Midnite Solar Rosie on sale

[SpongeboB Sinewave]

Sounds like a lose-lose. If you give your blueprints and essentially your IP to a Chinese firm, what is to prevent them from delivering an inferior product and materials under your contract, opening up another company manufacturing an AIO with relatively superior materials selling them under a different name and keeping all the profit to themselves.
I'm saying this because I've seen this happen before with an automatic door lock manufacturer that i used to sell(early 2000's before the current market saturation).
Not saying I don't buy things made in China. I have and will , hat is the world we live in.

I'm hoping you guys will break this cycle of given away your mind and life's work to the Chinese, in hopes of making ever larger profits that will not materialize once you've been double crossed.

We don't give away our IP. China makes these inverters themselves now. We guide certain manufacturers is all.

We still design and make our own products strictly in the US. With the help of parts that come from all over the world. Custom and off the shelf.

boB

 

[Zybane]

Sounds like a lose-lose. If you give your blueprints and essentially your IP to a Chinese firm, what is to prevent them from delivering an inferior product and materials under your contract, opening up another company manufacturing an AIO with relatively superior materials selling them under a different name and keeping all the profit to themselves.
I'm saying this because I've seen this happen before with an automatic door lock manufacturer that i used to sell(early 2000's before the current market saturation).
Not saying I don't buy things made in China. I have and will , hat is the world we live in.

I'm hoping you guys will break this cycle of given away your mind and life's work to the Chinese, in hopes of making ever larger profits that will not materialize once you've been double crossed.

You just described the West selling its soul to China for the last three decades.

 

[Hedges]

We don't give away our IP. China makes these inverters themselves now. We guide certain manufacturers is all.

We still design and make our own products strictly in the US. With the help of parts that come from all over the world. Custom and off the shelf.

boB

I've thought that running encrypted firmware embedded in ROM, or having a calibration process executing on domestic servers, might impede rip-offs.

I was working on a mass spectrometer (RGA, residual gas analyzer), and if manufacturing was to be performed overseas I thought the calibration process could protect it. But I had no control beyond my boards, calibration was developed in India and one guy sent database for quoting from China. I think even PCB fab data divulges part numbers if either OBD++ or Gerber assembly data is included. Ought to have a process to strip out just PCB geometry, leaving no more. If I was China and wanted to rip off IP, I would store every database that came in. So much easier than reverse-engineering.

In your case, good firmware will be a big part of that, but specifically for US grid so doesn't help a clone maker with overseas markets as much.
Maybe you could have them manufactured and initially programmed with self-immolation code. Once they land in the US, load encrypted code that works with a specific CPU serial number and apply the "Midnight" sticker and logo.

 

[SpongeboB Sinewave]

I've thought that running encrypted firmware embedded in ROM, or having a calibration process executing on domestic servers, might impede rip-offs.

I was working on a mass spectrometer (RGA, residual gas analyzer), and if manufacturing was to be performed overseas I thought the calibration process could protect it. But I had no control beyond my boards, calibration was developed in India and one guy sent database for quoting from China. I think even PCB fab data divulges part numbers if either OBD++ or Gerber assembly data is included. Ought to have a process to strip out just PCB geometry, leaving no more. If I was China and wanted to rip off IP, I would store every database that came in. So much easier than reverse-engineering.

In your case, good firmware will be a big part of that, but specifically for US grid so doesn't help a clone maker with overseas markets as much.
Maybe you could have them manufactured and initially programmed with self-immolation code. Once they land in the US, load encrypted code that works with a specific CPU serial number and apply the "Midnight" sticker and logo.

Yes, test software could be implemented in China and changed here.

My old MX60 firmware (modified some after I left in 2005) was given to the Chinese manufacturer (again, after I was gone), and when OB Power sent the inverters and CC's off to India, that company that had made the entire product in China for them, ended up putting their own name (Fang Pu Sung) on the wiring cover and selling it as their own for cheap. Of course, they weren't sold much in the US after that. But they WERE the manufacturer at that time and had all of the original everything to make them. Originally, it was just the aluminum casting that was made for the MX60.

