Ethical question

I am new to the world of electronics. Recently I have been doing some research to gain both the knowledge and skills that I would need to pursue electronic curcuit design and building as a hobby. Recently as I was browsing the internet I came across the user manual for a kit that I found rather interesting. So I went to the company's website and looked for the kit, however was not able to find it online. I then contacted the company through email to see if maybe they still had some, however was told that they no longer make the kit and did not have any to sell. The manual that I found included a board and componet layout along with all of the required componets.

This got me thinking. I could use this as an exercise to learn the CAD program that I have chosen. I could also use
it as an exercise in identifying and selecting the componets. I could also use it as an exercise in creating and building a pcb.

I was wondering what would be any ethical issues that I might face in using the manual that I was able to find and creating a schematic, board layout, pcb, and building the divice? I would strictly only be doing this for a learning experience and for my own personal use, not for finical gain.

Also has anyone here bought or tried to buy the rights to an electronics kit or other item? I might consider this if
the company would be willing and if the price was reasonable.

Thanks in advanced!

For personal use and education I don't see a problem with it at all. There is often nothing legally preventing you from doing this as long as you reverse engineer things and ideally make a few improvements along the way as you learn things. Even slapping a copyright providers the originator of the schematic with virutally no legal rights. If you produced your own schematic, even if it were functionally the same as the originating circuit you've effectively recreated it. Simply visually changing without functionally changing the schematic can avoid any possible legal wranglings. The only way to protect most electronic circuits is with patents or trade secretes, neither of which work very well.

So by changing from say dip componets to say smd's and maybe rearranging the location of some of the componets would keep me out of legal trouble. The device alse needs a LNA apm, I could probably try and include that and the rest of the device on one board, given proper sheilding. (Yes this is for a rf receiver in the 136 to 137 MHz range).

As far as copying anything and, I do mean anything, its legal as long as it for personal use only. If you ever sell it of try to make money off off selling the copy/s then you are in trouble.

If you can build an exact replica and meet all relative safety requirements and what ever other nit picking that pertains to its actual operation then your good to go!

I wouldn't worry about "legal trouble" if you are just building it for yourself. You can build it however you want in this scenario.

Now if you tried to sell it commercially, or placed your project on the web complete with plans and claimed it was your design, you'd be risking a lawsuit.

Unless it's patented.

Ok, so maybe I will use the receiver that I found and an example to help guide me. I would guess, without having a backgound in it, that most FM receivers are very similar. The model I saw was fairly basic I would think, and I am sure if I think about it hard enough that I could find areas for improvement in design, functionality, and additional features.

robertdean said:

Ok, so maybe I will use the receiver that I found and an example to help guide me. I would guess, without having a backgound in it, that most FM receivers are very similar. The model I saw was fairly basic I would think, and I am sure if I think about it hard enough that I could find areas for improvement in design, functionality, and additional features.

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It amazes me that someone who is new to electronics would imagine that they could improve a commercial RF design.I have 25 yrs experience in microwave radio & I know that it is 40% black magic. Good on you for having the confidence.

i think anything more than 10yrs old can be reproduced by any one without any legal problem. just check if the circuit is very old or not, since you found out they are no more producing it may be very old and patent no longer valid.

It is not illegal to make even a patented item for your self

Ross Craney said:

It amazes me that someone who is new to electronics would imagine that they could improve a commercial RF design.I have 25 yrs experience in microwave radio & I know that it is 40% black magic. Good on you for having the confidence.

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Ross, I aploigze if my thinking that I could improve upon an FM receiver offended you. Yes I am new to electronics, but I do have some techinal background. I also believe that there is not a product out there that could not be improved upon in one fashion or another. Now, what I may see as an improvement and what you see as an improvement may be two different things but that does not mean either of us are wrong. Sometimes to improve something you need to bring in someone from outside that has a different way of thinking.

