espruino.cn

I was just wondering if Espruino.com (this) and Espruino.cn have any affiliation. Is espruino.cn even recognized by Gordon?

Interesting to see this one:
http://www.aliexpress.com/premium/espruino.html?ltype=wholesale&d=y&origin=y&SearchText=espruino&initiative_id=SB_20150111020320&catId=0&isViewCP=y

No, it's nothing to do with Espruino or espruino.com.

The people who run it did contact me about it, and if I'm honest I really didn't follow it up properly. They were also making and selling a complete clone of the Espruino board (I think via the site) so I can't say I was desperately motivated to help them out.

@JumJum I have no idea if those are clones or not, they may just be reselling from Seeed. If they are clones then the price seems quite high.

Some stuff looks real... some (copied and) photoshopped, and some flat out copied... Noticed the (already available) shields, and the much more compact stacking - with machined headers, similar to the ones I equipped my Espruino board with, just reversed and way longer... (forum thread 29) have to find out where to get them. I used them also to make custom, stackable cable connections (like stackable banana plugs used in labs).

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Nice set of shields, but a real shame they haven't used the same footprint so they could be used on 'proper' Espruino boards - then it might actually have been useful for all Espruino users (rather than just them).

It's pretty frustrating, seeing the Espruino firmware copied, not just without any credit to espruino.com, but with a silkscreen that points people to espruino.cn instead.

Hi Gordon,
I'm sorry to make you frustrating:(
I built up the espruino.cn. The original goal of espruino.cn is just a community for Chinese espruino users. I have my own job and I maintain this community in my spare time. By the way I have stopped selling the JS On Board and NanoJS several months ago. So we have no conflict of profit now:)

China is a huge market, so I think it would be great for Espruino if you could somehow collaborate around the official Espruino. Cloning/copying the original leads to fragmentation, and the loss of profit for the original Espruino project will only harm Espruino's future development.

I think it's wonderful that Espruino is getting picked up in China! But everybody wins if we all pull in the same direction and help fund Gordon's continued work on Espruino.

@user6779, sorry for not replying to you properly when you first contacted me.

It's great having a Chinese language site available, and I'd really like to have some way to support it. Selling Espruino-based boards is tricky - it's not specific to you, but to anyone who sells their own boards with Espruino on. It's nice having a wider variety of boards that run Espruino, but at the same time I'm trying to support myself while working full-time on it. Right now the day-to-day sales (if you don't count the short-term boost from the KickStarters) aren't enough to pay me even minimum wage, so I just can't afford to do anything that might eat in to the small amount that I do make (and that means featuring other boards on espruino.com).

Looking at the 'json' files the Web IDE loads off espruino.com, I can see that right now 40% of the boards used with the Web IDE aren't using Espruino board's firmware (they may still be using NanoJS/etc though!). Obviously it's not practical to think this way, but if those were all Espruino boards then I'd actually be making enough to support myself.

So yes, it's hard - and if I didn't have to worry about getting paid I'd have loved to support you (and the other Espruino boards). Why did you stop selling the NanoJS board though? Originally you'd said that the existing Espruino board was just too expensive - is that still the case? I'd be happy if you wanted to resell the existing Espruino board (the price to distributors is much, much less than the $39.90 that Seeed sell it at).

As I'd said before, if you wanted to sell shields (maybe it makes more sense for the Espruino Pico) it'd be perfect. I'd put them on the site and would even try and get them into the distributors that I have. Hopefully something like that could be mutually beneficial, and I could then properly feature espruino.cn without any worries that it might eat into sales of the 'official' Espruino board.

NanoJS is designed by a friend of mine, he is too busy to maintain the board. So we stopped selling the NanoJS. Of course, I want to resell the existing Espruino board. I hope the Chinese community can help you to get more Espruino board users. Maybe we need more connection by skype or QQ.

Ahh, thanks! I'll reply to your PM.