But that was like 15 years ago and the Chinese have gotten real good at making stuff like that.

boB

 

[hwy17]

 

[littleharbor2]

I remember seeing these cloned rip off products for the first time. It really bothered be and I imagine it really pissed off the original Mfg. How could they knock off Mfg. get away with this?
There's this odd offing from a modern day "Trace". Their older version was pretty much identical to the DR series if inverters of old.

 

[Zybane]

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I love how they always give them ridiculous names. Always surprised me at how good the Chinese are at copying but how terrible they are at designing/innovating.

 

[hwy17]

I love how they always give them ridiculous names. Always surprised me at how good the Chinese are at copying but how terrible they are at designing/innovating.

I mean... They innovated the prismatic cell Lifepo4 battery. US manufacturers will probably fail even at making licensed copies.

 

[G00SE]

I mean... They innovated the prismatic cell Lifepo4 battery. US manufacturers will probably fail even at making licensed copies.

Easy to forget that 20% of the worlds population is in one area. Surely there’s a ton of bad products but they can also make a ton of high quality stuff

 

[Cmiller]

Yes, test software could be implemented in China and changed here.

My old MX60 firmware (modified some after I left in 2005) was given to the Chinese manufacturer (again, after I was gone), and when OB Power sent the inverters and CC's off to India, that company that had made the entire product in China for them, ended up putting their own name (Fang Pu Sung) on the wiring cover and selling it as their own for cheap. Of course, they weren't sold much in the US after that. But they WERE the manufacturer at that time and had all of the original everything to make them. Originally, it was just the aluminum casting that was made for the MX60.

But that was like 15 years ago and the Chinese have gotten real good at making stuff like that.

boB

I have seen those as well, and that all makes sense as to why the menus and everything are exactly identical. What about quality of the build though? Would you expect that the quality would remain the same, or would they (Chinese company) use cheaper parts/internals?

On a side note, apparently you can custom order those from Fang Pu Sung with your own name on them..... I have seen this personally.

It's kind of sad that the Chinese companies do things that way so easily, but it seems like their overall mentality is to view making a clone as being an accomplishment rather than a ripoff. Where here in the states (I think........ at least I feel this way...) it would be more of an accomplishment to have your very own design, and incorporate features that make yours even better!

Kind of like how the Midnite Classic has even more features than the MXs, right? Except, that would be new company, new product, I guess. Lol. At any rate, Kudos to you boB!

 

[Cmiller]

Yeah, does it keep working, or are there corner cases where AC coupled with lithium battery and BMS still causes system shutdowns?

(I figure you can say, "Not yet ...")


I like how mine works with lead-acid.
But having multiple inverters in parallel for grid connection due to current draw, I've had trouble with tripping breakers in the past.

I am AC coupled with LifePo4 batteries and have had no issues (when configured like supposed to be... see further down*). I think the biggest reason is that despite the fact that voltage tends to easily spike with lithium batteries when they are full, generally speaking even if you charge to let's say 56-56.5V, the batteries can still accept high current for a little bit without hitting ~58+ volts.

My system specifically is off-grid with 600AH LifePo4, (4) Victron 3000/48 (12,000 watts total), Fronius 7.6 AC coupled GT inverter with 5.4kWdc of solar. We have a electric dryer that runs at ~6,000watts peak, so that has the potential to introduce power surges if batteries are full but still at absorb voltage (56.4v)> solar is feeding let's say 4,500 watts to the dryer heating element> element kicks off. But we don't have any issues at this point. We have been running this way for ~1-1/2 years now.

I guess I should say ~1 year now, as the first ~6 months I had an old Sunny Boy with no frequency shift curtailment (so it was either all or nothing) but even then we had no issues. Just had 5 minute increments of no solar production once the batteries got full.

*The only time we had issues is when I changed the frequency shift settings of the Victrons and frequency did not go high enough to curtail the GT inverter.... THEEENNNNN we had issues! ~270VAC overvoltage shutdowns. Sequence of events went like this: battery internal overvoltage shutdown> Victron inverter DC overvoltage shutdown> AC bus voltage spike> Fronius AC overvoltage shutdown. Victron does say that their default settings work well..... therefore there really is no benefit in changing them.....