "cheapest bidder", and because their parts are tested, and because people took care to allow for 2 million of those 3 million parts to fail without disaster being inevitable.

The risks of remote-bricking counterfeits are rather obvious, indeed.

But it's just as trivially obvious that it is intended to protect the supply chain. Or, for the cynical: that its intend to protect these companies' profits is aligned with protecting the supply chain.

It's a trade-off, unlikely to have a single, generic best answer.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#147

Post by IAmEveryone »

S_A_P wrote: post #85
kbenson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I strongly disagree with this. I see no way to rationalize that a company should be responsible for ensuring that counterfeit devices work correctly by releasing drivers that are tolerant of them or do not stop them from functioning. There's a difference between not taking steps to ensure counterfeit devices function, and purposefully causing hardware to fail on a remote system. For example, I'm pretty sure purpose…

>Refusing to function is acceptable. Bricking the hardware is not. In some/most cases there is no difference.

Intend is 99% of the law (and commonly understood ethics).

That's why you can kill someone and be either glorified as a war hero, hanged by a jury of your peers, or ordered to retake your driving exam.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#148

Post by kd5bjo »

robomartin wrote: post #143
kd5bjo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is also off, because we’re talking about an internal component rather than an entire device. If a repair shop doesn’t use a Genuine Apple replacement screen, does Apple have to support it? No. Is going out of their way to physically destroy these replacement screens anti-consumer behavior? Yes. A key point here is that it’s impossible for the malicious driver to know what representation the seller made t…

Read my comment about how there are at least two separable problems in this issue. Perhaps then my position will make sense to you. Continuing to argue through hypothetical examples is pointless, it's getting sillier and sillier and farther away from key issues. Counterfeit goods is not a victimless crime. It costs jobs. It costs progress. It costs entire industries. Don't blame the victim. Consumers just happen to b…

> I mean, what's FTDI supposed to do?

I’m not saying that FTDI or a similar company should sit idly by, but the vigilante justice you’re advocating leads to bad places. We have customs enforcement to stop goods at the border and a court system to deal with internal disputes; use them.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#149

Post by IAmEveryone »

robomartin wrote: post #124
teraflop wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's complaining that FTDI didn't make their drivers compatible with counterfeit hardware. They're complaining that FTDI deliberately took actions in their driver code to damage any supposedly counterfeit devices that were plugged into a system. To use your example, imagine if Apple released an update to iOS that would scan any jailbroken iPhones on the same network, and if it detected one, would use a backdoor t…

One bad example after another. Why is this so hard for folks to grasp. The proper example would be fake iPhones made in Switzerland sold in the US as through they were real iPhones. If that's the case, then, YES, Apple would be right to brick them with an update. Absolutely. I ask again: In what alternate reality would Apple be required to allow fake iPhones, look the other way and just let them be?

> I ask again: In what alternate reality

In that alternative reality where, for example, mobile phone carriers are required to allow 911 calls even if your account is otherwise locked because you fraudulently paid with someone else's credit card.

Re: Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

#150

Post by robomartin »

fulafel wrote: post #144
robomartin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two issues here, and they are separable. One is the issue of intellectual property theft and what a company has a right to do in order to protect itself. FTDI invested massive amounts of money to produce excellent solutions for a number of problems. I have personally been using their chips in my designs for over twenty years. I don't even remember when I started, it's possible it was at the very start of th…

I don't think it's productive to go around saying "an entire country is openly stealing intellectual property" here any more than citizens of other countries saying the same thing about US as a nation and personal data. IPR is a contentious field of intl agreements band there are no moral absolutes. But damaging physical property is pretty clearly unlawful in most jurisdictions.

You've never done business with China, have you?

The scale and breath of intellectual property theft leaves one gasping for air.

This isn't some kind of a secret. Anyone in manufacturing knows exactly what I am talking about. People who don't make physical products for a living have absolutely no idea.

You can find clones of just about anything you can possibly imagine on Alibaba. Anything. That's a breath and scale that is impossible to sustain without systemic factors.

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