If this is not what you meant by your post I again apologize and would like to say thank you for your vote of confidance. I have no false hopes of changing the world with any thing that I may design or build, but only hope to enrich my life with the knowledge that I would gain.

robertdean said:

Ross, I aploigze if my thinking that I could improve upon an FM receiver offended you. Yes I am new to electronics, but I do have some techinal background. I also believe that there is not a product out there that could not be improved upon in one fashion or another. Now, what I may see as an improvement and what you see as an improvement may be two different things but that does not mean either of us are wrong. Sometimes to improve something you need to bring in someone from outside that has a different way of thinking.

If this is not what you meant by your post I again apologize and would like to say thank you for your vote of confidance. I have no false hopes of changing the world with any thing that I may design or build, but only hope to enrich my life with the knowledge that I would gain.

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Not offended at all , like I said , go for it. It just amuses me when you see posts li8ke - " I have decided to become interested in electronics. I have bought heaps of tools , components & test gear. What do you think I shoud make ?" OR " I have a LED & I want to make it flash. How do you do it ?" This method is not a path to learning , it is purely a path to results. Why someone who is learning thinks they can say " I'll start the learning level at digital quadrature modulators or GT Inverters " beats me. If you are into learning you should be starting at the basics & working from there.

Ross Craney said:

Not offended at all , like I said , go for it. It just amuses me when you see posts li8ke - " I have decided to become interested in electronics. I have bought heaps of tools , components & test gear. What do you think I shoud make ?" OR " I have a LED & I want to make it flash. How do you do it ?" This method is not a path to learning , it is purely a path to results. Why someone who is learning thinks they can say " I'll start the learning level at digital quadrature modulators or GT Inverters " beats me. If you are into learning you should be starting at the basics & working from there.

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I agree with what you say, though I have no clue as to what a digital quadrature modulator or GT Inverter is but I am sure if the things that I want to do take that direction I will learn it. I will admit that with the way I am starting to learn may be some what non-traditional, I think that for me choosing a project in something I am intrested in will help push me along and learn quicker. When I was looking around I came across the receiver, it is a weather satellite receiver, and thought that it would be something neat to have. The nice thing about this is there is opensource, and it is under the GPL, software available to demodulate the satellite images.

robertdean said:

I agree with what you say, though I have no clue as to what a digital quadrature modulator or GT Inverter is but I am sure if the things that I want to do take that direction I will learn it. I will admit that with the way I am starting to learn may be some what non-traditional, I think that for me choosing a project in something I am intrested in will help push me along and learn quicker. When I was looking around I came across the receiver, it is a weather satellite receiver, and thought that it would be something neat to have. The nice thing about this is there is opensource, and it is under the GPL, software available to demodulate the satellite images.

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When you are teaching yourself, it's better to start at the top (big idea) and work your way down to the basics. One main reason is, you probably don't know what the basics are at that point, and can confuse yourself much worse than you will learn.

Take the big idea and start breaking it apart. Say you want to build a power suppy. So study the various types of power supplies. You decide on an SMPS power supply, so you start learning about PWM, mosfets, coils, diodes and how they basically fit into the power supply. At that point you can start refining things down, like control modes, feedback, limiters, PFC correction, etc.

Without someone to direct you, starting at the basics is actually harder. Start at the top and just keep pulling apart the ideas until you get to the bottom.

Although the biggest advantage is you can choose a high level device/topic that excites you. You are learning because you see something at the end. Starting with the basics has no motivation other than general learning.

smanches said:

Say you want to build a power suppy. So study the various types of power supplies. You decide on an SMPS power supply, so you start learning about PWM, mosfets, coils, diodes and how they basically fit into the power supply. At that point you can start refining things down, like control modes, feedback, limiters, PFC correction, etc.

