Interesting article. I did not know there was a big issue with the Chinese DS3231's but I had my suspicions. Back in November 2019 I ordered three 4-tube IN-12 clocks for about $25/each from AliExpress (looks like this one on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/IN-12A-B-Nixie-Magic-Eye-Clock-4-Bit-Glow-Tube-Clock-DS3231-W-Colorful-LED/352836421129). They are similar to some 4-tube ZM102x clocks I have. I was going to give two to friends for Christmas.
I fired them all up with new tubes and discovered issues with them. First off, the quality of the construction was lousy. The worst I have ever seen for one of these prebuilt clocks. Unlike the photo in the eBay auction above, the back plexiglass panel has no spacers and is bent over the rear of the main board. Also, one of the brass spacers on the front has stripped threads and the screw falls out. But that is just the physical appearance. One clock was very accurate and I am using that one myself now. The other two were lousy at keeping time. One was losing about 2 minutes a day and the other was losing 15 minutes or more a day. I was appalled and went into the dispute system on AliExpress. After sending many videos of the defective clocks, and back and forth on trying different things, we reached an agreement where I would pay USD$20 for the one functional clock and keep the defective clocks (I offered to send the defective ones back but they said to keep them). I did try seeing if I could get the second clock, that lost 2 minutes a day, to function better but very quickly it stopped working and only displays one digit that does not change (the function buttons do not work either). The other tubes are dark. I am guessing the CPU blew out. The HV module works so I can scavenge that if I need one. As for the third module, I never bothered to do anything more with it and it is still in the box. At least that one I can use for testing IN-12's as it does count. Just not very accurately. Between the three I at least was able to create one good clock from the parts. So after all that, I noticed very quickly these clocks disappeared from AliExpress from the various vendors that were selling time. I guess I was not the only person who had problems with them. A few did reappear in the new year at a prices similar or higher to this one on eBay. It is possible they might be manufactured by a more reliable (by China standards) manufacturer and work correctly. At least the pictures look nice. At least eBay and AliExpress have good customer service and if you wind up with a piece of junk they will work to fix the problem On Thursday, July 9, 2020 at 1:29:49 PM UTC-4, celzey11 wrote: > > > https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/bj3sbf/how_to_identify_counterfeit_rtc/ > > Interesting thread about cheap DS3231 chips > > On Thu, Jul 9, 2020, 1:04 PM gregebert <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > >> There are also counterfeit devices, easily found on the dirt-cheap cards. >> See what yours does at midnite on New Year's Eve...... >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the >> Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. >> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/neonixie-l/lrwNNw59f1k/unsubscribe. >> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to >> [email protected] <javascript:>. >> To view this discussion on the web, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/bfdc59e3-5286-424e-bf39-3bd4dd042f18o%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/bfdc59e3-5286-424e-bf39-3bd4dd042f18o%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/b63dace5-8f83-47be-8e8d-6ae87c72ea90o%40googlegroups.com.
