There is a large amount of software in the Console Modification market that comes with little hints and nudges that if you didn't get it from somewhere legit, you're probably running a clone. One hardware trick that a friend of mine came up with is clever: A series of 0Ohm resistors. Each batch gets sent out with a different one and they're just the Luhn digit for YYYYMM of manufacture, which is silkscreened onto the board through some Gerber mangling.
he's caught 2-3 people cloning his stuff b/c the Luhn digit will be wrong for the recorded YYYYMM. Instead of getting mad at them, he reaches out to them and offers them a licensing deal ("you get legit gerbers every two months marking that you made it, you must not distribute them, etc") for some reasonable cost ($0.10/board made) and he gets a kickback of 50% of the raw profit from the sale. He also offers a $0 "send me a clone I haven't seen yet and I will send you a legit one" exchange.
Works out pretty well for him, but he works in a Niche of a Niche in automation. He sells maybe 100 of the things a year.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Re: It stops hardware cloning
Date: 2024-12-17 08:59 pm (UTC)There is a large amount of software in the Console Modification market that comes with little hints and nudges that if you didn't get it from somewhere legit, you're probably running a clone. One hardware trick that a friend of mine came up with is clever: A series of 0Ohm resistors. Each batch gets sent out with a different one and they're just the Luhn digit for YYYYMM of manufacture, which is silkscreened onto the board through some Gerber mangling.
he's caught 2-3 people cloning his stuff b/c the Luhn digit will be wrong for the recorded YYYYMM. Instead of getting mad at them, he reaches out to them and offers them a licensing deal ("you get legit gerbers every two months marking that you made it, you must not distribute them, etc") for some reasonable cost ($0.10/board made) and he gets a kickback of 50% of the raw profit from the sale. He also offers a $0 "send me a clone I haven't seen yet and I will send you a legit one" exchange.
Works out pretty well for him, but he works in a Niche of a Niche in automation. He sells maybe 100 of the things a year.