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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

It seems that they're buying parts from a manufacturer and putting them together with a custom configuration of OpenWRT. I went through the listing and nowhere does it say "all components completely designed and manufactured by us". The OpenWRT logo is actually on their page, so they're not hiding what they use. Open up an iPhone (which is built by third parties - not by Apple), and you'll see components from lots of other manufacturers too. The people complaining seem to not know that literally no one - not even Linksys or Apple - builds routers or any other consumer electronic product entirely from scratch.

This product is neither great nor original, but the claims that they somehow lied about what they were doing just ring hollow to me.

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From the kick-starter page:

Our first prototypes were pretty clunky, and cost between $200-$400 just for the parts, but they worked well and proved the concept. We knew that the device had to be small enough to easily conceal, built with quality components, and rock solid. But we also wanted to make it inexpensive. We wanted to make it available to as many people as possible.

By our fourth round of prototypes we had created a model with 64mb memory and a 580mhz CPU. This not only runs the software well, it flies!

At last happy with the board, we designed a simple, minimalist case in plain white to house it. The end result is our current model. We decided to name it the anonabox.

And? "We designed a case". "We bought lots of other prototype equipment to make this thing before we put together the final version".

I see nothing here indicating claims that the electronics are designed and/or built by them. It looks like they are very inexperienced at this and it took them a long time to find the parts necessary to build what they wanted. Again, it may be a crappy, unoriginal product. But I just don't see anything to be outraged about.

They didn't design the case either. The product comes complete, in the same case, from a Chinese manufacturer. Zero assembly required... same RAM and CPU specs... 5 different models to choose from... $20. Claiming they did ANY hardware design, assembly, etc. is the fraudulent part.

http://www.atupapa.com/17043400030en.html

Meh. They may well have played with their own designs and then found this. Either way anyone saying this is fraudulent is being pedantic. They created a product that does what it says. End of story.

They put the open hardware logo beside a commercially purchased product they claimed "we designed" at least part of. Lastly the bottom of their page is clearly worded in reference to manufacturing... with "backup suppliers for parts". I just can't make the same leap in acceptance that it was a wording error.

As someone who backed, then retracted my pledge, my thinking was thus:

When you are looking at a product designed for security, you want complete, up-front honesty. The campaign had claimed (or perhaps strongly insinuated) that it had effectively designed four prototypes. This turned out not to be true (well, allegedly at this point -- it's really not clear). That raises other questions about what they might not be forthcoming about.

In short: I expect a security product to be proactively disclosing things like this. That's how you build trust.

It's your money and you're entitled to your opinion. But by this logic, the manufacturers of your smartphone, the keyboard on which you typed this response, the monitor on which you saw it, and the computer you used to submit it all lied to you by claiming that they "made" these devices. Open any of them and you'll find chips from Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, and countless others.

They likely designed four prototypes. That says nothing about creating them from scratch, and they would be idiotic to even attempt to do so. They certainly couldn't do that on $600K.

I agree, the only thing they said they actually designed was the case which is different from the linked pictures as far as I can tell. About the board was that it was finally one that was small and did all the things they wanted for the software to run. This smells a lot like a witch hunt.

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