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Well this is the first time I have outrightly disagreed with someone here. This method is result based. What you do is learn enought to make a power supply & thats it. This will not result in you learning what other uses these components have or even how they do what they do. I started in electronics when I was 10. I progressed through the technollogy changes of valves , transistors , analogue IC's , digital IC's & digital cct technology both as a hobby & a profession. Mine was a slow ,structured & orderly progression of learning. If you are a mature age & just starting then you probably don't have the time or opportunity to learn from the ground up like I did (espesially if you are not employed in the electronics field). With the rapid pace of change in both electronic technology & techniques now days you would probably be better off concentrating on specific areas of interest (power supplies , RF , Audio etc) & become knowledgable in those fields. The alternative is to know a little bit about a lot but not really knowledgable in anything. Just my opinion. Having said that - all knowledge is worthwile so good luck to you.

I would have to agree with both Ross and smanches to a point, but I would also say that it has a lot to do with the person that is trying to learn. When you are trying to learn something new it is always good to have something that you can "show off". The reason that I say it depends on the person is because some people get very discouraged if they have nothing physical that they can show off, while others are content with having the knowledge but not a physical product of the knowledge. The physical product could be just enough to push the person along to develop more knowledge.

If the person is an inqusitive person that has a desire to learn what is wrong with saying I want x and then figuring out the parts needed and how everything enteracts to get x. Basically start with either a problem definition (i.e. There is a need for a device to do x) or a question (How would I build x?) and then go about designing, to include componet selection, the device. Now this assumes that the person is willing to do the leg work to research the componets, programming, or related technology.

Without someone to direct you, starting at the basics is actually harder. Start at the top and just keep pulling apart the ideas until you get to the bottom.

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I agree with that 100%.
However that is the entire point of this forum, at least by the way I see it. Here is a community, here is the feedback and direction someone in Deans's position can benefit from greatly, so long as we all don't get so carried away with topics so far off the main post that Dean runs away because he's not getting answers that are useful.

I personally thrive in the area of theory and wanting to learn more, I only really dabble in electronics as a practical hobby, though I'm gearing up for some real hardcore experimentation within the next few years. Most people don't think that far along though or have a concept of just how much there really is to learn, I'm still a noob after something like 6 years into this as a hobby. I've only a modest collection of knowledge and devices, but it's enough for me. Deans gotta find what's right for them without us telling him what that is.

As far as I'm concerned you have to look at it all and do what you think is best =) So don't do what any one of us suggests, just listen to all of us, and then do what you think is best. No matter how you do things you'll hit dead ends snags and problems of many kinds. Just keep at it as much as your interest pans out. As far as Deans needs to have something right here and now to test personally I'm from the opposite end of the spectrum, but I fully understand his need for it, that's what he needs, lets lean towards getting him what he needs =)
I would however also recommend buying some dirty cheap kits to get your feet wet in the physical construction department.

One of the most difficult things I can see is that you need to actually want to DO something before you can learn anything, and you have to want to do it enough that you'll learn things you might otherwise find distasteful to accomplish, in the end even the things you find most trivial and pointless are incredibly important.

I usually like to start with a "big picture view" then break it down. Lets say I decide to persue the weather satellite receiver. I have found a design that works that I will base my design on. Alot of the componets are either hard to find or are no longer being produced, so now I have to figure out what each componet does and what a suitable replacement will be. I feel that this will help me learn what each part is, what it does, and how it connects to the other componets. Once I really start to work on this the way I will approach the whole project will be to break it into many small projects. In the mean time I have found some documentation on NOAA, Russian, and European weather satellites that cover how they operate; I have also found other websites detailing the same type of devices that I am looking at.

Alot

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I don't often correct this but it's a pet peeve of mine. It's a lot not alot, alot means to set aside for some other use.

If you want to continue this discussion start a new thread, with a full listing of the schematic and links to or otherwise post all the information you have associated with it. This thread is no longer useful to directly helping you so I think a new one is in order. Don't bury it under the old thread title and the current topic of conversation.

Sceadwian said:

I don't often correct this but it's a pet peeve of mine. It's a lot not alot, alot means to set aside for some other use.

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Oppss. Sorry, must have missed the space bar. I don't do that a lot.