The Chinese aren't buying market share with new technology. They clone what other in the West have done and then they sell it for next to nothing. There's nothing that should scare a beginner that appears on one of the MCU-to-serial/RS232 port boards that I've mentioned.

Just recently, I bought a little LC meter assembly, and it's produced a lot of communication, to no avail, with the vendor. There are switches intended to set the operating mode, but it's not clear that they work as one might assume. Further, they are situated such that, if you want to mount the assembly in an enclosure, flush with the display, you can't easily reach all the switches and buttons. Shortening the display pins might mitigate the problem but I don't think I should have to do that. This is clearly not a product that fits the model I previously mentioned. It's not going to buy them much market share. However, there are many items, e.g. RF modules, RS232 adapters, etc. avaialble on eBay at very low prices, that shouldn't be a challenge to implement and which will save a lot of time.

RE