i've been thinking about something kind of, robotdyn is a viable order source, so that'd be a primary order source if i need boards.
we can stil occasionally order small quantities from other sources and if we receive fakes, just make a complain to the vendor (perhaps air them here). i'm not too sure when are they going to correct that.but if different people complain, it would finally get the attention of some of them.and some of them may clarify their stand about shipping fakes as not all vendors want to be associated with the fake sellers. make that same complain to aliexpress so that it gets registered in their logs, i think they'd at least do something as aliexpress do have a bigger stake than do those fake sellers. otherwise sellers such as robotdyn, would choose to distinguish themselves and offer their own web sites on which to order boards instead of going through aliexpress, after all you are the same customer whether you use aliexpress.
the other thing is to 'build from scratch', i've been dragging my feet on that and i think it is a good thing to at least try.
at least then one'd not be dependent on those vendors and they can go do whatever they want
the other thing though, the original blue-pills are apparently from vcc-gnd on taobao
https://vcc-gnd.taobao.com/?spm=2013.1. ... c73bQppk9d
the trouble with taobao of course is that the pages are in chinese, this can prove a challenge. i'm not too sure if google translate can help.
one tactic is that on the web one can try to type a message in english to converse with the vendor. it is rather possible that some of them understand english. after all, some of them are pretty much the same people behind aliexpress. apparently vcc-gnd is also the vendor for the F401/F411 pill boards, just check their web on taobao
the other thing though, taobao has some kind of logistics aggregation centers, one way is to ship locally to the local aggregation center in china and let alibaba transship that to you (you need to do that on the taobao web) and transshipment has a separate fee. or while ordering directly on the vendor's taobao store, to check for direct shipping option. there are apparently 2 routes and one would need to choose the appropriate one.