Documentation

[lworthing]

I’m pretty frustrated with you documention. Are there any plans in the near future for it to be updated.

[lworthing]

@fred
I have had a similar experience to this post from 6 months ago. What's changed since then?
https://forum.pycom.io/topic/1452/first-steps-with-lopy-pysense-and-feedback

Will i achieve anything by complaining, probably not and will not benefit this community . However when i purchase a product(s) that is released to joe public you do expect many of the bugs to be ironed out with a smoother onborading process.

I'll be first to say i don't no everything and most definitely not an expert in python but hey that's why we look at products such pycom to develop and learn. So what have i done so far;

• I've updated the lopy firmware with the tool provided. Orientating the lopy was not straight forward and this goes for the pysens/pytrack. If i did not have an expansion board how do i update the firmware using a pysense?

*I did the usual pycom hello world of LED lights. GREAT!! VS Code is working and syncing as it expected.
*Next i connected to WiFi and used SSH to log in.GREAT!! I thought this was easy.
*I explored sending events to AWS and Azure. After some tinkering a made it happen posting sample json data. GREAT!! Now lets connect the pysense and collect some real data!

*I have struggled installing drivers and updating pysense firmware or should i say understating if it has completed correctly.
I can only assume i have at this point.

I then had to roll back the Windows driver so i could communicate on COM4?

*I go to github to download pysense libs and sample program. https://github.com/pycom/pycom-libraries/tree/master/pysense

I have a couple of errors

So i see pycoproc is required in the ERROR, so lets get that and it to my pycom lib

But hold on team.... pycoproc is within its folder. It actually need to be in the root of lib right?

GREAT!!! We are now running with pysense

Following the Pycom tutorials is there any reference to pycoproc?

I'm all about discovering and going out to find the information - what a great way to learn.
I feel it would benefit all levels knowledge if you had projects packaged up ready to go that we can use as a benchmark or fall back if something stops working we can then trouble shoot hardware easily.

A library of short 3min videos would be a great for people getting started.
i'm a member of the Dev xpress framework and there documentation is the best i have ever experienced. Check you there getting started videos. Simple but very effective.
https://www.devexpress.com/Support/Start/

i'm with the community and agree this hardware is pretty cool but i want to get up and running in a couple of mins running sample code from there we can go and invent!!

Thanks
Lewis

[Fred]

@crumble thank you! Very good input... I am drawing up a list and will incorporate these suggestions.

[crumble]

@fred said in Documentation:

Then its a case of going through all of the content on the Docs and improve and improve and improve.

I think you have to rewrite a lot if you want to target beginners. The whole boot process for instance. And you have to provide useful examples on it. Most of your examples are not beginner friendly. The LoRa PingPong for example is not ready and configured for EU only.

At best, let the new people try to work with the documentation without any help of the seniors. Let them write down where they failed and you will have the best feedback where you have to improve ;)

We are working on some very detailed data sheets for each product.

Please add some realistic numbers and not the theoretical ones, marketing has found on some modder sites. Typical radio ranges and free memory for the user will be great and real numbers won't frustrate that much.

You have a great product if you would focus more on the software and documentation than on new hardware. I miss a high level API for the pytrack. There are better languages than python for programming bare metal device.

You have a great hardware and good people in the forum support, but you have to improve the software/documentation a lot.

[Fred]

@lworthing

Hi,

Thanks for airing your comments. We take on all input and always strive to improve. We still have a long way to go and as rightfully pointed out by some others, have made some big recruitment drives to start filling-in some of these cracks.

It is however very useful that you explain the issues to us because we can start identifying not just the effect but the cause.

We are looking at revamping the Forum, making info easier to find but also content must be improved. We are working on some very detailed data sheets for each product. We have one format complete and will roll-out these out in the next few weeks. Then its a case of going through all of the content on the Docs and improve and improve and improve.

Do bare with us!
Best wishes Fred

[lworthing]

@robert-hh
Yep fair point, i’ve had a beer and calmed down. *post edited.

[livius]

@lworthing
What you need to be documented?

[robert-hh]

@lworthing I do agree that the documentation is incomplete and partially simply wrong, but I do not agree with the style commenting.
It looks as if Pycom has hired now people dedicated to updating the docs, so things should improve.
It should be noted that everything which is standard Python is not part of the documentation. For that, you might look at the origin of Micropython: http://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/pyboard/genrst/index.html
Alhough, this sectikon has not been updated since long, and the language develops.